§ The present convergence of parliamentary democracy, establishment media, neoliberal practices, anti-terrorist laws, social conformity, and cultural exhaustion, all lead to a societal formation greatly resembling that of the totalitarianism of the prior century. These uncomfortable facts can no longer be swept away or not dealt with. No one can deny the new phenomenon that is emerging, and the necessity to deal with it.
§ The present has characteristics like the fascism of the past, although it differs from it to a large degree. It would aid our conception far more to glance back at was seen as a forerunner to fascism. That is, the early modern world of absolute monarchy, the inquisition, counterReformation and Jesuits. The difference with today is that the prior divine right of the sovereign in executing justice, to end or save life, is now found transmitted to every cop. The inquisition against free thoughts and heresies is now largely devoted to certain practices which are then defined as heretical acts, e.g. terrorism. Although as before with the Nazis, the police demand a terror of their own to fight terrorism. The Jesuitical aspect of mainstream branches of economics, and academia more broadly (so we can include the Left as well), is quite obvious.
§ Just as the Socialists had sent the workers to the slaughter of 1914, and later worked against and violently suppressed the post-war revolutions- this earning them the analysis as social-fascist from the 3rd International- so too, what remains of the Left of today works to establish and justify the permanent state of exception that grounds the new authoritarianism. Obvious cases like Hollande or Obama should not have anyone overlook certain generals in Podemos, nor the normalization of far-right discourse under Syriza-Anel (along with a truly shameful statement opening up to the Nazis of Golden Dawn if they became peacable) and the implementation of new anti-terror practices clearly targeting family members of political prisoners.
§ The state of exception is the mechanism and institutional reality by which the new fascism can become a reality in a short time. Although when this last arrives, it will not be with stormtroopers, as in the classic view, but much more with elections, or even just the signing of a few pieces of paper. When it becomes evident, it is already too late- and thus a primary axis of political action in our times must be directed against the state of exception and its neoliberal and anti-terrorist ideology.
§ The paradigm of counter-insurrectionary cleansing by the new authoritarianism is of course, the crackdown in Italy beginning in 1979: all purely done in a legal framework, and sanctioned by the Left. Thousands of activists were arrested in a few large sweeps, and many thousands more forced into exile. The goal is the accomplishing of what the old fascism did (smashing radicalism, large transfer of wealth to the rich), but in a controlled and legalistic manner.
§ The other great counterpart to the state of exception, is the legitimation of the Left under the banner of an endless ‘lesser-evil’ argument, as well ending in an engineered ‘transition to democracy’ or ‘reconciliation’. Of course this will only become a reality after the social threat has been dismantled. This cleansing is sort of like some switch-on it will go until society is remolded into ever more atomized neoliberal forms, then the sterilized, preprogrammed consumerist parliamentary democracy, now free of its small malfunctions, can return in all its splendour.
§ These theses are not meant to be the last word, but the beginning of a larger debate about the disastrous course of events unfolding. . .
p70-71, March 2017