On the Success of Facism
How could the German #noafd secure such a landslide victory? Because they allow to hate migrants and promise the prospect of violence against them (and others).
It's clear and neither difficult to see nor unique to the German case – worldwide, we observe the ascendance of these fascist movements.
Yet, the problem with this plain view is the reluctance of democrats to name it directly, and to react accordingly.
The supporters of fascism want a different social order, and they are not interested in any kind of improved democracy.
What many well-meaning democrats suggest – to develop programmes that serve the rational interest of these people – is absolutely futile. Social decline may characterise the biography of some fascists, but they strive only for a very specific, and direct, and bodily repair of this experience. They want to make their scapegoats suffer. Nothing else will satisfy them.
So, the necessary answer is very clear: They must be forbidden from doing so. Only the power of law will contain and ammeliorate this problem.
The challenge for democracy is not the answer itself, but it's institutionalisation. Democracy carries a burden of modernisation theories. They promised that one day everything will be fine. Everybody would finally be wealthy, civilised, and happily included.
The non-existing case were people who do not want democratic equality, not even for themselves. People who prefer “declarations of dependence” (James Ferguson), and the subjugation to a leader that allows them to hate and beat.
This problem exists on the local and on the global level. Neither do we have a justified way of forcing fascist into compliance nor do we know of how to conceptualise a world in which authoritarian regimes will exist as a rule (and not as an aberrance or exception).
Hence, there is a lot to discuss – but not of how to encounter fascists.
For those who ask for a reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Freedom