Jakub Majmurek: You titled your book Why this fascism?Should we not first ask “what fascism is”?
Michael Herer: For a year I taught at the Faculty of doctrine of the University of Warsaw classes entitled precisely What is fascism? We looked at different definitions and ways of knowing Fascism. all time, however, it turned out that these definitions were eluded, that fascism was specified a multifaceted phenomenon, that the effort to specify it in terms of whether social or political or economic, omitted any dimension of Fascism and remained incomplete.
It turns out that the various phenomena that we would associate with fascism have a network of household similarities alternatively than that they all have a common feature. erstwhile we look at a household portrait, we see a similarity, but we are incapable to identify a circumstantial physical feature that would definitely find who is and who is not a associate of the family. It is the same with various phenomena, movements or parties referred to as fascist: individual on this image has a chin of grandpa Benito, individual else – the look of uncle Adolf, but it is hard to indicate 1 common feature or even a set of features.
So I thought that alternatively of a definitive approach to fascism, it would be more useful to look at what mechanisms have produced it in the past, and whether they work present as well.
So what does fascism produce? What is at the beginning of this household history?
Actually, my full book is an effort to answer that question. It consists of respective chapters in which I look, successively, modernity, dynamics of capitalism and burgherhood, understood both as a social class and a certain ethos. My answer to the question “where did Fascism come from?” is in a triangle designated by these concepts. due to the fact that fascism is straight linked to the dynamics of these 3 phenomena.
How?
Modernization, historical evolution of capitalism and the improvement of bourgeois culture they bring any problems – fascism was an effort to solve them. A false and criminal attempt, yet responding to any real challenges that request to be understood to realize where fascism comes from, and, as crucial as preventing it, seeking another solutions and ways to relieve tensions.
I will halt on their general characteristics – not to "soil". On the most general level, it is about – modern, but besides typical of capitalist formation – the tension between continuous liquefaction and deregulation of reality at all levels and reregulation, coding for what has been decoded. Marks and Engels wrote about it in Communist ManifestoAnd then Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Edypium. Fascism can be associated with either trend, taking various forms. As a regime, he stood on the side of regulation, imposing a fresh order. But as a move, it referred to and continues to mention to liquidating tendencies – most frequently trying to block them. In the case of bourgeoisie, however, there are tensions that lead to the creation of various forms of anti-personnel rebellion. Historical fascism, in any respects, was an archimic (small-minded) phenomenon, and under others he allied himself with these rebellions. Finally, for his historical genesis – as well as, I believe, actuality – the process of pauperizing bourgeoisie or mediate class was of large importance.
It is crucial not to fix on simpler and misleading formulas. It is not that modernity or capitalism “learns fascism.” In my opinion, it is permanently connected with modernity, capitalism and bourgeoisy, but this lasting bond does not remove ambiguity. erstwhile again: Fascism is born from interior tensions of capitalist modernity, it involves certain (but fortunately not only possible) ways of unloading them.
Should the crisis of 19th-century political liberalism and nationalism not be added to these 3 phenomena in the space where fascism is created?
The diagnosis that fascism is directed against liberalism and liberal democracy, as is the awareness that it is an utmost form of nationalism, is present in both professional literature and public debate. Therefore, I did not devote much space to these issues, as did anti-Semitism, which played a very crucial function in the formation of historical fascisms.
Since I wanted to get a cognitively productive connection between past and the present, I treated this last subject alternatively briefly. Today, I think that anti-immigrant phobias play a more crucial function than anti-Semitism, the fear of mixing the "sound Europeans" with migrants from the mediate East and Africa. Of course, in Poland anti-Semitism is inactive not a completely overworked issue, but the global trend is that in processes of fascism the emphasis from anti-Semitism shifts to Islamophobia. 1 can even observe the warm feeling of the leaders of the far right regarding Israel.
However, the substance is complicated, and present it is even more complicated with the situation in Gaza. There is talk of a fresh wave of anti-Semitism in Europe, the origin of which is the arabian minority. This is indeed very disturbing, but it seems to me that this fresh anti-Semitism (if we want to stay with this word) differs from the 1 which was fuel for historical fascism – just as this modern 1 (in the Baumanian sense), fascist anti-Semitism was different from pre-modern one. Even there, in the alleged immigrant environments, hostility towards Israel takes the form of anti-Semitism, I uncertainty that this involves fascism.
Fascism means for me fear of mixing and thirst for homogeneity. fresh forms of anti-Semitism seem to have a different character (which does not mean that they can be ignored). On the another hand, the various fascism groups of “white Europe” can look with admiration at Israel’s policy, while speaking of the arabian number in their countries, they talk the language of the Nazis. What, though, would be their attitude toward the judaic diaspora if it inactive existed in specified a dimension as before the war? It's getting harder and harder to figure out...
A good example is Viktor Orbán, who threatens with the flood of muslim migration, starts campaigns utilizing anti-Semitic stereotypes for Hungarian politics, and on the another hand builds friendly relations with the Netanjah government.
Yes, anti-Semitism continues to supply the language that is increasing present with various forms of xenophobia. I compose a small about it by referring to Modernity and Holocaust Bauman, in which the thesis appears that the judaic diaspora was a "objective" obstacle to the modern task to build a national state, as a country with 1 dominant national culture, in which at most there are certain tolerated minorities. Therefore, those who decided to implement the task at all costs yet came to the conclusion of the Nazis in Germany.
Today, of course, we are facing a deep crisis both of the ideas and institutions of the national state, but the various fascism movements are inactive reviving the desire for national or cultural homogeneity. Only now it is not the judaic diaspora that is seen as a threat to this ideal, but to migration. They are, and will be, you can't halt them, but that's why these fantasies of homogeneity should bother us so much.
It seemed very interesting to me the thought I found in Adorn, who wrote that the nationalism of the Nazis was already a fiction, given the social dynamics of Germany in the 1930s. But the more political ideas have fictional or fantastic character, the more frequently they are tried to implement them with radical, if not criminal, means.
If we accept the Fascism strategy as a bad consequence to the challenges of modernity, capitalism and burgher culture, can we say why any societies – Germany, South Europe, a large part of east Europe – reached for fascist solutions and others – Anglo-Saxons, mostly Scandinavians – Right?
Fascism does not necessarily should be a ‘winning fascism’, gaining power in a state and establishing its order from the top, as happened in Germany and Italy. We may besides be dealing with “a creeping fascism”, dispersed.
Michael Herer. photograph by Jakub SzafranskiThere were many elements in the fascist package: eugenics, racism, camps, imperialism. Jean-Louis Vullierme in Mirror of the West showed that British colonialism was the origin and laboratory of many practices that later implemented fascist regimes.
However, the question is justified. Fascism did not win and set its order in the United States or Britain. There was no integration of various fascist practices that would let Fascism to win over another options on the table. I don't have a simple answer to why that happened. Without doubt, Versailles played a key function in the triumph of Nazism in Germany – the situation in which Germany came after the First planet War was conducive to the emergence of respondents. Those who focus on the political dimension of Fascism, for example, would point to the strength of democratic ideas and institutions in countries where Fascism has been prevented. It can besides be argued that these countries have better dealt with the economical crisis in the late 1920s and 1930s.
If Fascism is simply a network of phenomena connected by household similarities, what would be the most typical representative? erstwhile we hear a “bird”, we imagine a falcon alternatively than an ostrich erstwhile we hear a “fascism” – we think of Nazis. But was Nazism not even a unique case of fascism – even due to the peculiar anti-Semitic obsession – and focusing on it, alternatively than on another fascisms, hard to grasp the nature of fascism?
I think that whether we hear a “bird” or think about a crow or, for example, a penguin, the most talks about us, not the birds themselves. I focus in the book on the German case, due to the fact that this cultural area I have the best known. However, 1 can wonder whether more about the essence of fascism reveals to us cases of victorious or creeping fascists.
Or whether it was Hitler or Salazar and his Portuguese fresh State who won.
The German case seems so crucial to me that we can track the various stages of Fascism. After all, the Nazis gain power only after more than a decade of activity within the Weimar Republic. Fascism in Germany begins not in the form of a regime, but in the form of a movement, with forms of “ creeping”. Looking at different stages of Fascism in Germany, it is possible to trace its evolutions, the different positions it took in different stages, e.g. towards bourgeoisy.
And where on this map would we put historical fascisms inter-war Poland?
Without a doubt, we were dealing with fascist and fascist movements. I think that Bauman's tools fit well in the analysis of the Second Polish Republic. In 1918, the state regains independency after more than a century. The elites effort to build a national state, with Catholicism as the main force connecting the national community. Minorities, especially judaic ones, were seen as an obstacle to this task – hence the peculiar function of anti-Semitism in inter-war Poland. It would be unusual if fascist tendencies did not appear in a country that, in a fast-track mode, sought to establish itself as a modern national state. Since the success of Nazism in Germany is explained by their celebrated “delay” (according to the expression verpätete Nation)...
Was the late sanitation a fascist or fascist regime?
Fascism in the Polish interwar usually associates with ONR, possibly with the National Party, little frequently with the sanction. However, it is hard not to announcement that the political government in Poland after the May coup, and even more after the Brest process, was marked by authoritarianism. Persecution of opposition, civilian rights violations, camp in Kartuska Bereza, and the compulsory cult of uniform – the association with fascism is self-imposed, but the word "fascisive" is more appropriate.
I would say that both the nationalists and the supporters of the sanitation were fascist, but these were 2 different styles. The first – in the issue of nationalists – was based on anti-Semitism and fantasies about the large Catholic Poland (also about Catholic State of the Polish Nation); the second – in the release of the sanitation – as it was a kind of real power in the state, took the form of political authoritarianism.
Fascism is not only a historical problem for you, but besides a current one? present it inactive forms in the capitalism-modernity-placement triangle?
Surely, the processes of fascism are connected with the logic and dynamics of capitalism – due to the fact that no 1 seriously doubts that we are inactive surviving in the capitalist system. More debateable is whether and how our societies are inactive modern and bourgeois, but the modern crisis of capitalism remains a key point of mention besides for the analysis of fascism processes. This is about a crisis in a dual sense: both in the common sense (economic crisis) and in the wider sense (a minute in which a crucial change occurs, mutation). The very concept of crisis has its origin in medicine, where it marked a crucial minute in which it determined whether the patient would last and recover or die. In the case of modern capitalism, it is not so much life and death as a transition from 1 form of life – and more specifically: forms of capital accumulation – to another.
Capitalism is going through both of these crises today. On the 1 hand, since 2008 we have been faced with a stretched economical crisis. On the another hand, capitalism changes, which besides involves the technological revolution, the emergence of any fresh oligarical info-capitalism. Both processes origin anger and anxiety, which fascism, as it had done before, redirects present to various replacement facilities.
But do we truly request the concept of fascism to describe modern forms of radicalization associated with the crisis of capitalism? Especially given how it is burdened and abused in public debate? Isn't it better to talk about utmost right or right-wing populism?
Indeed, this concept was abused, sometimes utilized to describe all authoritarian or oppressive practices. On the another hand, 1 can find purists who insist that fascism is only an Italian phenomenon and even Nazis were not fascists. There is, however, rather a large space between these extremes where the concept of fascism can be utilized reasonably.
I support the nominalistic approach: concepts specified as fascism are yet just words. We usage words to kind things out on a theoretical level, but besides to make a difference. And from this point of view, the concept of fascism seems useful to me. To abandon it to concepts specified as "the utmost right" or "right-wing populism" would, however, entail any losses.
Fascism is, of course, an option of utmost right. But it is besides a complex phenomenon, not limited to the political dimension, where the left-right divide belongs.
I besides have no assurance in the notion of populism. It is besides easy intercepted by liberal discourse. The association of fascism with populism may lead to the conclusion that the only way to halt Fascism is by the regulation of liberal “professionals” (mainly from tightening the belt). Of course, the left discusses the request to build “left-wing populism”, but in the mainstream of public debate, at least in Poland, this subject does not exist. Populism appears in it as something that opposes the regulation of liberal technocrats. It is besides curious that the "populists" are called oligarchs, who the people (populus) have... deep respect.
Finally, the word “fascism” sounds like a strong warning. The times are dark and dangerous, so I think we request warnings.
The explanation that was created to describe historical fascism – you trust powerfully on Frankfurt School – is well suited to describe modern fascism mechanisms? Has society changed besides much and specified concepts as "authoritarian personality" explain small to us today?
The large advantage of the survey of the Frankfurt School on fascism was its interdisciplinary approach. The Frankfurters explored fascism as a phenomenon of both political and psychological-affective, economic, social and aesthetic. Today, a akin interdisciplinary approach is somewhat lacking. In the field of psychology, advancement has been made in the sense of Fascism since he wrote about this phenomenon Fromm, but there is no link between different perspectives.
What explanation would that be? How much is the theoretical apparatus designed to analyse historical fascisms inactive useful?
I am not attached to any peculiar explanation of fascism, but any concepts have helped me to realize his genealogy. They are besides useful today, although they do not request to be applied “one to one”. For example, the notion of fascism as “state capitalism” coined by Friedrich Pollock. It was not rather accepted even at Frankfurt School itself (it was rejected by Franz Neumann in Behemoth), and yet it allows to see to what degree fascism was active in the wider process of mutation of capitalism in the 1920s and 1930s, leading to the reconfiguring of relations between the marketplace and state, economy and politics, property and management. present capitalism mutates again, which can be accompanied by fresh forms of fascism.
Another crucial mention point for me is inactive Male fantasies Theweleita and all concepts indicating the link between Fascism and Misogynia.
Fascism is present only a “ creeping” phenomenon? Is there a phenomenon that he will "really answer" a number of challenges facing Western societies?
For now, this form of fascism, which I call "reactive" prevails, and which boils down to frequently fearful reactions to all processes associated with the late-modern liquefaction of reality. This liquefaction occurs on many levels – due to the distortion of sex identity, the erosion of the concept of a homogenous national community, etc.
At the same time, these reactive actions, calculated to halt changes occurring, reconstruct old order, prove insufficient. And then the space for establishing the fascist order of the fresh kind may appear.
I think present we will be able to observe this peculiarly in relation to migration. erstwhile it turns out that, due to the climate crisis and possibly even climate wars, mass migration cannot be stopped, a fresh order based on any form of racist segregation can emerge. I encourage readers to practice in dystopian imagination to anticipate the improvement of akin scenarios and to prevent them in advance.
What can be a phenomenon alongside migration that provokes fascist answers?
Fascism is simply a consequence to the crisis, and present we are dealing with what researchers call a polycrisis, a overlapping economic, political and climate crisis. There are besides crises related to migrations or the liquefaction of sex identities.
Historical fascism had a strong sex component, driven by a reaction against postwar emancipation of women. akin mechanisms that Klaus Theleveit described in connection with historical fascism in Male fantasies, present they return in the alleged manosphere – in mostly online spaces where extremist anti-feminist backlash. The increasing male resentivity, the increasing – ideological, political, educational – gap between the sexes is something worth watching closely.
Where do you see today's top threat to fascism? Would it be Trump's second triumph or the election of Marine Le Pen as president of France?
Trump is simply a very interesting case. I don't think I'd call him a fascist. I see him as a politician who flirts with Fascism, wants to have these various armed militias and militias on his side, and at the same time believes that he will stay in control until the end. Of course, as we know, many in Weimar Germany hoped that they would usage Hitler for their purposes and miscalculated painfully.
Trump says, for example, at a rally, "we'll pursuit the communists." Then he pauses and adds, "...and fascists." 1 asks himself, ‘ Why does he add fascists to this calculation? ’ Does he wink at fascists in this way and say to them: “Do not be afraid, even if we pursuit you, then a small less”? Or is it thus protected against criticism by liberals? Or does he do both?
What about the French case?
In France, as in Germany, migration gives emergence to large fears of cultural and cultural confusion or the "replacement" of the "core" population by migrants. And I have the impression that present the major problem in these countries is that the mainstream, in trying, as he calls it, to "cut off fuel" from anti-emmigrant parties, himself takes over their language and politics. It's a very dangerous game and there's no telling how it's gonna end. The same is observed in Poland, where speaking about the protection of borders, Tusk frequently speaks a language that is not truly different from PiS.
In the 1930s, both the liberal center and the left turned out to be helpless in many places as Fascism grew. Do these forces present have a good consequence to modern fascism processes?
No, they don't. And given the complexity of the phenomenon of fascism, the fact that it is not limited to politics or economics, that it besides has an affective, intellectual dimension, I don't know if there is 1 answer at all. Rather, it would be a set of coordinated practices calculated to inhibit different forms and fascism processes.
What would these practices look like?
In my book, I abstained from giving circumstantial prescriptions due to the fact that I have a deep conviction that no simple prescriptions just don't work. Of course, authors like Adorno are right, emphasising education in a spirit of democracy, tolerance, respect for the rights of minorities. But that's not enough.
The mechanisms that make fascism are deep in the logic of modern societies. We can't get free of the spectrum of Fascism easily. We have his repulsive, continuous exorcism. If we can get out of the current polycrisis, not allowing fascism to political victory, if we gotta conflict only with various creeping fascisms, then this can already be treated in terms of historical success.
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Michael Herer – philosopher and translator associated with the Faculty of doctrine of the University of Warsaw. He published texts on contemporary thoughts and culture, including books: Gilles Deleuze. Structures – Machines – Creations (2006), News philosophy. Behind Nietzsch and Marx (2012) and Praise for Friendship (2017). He translated, among others, Althusser, Deleuze, Foucault and Theweleita.
