The Marxist cultural critic Walter
Benjamin once argued that every rise of fascism bears witness to a failed
revolution. Benjamin was not only addressing elements of a failed political
revolution, but also the failure of language, values, courage, vision and a
critical consciousness. In the midst of a moment when an older social order is
crumbling and a new one is struggling to define itself, there is always a
moment of confusion and danger. We have arrived at such a moment in which two
worlds are colliding.
First,
there is the harsh and crumbling world of neoliberal globalization and its
mobilizing passions that fuel a US-style fascism. Second, there is a counter
movement with its search for a new politics that can rethink, reclaim and
invent a new understanding of democratic socialism, untainted by capitalism. In
the midst of this struggle, a new political movement and social order will be
born, though one without guarantees. Something sinister and horrifying is
happening to liberal democracies all over the globe. The global architecture of
democracy is giving way to authoritarian tyrannies. As alarming as the signs
may be, we cannot look away and allow the terrors of the unforeseen to be given
free rein. We cannot allow the power of dreams to turn into nightmares.
It
is hard to imagine a more urgent moment for developing a language of critique
and possibility that would serve to awaken our critical and imaginative senses
and help free us from the tyrannical nightmare that has descended upon the
United States under the rule of Donald Trump. In an age of social isolation,
information overflow, a culture of immediacy, consumer glut and spectacularized
violence, reading critical books and other representational texts coupled with
thinking analytically remain necessary if we are to take seriously the notion
that a democracy cannot exist or be defended without informed and engaged
citizens. This is especially true at a time when denial has become a national
pastime matched only by the increasing normalization of one of the most
alarming administrations ever to take hold of the US presidency.
Against
a numbing indifference, despair or withdrawal into the private orbits of the
isolated self, there is a need to create those formative cultures that are
humanizing, foster the capacity to hear others, sustain complex thoughts and
engage social problems. We have no other choice if we are to resist the
increasing destabilization of democratic institutions, the assault on reason,
the collapse of the distinction between fact and fiction, and the taste for
brutality that now spreads across the US like a plague. Reading critically
means not only learning how to read the world, but also learning how to think
analytically while refusing to succumb to the unthinkable. Reading is not only
valuable as a form of translation, but also, as George Steiner observes,
follows language as “the main instrument of [people’s] refusal to accept the
world as it is.” The pedagogical lesson here is that fascism begins with
hateful words, the demonization of others considered disposable, and moves to
an attack on ideas, the burning of books, the disappearance of intellectuals,
and the emergence of the carceral state and the horrors of detention jails and
camps. As Jon Nixon suggests,
reading as a form of critical “education provides us with a protected space
within which to think against the grain of received opinion: a space to
question and challenge, to imagine the world from different standpoints and
perspectives, to reflect upon ourselves in relation to others and, in so doing,
to understand what it means to ‘assume responsibility’.” Reading against the grain offers opportunities for people to break out of
their own experiences at a time when neoliberal ideology not only constrains
our imagination, but also imprisons them in almost impenetrable orbits of
self-interest and hyper-individualism.
Trump’s
presidency may only be symptomatic of the long decline of liberal democracy in
the United States, but its presence signifies one of the gravest challenges, if
not dangers, the country has faced in over a century. A formative culture of
lies, ignorance, corruption and violence is now fuelled by a range of
orthodoxies shaping US life, including social conservatism, market
fundamentalism, apocalyptic nationalism, religious extremism and white
nationalism — all of which occupy the centers of power at the highest levels of
government. Historical memory and moral witnessing have given way to a bankrupt
nostalgia that celebrates the most regressive moments in US history.
Fantasies
of absolute control, racial cleansing, unchecked militarism and class warfare
are at the heart of a US social order that has turned lethal. This is a
dystopian social order marked by hollow words, an imagination pillaged of any
substantive meaning, cleansed of compassion and used to legitimate the notion
that alternative worlds are impossible to entertain. What we are witnessing is
an abandonment of democratic institutions and values and a full-scale attack on
dissent, thoughtful reasoning and the radical imagination. Trump has degraded
the office of the president and has elevated the ethos of political corruption,
hypermasculinity and lying to a level that leaves many people numb and
exhausted. He has normalized the unthinkable, legitimated the inexcusable and
defended the indefensible. Under such circumstances, the United States is moving into the
dark shadows of a present that bears a horrifying resemblance to an earlier
period of fascism with its language and/or racial purification, hatred of
dissent, systemic violence, intolerance and its “glorification of aggressive and violent solutions to
complex social problems.”
The
history of fascism offers an early warning system and teaches us that language
which operates in the service of violence, desperation and the troubled
landscapes of hatred carries the potential for resurrecting the darkest moments
of history. It erodes our humanity, and makes many people numb and silent in
the face of ideologies and practices that mimic and legitimate hideous and
atrocious acts. This is a language that eliminates the space of plurality,
glorifies walls and borders, hates differences that do not mimic a white public
sphere, and makes vulnerable populations — even young children — superfluous as
human beings. Trump’s language, like that which characterized older fascist
regimes, mutilates contemporary politics, disdains empathy and serious moral
and political criticism, and makes it more difficult to criticize dominant
relations of power. His toxic language also fuels the rhetoric of war, a
super-charged masculinity, anti-intellectualism and a resurgent white
supremacy. But it’s not his alone. It is the language of a nascent fascism that
has been brewing in the United States for some time. It is a language that is
comfortable viewing the world as a combat zone, a world that exists to be
plundered, one that views those deemed different because of their race,
ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation as a threat to be feared, if not
eliminated. When Trump uses the toxic rhetoric of “animals,” “infest” and
“vermin,” he is doing more than using ugly epithets; he is also materializing
such discourse into policies that rip children from their mothers’ arms, puts
young children in cages, and forces children as young as one to appear before immigration judges.
And
while there is no perfect mirror, it has become all the more difficult for many
people to recognize how the “crystalized elements” of totalitarianism have
emerged in new forms in the shape of a US-style fascism. In part, this may be
because history is no longer treated seriously, especially at a time when the
need for instant pleasure and the language of tweets overrides the necessary
discipline and potential pleasure that comes with the slowing down of time and
the hard work of imaginative contemplation. Moreover, as Leon Wieseltier observes, we live in an era
in which “words cannot wait for thoughts [and] patience is a … liability.” In
an age of instant gratification, history has become a burden to be treated like
a discarded relic that no longer deserves respect. The past is now either too
unpleasant to contemplate or is delegated to the abyss of willful ignorance and
consigned to the memory hole. However frightening and seemingly impossible in a
liberal democracy, neither history nor the ghost of fascism can be dismissed
because Trump has not created concentration camps or engineered plans for
genocidal acts, though he has caged children and denied immunity to immigrants
who, if forced to return to their countries, face an almost certain death.
Fascism is hardly a relic of the past or a fixed political and ideological
system.
Renowned
historian of modern Germany Richard Evans observes that the Trump
administration may not replicate all the features of Germany and Italy in the
1930s, but the legacy of fascism is important because it echoes a dangerous
“warning from history” that cannot be written off. Fascism is not static and
the protean elements of fascism always run the risk of crystallizing into new
forms. The ghosts of fascism should terrify us, but most importantly, the
horrors of the past should educate us and imbue us with a spirit of civic
justice and collective courage in the fight for a substantive and inclusive
democracy. Historical consciousness is a crucial tool for unravelling the
layers of meaning, suffering, search for community, the overcoming of despair
and the momentum of dramatic change, however unpleasant this may be at times.
No act of the past can be deemed too horrible or hideous to contemplate if we
are going to enlarge the scope of our imaginations and the reach of social
justice, both of which might prevent us from looking away, indifferent to the
suffering around us. This suggests the need for rethinking the importance of
historical memory, civic literacy and the importance of reading as a critical
act central to an informed and critical sense of agency. Rather than dismiss
the notion that the organizing principles and fluctuating elements of fascism
are still with us, a more appropriate response to Trump’s rise to power is to
raise questions about what elements of his government signal the emergence of a
fascism suited to a contemporary and distinctively US political, economic and
cultural landscape.
In
an age when memory is under attack, critical reading becomes both a source of
hope and a tool of resistance. Reading critically is fundamental to connecting
the past to the present and to viewing the present as a window into those
horrors of the past that must never be repeated. The US is sinking into the abyss of fascism. The signs are all around us,
and we cannot afford to ignore them. A critical reading of history provides us
with a vital resource that helps inform the ethical ground for resistance — an
antidote to Trump’s politics of disinformation, division, diversion and
fragmentation. Memory as a form of critical consciousness is crucial in
developing a form of historical and social responsibility to offset a willful
ignorance that reinforces the American
nightmare. In the face of this nightmare, thinking and judging must
be connected to our actions.
We
live at a time when the corruption of discourse has become a defining feature
of politics, reinforced largely by an administration and a conservative media
apparatus that does not simply lie, but also works hard to eliminate the
distinction between fantasy and fact. As Hannah Arendt has argued, at issue
here is the creation of modes of agency that are complicit with fascist modes
of governance. She writes in The Origins of Totalitarianism: “The ideal
subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist,
but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality
of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards
of thought) no longer exists.”
Please continue this article here: https://truthout.org/articles/reading-against-fascism/
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