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Fascism and Democracy, A Meditation [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-11-14  

Fascism is an abstract word. But what exactly is Fascism? Several years ago, around 2019, following events unfolding in this country, I was moved to settle in my own mind what this emotionally charged political word actually means, basically to confirm and clarify my own philosophical understanding of its essential characteristics. Web searches I found tended to be too sterile or superficially shallow (echoing the web itself), mostly by offering factoid definitions with lengthy enumerated descriptive characteristics without binding them into an intuitive sense of core understanding. Casting about, I rediscovered in my disorganized library a paperback copy of the 1997 third edition of political philosopher Carl Cohen’s theoretical treatment of communism, fascism and democracy, an edited reader intended for undergraduate college classes in political philosophy. After some reflection, I recalled I had found this about 10 years ago at our county’s refuse transfer facility in a large cardboard box intended for sequestering discarded books; I had always made it a habit to wander over and paw through it whenever I made an infrequent dump run. I immediately recognized the author since I owned the much thinner 2nd edition I had picked up at a college bookstore somewhere in the distant past. Reviewing it at the time, I was disappointed and unimpressed with its flat sophomoric artificially objective and unconvincing idealistic tone; making fascism look good was a morally hollow attempt at both-sideism, a postmodern lie. It went back on the shelf with my other intellectual white elephants. When, quite by chance, I found this much thicker 3rd edition at the dump. Thumbing through it, I thought “this warrants some serious study” and resolved, like so many things in life, to do that later. Well, given the moral urgency of the times, later is now, and after seriously studying the 3rd ed., I found the discussions confirmed my first suspicion and expectations: throughout it is germane, intellectually mature, excellent; exactly what I was looking for. (This edition is still available in paperback, but apparently not in electronic form. So I manually transcribed Cohen’s heuristic introduction to fascism found in Section Two for this essay.) Cohen writes:

“Fascism” is the twentieth-century version of a very old tradition in political philosophy, revised to fit modern circumstances, reformatted using concepts recently developed, and presented as the justification of some powerful modern governments. The English word “fascism” comes through the Italian, from an ancient Roman tradition: the fasces were bundles of thin rods bound together with an ax among them, and carried before the highest magistrates of imperial Rome as a symbol of authority and of the strength that a tightly unified community may enjoy. The old themes of organic unity and disciplined power were re-woven, with flair and efficiency, by the fascist philosophers of the twentieth century. But as a political philosophy, fascism is not easy to define or to explicate. Fascist thinkers have borrowed freely from both ancients and moderns, and they have delighted in deliberate irrationality. As realized in actual modern governments, fascism has been a potpourri of doctrine impossible to present as a fully coherent theory. In this Part are presented selections from zealous leaders of fascist nations, but also selections from philosophers—Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Nietzsche, for example—who were not fascists but who did provide intellectual materials of which recent and contemporary fascists have made much use. Within this mixture of old and new, of principles and dogmas and expedients, three main streams of thought may be distinguished. Fascism may perhaps be best understood as a contemporary blend of these three philosophical traditions. The first is the absolutist tradition. On this view, the powers of government must lie entirely in the hands of one powerful and intelligent leader—the prince or sovereign, Il Duce or Der Fuhrer. Such absolutism has many ramifications. It largely determines the principles of organization within the state, which are authoritarian and generally patterned on military lines. All authority exercised by or in behalf of the state stems from the leader, and rights enjoyed in every sphere are owed to him; while on every subordinate echelon the principal duties are those of obedience and responsibility to superiors. Again, since the leader is the source of the law, he himself is above the law. The standards of conduct that apply to him, therefore, are not those that apply to the private citizen; he may be judged, as leader, only by his success in maintaining and extending his power and the power of his state. The result is rightly called Machiavellianism, for fascist dictators have generally acted under Machiavelli’s principle that “if the act accuse him, the result will excuse him.” The second leading element in fascism is organicism. According to this theory a nation is properly understood to be an organic unity, like a human being, but of greater import, having many separate organs that contribute to the general welfare, and a larger interest, or general will, that is necessarily superior to the interest or will of any particular member or members. There is some plausibility to this organic approach to human communities, and fascists are not the only theorists who have developed it. When carried to extremes, however, organicism can lead to the conclusion that the state has not only an organic reality but a super-reality, so awesome that its apparent will is the true will of subordinate citizens, whether they think so or not. Nothing may then obstruct this state, or super-organism, from liquidating those elements within it that interfere with the achievements of its objectives. Some have gone so far as to elevate the state to an object of worship or to view it as a reality having supernatural or divine attributes. Hegel said: “The March of God in the world, that is what the State is.” One serious problem for this theory is that of determining what the will of the state really is and how it is to be known. This problem is resolved, sometimes painfully, when the theories of organicism and absolutism are combined. The general will of the state is then taken to represent the essence of the nation. This identification is one of the distinguishing marks of twentieth-century fascism, especially as manifested in Italy and Germany. Serving as a catalyst in combining the two elements already mentioned is a third no less important element: deliberate irrationalism. Sometimes an attitude, sometimes a manipulative device, sometimes a seriously proposed methodology, the express denial of the competence of reason to guide human life opens the door to acts and claims immune to effective criticism. Many varieties of philosophic irrationalism have achieved great popularity, from that of the early Christians, (said Tertulian: “Credo, quia impossibile” – “I believe it because it is impossible”) through its more sophisticated versions in Schopenhauer and Bergson and some contemporary existentialists. The deliberate manufacture of racial and social myths, the inculcation of those myths in public sentiment and then their implementation in national policy–culminating in horrors almost beyond belief –were the fruits of this irrationalism as applied to politics. Fascism may be described --oversimply but not mistakenly--as the commingling of these traditions of absolutism, organicism, and irrationalism. Its roots go very deep, but its full realization came only in the twentieth century. Communism, Fascism, and Democracy: The Theoretical Foundations, Carl Cohen, third ed. McGraw Hill 1997, pgs 215, 216.

The selected historical readings that follow amplify on each of these three themes. They add depth and are well worth studying. I caution against the temptation to reflexive over-simplification in applying these three concepts to contemporary Christianity in one of its current perverted forms as fascist Christian Nationalism, really a dishonest poor caricature of Christianity. A good corrective to this is the recent book by Michael L. Brown: The Political Seduction of the Church: How Millions of American Christians Have Confused Politics with the Gospel.

It seems to me the perplexing enigma of QAnon falls squarely into the emotional maelstrom of fascist irrationalism, where the psychic energy and vital force emerge from its organic and absolutist aspects. It is precisely this three-fold unity that makes the contemporary GOP’s embrace of true fascism so powerful and difficult to understand. And here, especially with respect to QAnon, it manifests as a cynical “manipulative device” by a demagogue. This irrationalism is what is so insidiously destructive to democracy – especially when toxically intensified and propagated by social media, something that didn’t exist in the 20th Century. It is, as Cohen notes “immune to effective criticism”. Why? Seeking to better understand this, I found an authentic testimonial that offered a penetrating psychological analysis in The Rape of the Mind. The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide and Brainwashing, by A.M Meerloo, M.D. published in 1956. (It is readily available in open-source and reprinted in copyrighted forms.) From a social psychological standpoint, QAnon is a true pathological spiritual (Meerloo would say “mental”) parasite that requires a host: the human individual who can no longer grasp the critical existential relationship between freedom and democracy. Meerloo offers this sober caution at the end of the book:

No compromise or appeasement is possible in dealing with such attitudes. We have to watch carefully lest our own mistakes in attacking personal freedom become grist for the totalitarian’s mill. Even our denunciation may have a paradoxical effect. Fear and hysteria further totalitarianism. What we need is careful analysis and understanding of such phenomena. Democracy is the regime of the dignity of man and his right to think for himself, the right to have his own opinion, more than that, the right to assert his own opinion and to protect himself against mental invasion and coercion. …



Mass participation in government, without the decentralization that emphasizes the value of variation and individuality and without the possibility of sound selection of leaders, facilitates the creation of the dictatorial leader. The masses then transfer their desire for power to him. The slave participates in a magic way in the glory of the master. Democratic self-government is determined by restraint and self-limitations, by sportsmanship and fairness, by voluntary observance of the rules of society and by cooperation. These qualities come through training. In a democratic government those who have been elected to responsible positions request controls and limitations against themselves, knowing that no one is without fault. Democracy is not a fight for independence but a mutually regulated interdependence. Democracy means checking man’s tendency to gather unlimited power unto himself. It means checking the faults in each of us. It minimizes the consequences of man’s limitations.

The fascist individual has no authentic opinion,has nothing new to say because their identity is drawn exclusively from powerfully shared surreal delusions orbiting around the political idolatry of the subsuming black hole that is the organic fascist state. This is true of QAnon members as well as the cynical GOP elites who choose to pander to them; in a mystical sense they have all become One, all of them existing in a collective political organism that will eventually self-destruct since the radical individual cannot remain repressed indefinitely. The identity that was once a unique human person is now a lifeless clone of the monolithic single identity of the totalitarian political state. Meerloo explores this in many nuanced cases in different social contexts discussing, as a psychiatrist informed and illuminated by his own personal wartime experiences, why people give up their true identities for the enslaving corporate identify of a social group, a mirage of true belonging. He is careful to distinguish this from the human proclivity to self-assemble into healthy viable democratic communities. (I am enriched by the communities I mingle with – especially theological and professional scientific communities, but my individual identity is not defined Tabula Rasa by any of them.) This is a crucial point. Donald Trump, seen as a fascist archetype, has no real separate individual identity. He draws his life parasitically from enslaving others; this is the pathological self-destructive side of fascism and totalitarian authoritarianism. The light of objective truth shining on him casts no shadow, for there is really nothing there; this is an unnerving aspect of the mystery of existential evil. Vaclev Havel in his dissident 1978 essay, The Power of the Powerless, (then future President of a Democratic Czechoslovakia) put it this way. (In the essay this was aimed at the “post-totalitarian state”, but it applies equally to a contemporary fascist demagogue):

For the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, “The emperor is naked!”—when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game—everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.

Fascism is unstable. It sows the seeds of its own destruction by reversing the motto of our country: E pluribus unum, “Out of many, one” and re-casting it as E unum pluribus “Out of one, many”. Nathanial Manderson in a 2022 Salon article noted that Nelson Mandela captured this well in a comment that lies far beyond the woke identity-silos of applied postmodern Critical Theory in its many contemporary forms:

It is not our diversity which divides us; it is not our ethnicity, or religion or culture that divides us. ... [T]here can only be one division amongst us: between those who cherish democracy and those who do not.

The parallels between the religious neofascist movement and antebellum southern white Christianity are stronger than some may think. Both deal with the same spiritual cancer: one enslaves the mind, the other the body, and both use and have used cultural Christian dogma as morally indefensible props. I commented to a charismatic Christian minister I know, immediately after Donald Trump was elected president, that Trump was “God’s judgment on America, and that means all of us … including the Church.”. Who we really are, as a people, and as individuals is being laid bare. (I recall a comment years ago by Rollo May from his 1968 book, Love and Will: “It is only in the existential crisis of personal suffering that any of us will take the time to work out the deep roots of our problems”.) It seems this applies to all of us, the religious and the irreligious alike, transcending conservatives and liberals because it deftly alights on the mystery of the human individual, the inextinguishable flame of true being (I am indebted to Martin Buber for his deep understanding of this). Philosophically this is an ontological concept. Reflecting on this, I remembered Chris Hedges said something I read years ago about the horrors of war and his enervating experiences as a war correspondent, describing what sustained him as a person in a scene that settled deeply into me:

In the wake of catastrophe, including the attacks of September 11, 2001, there is a desperate longing by all those affected to be in the physical presence of those they love. When a heavy shell landed in Sarajevo, or an assassination took place in the streets of San Salvador, or a suicide bomber blew himself up in Jerusalem, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, and children pawed through the onlookers seeking physical reunification with those they loved. This love, like death, radiates outwards. … There are few sanctuaries in war. But one is provided by couples in love. They are not able to staunch the slaughter. They are often powerless and can themselves often become victims. But it was with them, seated around a wood stove, usually over a simple meal, that I found sanity and was reminded of what it means to be human. Love kept them grounded. It was to such couples that I retreated during the wars in Central America, the Middle East, and the Balkans. Love, when it is deep and sustained by two individuals, includes self-giving—often self-sacrifice—as well as desire. For the covenant of love is such that it recognizes both the fragility and the sanctity of the individual. It recognizes itself in the other. It alone can save us. Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (pp. 160-161).( PublicAffairs. Kindle Edition).

... since the radical human individual cannot remain repressed indefinitely ...

To the QAnon individual:

I pray that your Atheist God

Will silently turn and gaze

Deeply into your Alien Being

And deliver you from the lie

Of what you are not

Your hatred dissolving into the

Mists of non-being

Lost in the nothing from which it came.



To the Fascist Christian Nationalist individual:

You have left your First Love

Repent and do the First Works

Or I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place

To him who overcomes

I will give to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life

That is in the midst of the Paradise of God

[from Rev 2:4–7]



The urgent moral question before us is what will this pandemic recrudescence of 20th Century fascism take down and destroy with it beyond itself ?

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