What is Fascism?

Welcome to my latest obsession

Pop quiz, hotshot¹: someone just called a politician a ‘fascist’. What do they mean by that?

If you had asked me this even a month ago, I’d have stumbled through a stuttering reply. It’s got something to do with authoritarianism. It’s also (I think?) got something to do with white supremacy and patriarchy.

Basically, when I thought about fascism, I thought about Nazi Germany.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. And that’s a problem, because while the National Socialist movement in Germany became fascist, not all fascists are National Socialists.²

Think of it like fruit - most of us grow up learning what fruits are by example. So apples, bananas, oranges, strawberries. So when someone tells us a tomato is a fruit, or a pumpkin or an olive or a string bean, we scoff at their foolishness. Those are clearly vegetables.

Then we take a science class and learn that our botanically-minded friend was right - there’s a definition of fruit: the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering.

It has nothing to do with the obvious (to our five senses) qualities we’ve absorbed through experience with fruits. Rather, there’s a structural definition that has to do with the way plants are classified.

Nazism is a particular fruit of the fascist root (if I’m allowed to bend the metaphor just a bit). It’s the one most of us are most familiar with, so we make the (mistaken) assumption that all fascism has to look like Nazism.

But fascism is a larger category for a way of governing. Nazism is definitely one kind, but it’s far from the only kind. And as long as we only know to look for one flavor of fascism, we’ll miss it when it emerges in our contemporary context - especially if it doesn’t do us the favor of draping itself in a swastika and antisemitism.

Rotten Fruit, Rotten Root

Our Dusty Old Friends book club just finished political philosopher Jason Stanley’s book How Fascism Works (no wonder I’m thinking about it, right?). Stanley defines fascism broadly:

I have chosen the label “fascism” for ultranationalism of some variety (ethnic, religious, cultural), with the nation represented in the person of an authoritarian leader who speaks on its behalf. — Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works (Bookshop.org, Amazon)

Stanley’s definition surprises a lot of folks who see fascism as inherently tied to capitalism. But Stanley sees the potential for fascism in non-capitalist governments and nations too.

In the book, he identifies 10 tools fascist leaders use to obtain and maintain power. They are:

1. The Mythic Past

2. Propaganda

3. Anti-intellectualism

4. Unreality

5. Hierarchy

6. Victimhood

7. Law & Order rhetoric

8. Sexual Anxiety

9. Vilification of Cities

10. Attacks on Organized Labor

None of these requires a capitalist framework. In fact, we see them throughout history and across cultures. For Stanley, this is a warning sign: fascism isn’t something we defeat once and for all. It’s a human tendency against which we must remain ever vigilant.

Be Always Vigilant

Tom King is my favorite comics writer. He’s up for an Eisner Award this year for his graphic novel Animal Pound. As the name suggests, the book is King’s response to George Orwell’s famous parable of fascism Animal Farm. In the introduction to Animal Pound, King observes that Orwell wrote Farm as a way to illustrate how easily the progressive socialist countries of Europe could slide into fascism.

But, King goes on, that’s not what’s happening in our time and place. Today, it’s the right-leaning democratic governments and parties sliding into fascism. He wrote Animal Pound as a latter-day companion piece to Animal Farm. The result is a beautiful, horrifying take on freedom, tyranny and bunnies.

Animal Pound illustrates what I found to be Stanley’s most provocative thesis:

Fascism is not a new threat, but rather a permanent temptation. — Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works

I considered fascism to be a particularly 20th century malady tied to the rise of socialism in Europe and the cracks that presaged the collapse of capitalism. But Stanley’s definition is one that illustrates a bent toward authoritarianism we see over and over through history. The tools of these tyrants aren’t new. They prove most effective in times of social upheaval.

It’s no accident that, around the globe, fascism has been on the rise in the first part of the 21st century. This has been an era of massive social upheaval as the ripples from the fall of colonialist governments reverberated through the global South (contributing to multiple refugee crises) and nations like Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran fought back against the Western powers that had dominated and exploited them since the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the first World War. The US elected our first Black president, which advanced the cause of various minority groups from the queer community, which saw the legalization of gay marriage to the Black Lives Matter movement and the increasing influence of Critical Race Theory from Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow to Ibram X Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning to the 1619 Project.³ Movements like #MeToo and #OscarsSoWhite illustrated that the problem wasn’t liberal vs conservative - Hollywood had as much ingrained injustice as the GOP.

With so much pressure from all sides, it’s no wonder fascist leaders like Vladimir Putin (Russia), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkey), Viktor Orban (Hungary), Narendra Modi (India) and Donald Trump (USA) have risen to power. Their rhetoric is particularly effective in countries that face cultural change and anxiety.

As flu season approaches, we get flu shots and vitamins to ensure we’re protected against the flu virus.

I’ve been wondering what an inoculation against fascism should have looked like. For reasons I’ll elaborate on in an upcoming essay, I think religious communities are uniquely positioned to provide such inoculation, which makes it all the more tragic that US churches were at best impotent in the face of the rising tide of fascism. At worst, many churches actively contributed to the US shift toward fascism (looking at you, Christian Nationalists).

As we fight back against the fascism of our current moment, we must look toward the future. How can we build better systems, better institutions, that inoculate us against fascism. Because it’s not something we can destroy once and for all. It’s a “permanent temptation.”

YOUR TURN: How do you define Fascism?

1. Yes, this is a reference to Speed, the 1994 Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock action rom-com. You’re welcome.

2. This is super important, because socialism doesn’t necessarily turn into fascism. Democracy can, too!

3. No, it’s not actually critical race theory, but it all gets lumped into CRT in the public imagination, for better and worse.