Years of historic injustice piling up inside you, looking for an opening to escape. Then comes “hope”, feeding on your pride, channelling your anger towards what you are made to believe is the reason for all your problems. You fall for the charisma of the one who gives you hope, when the world seemed to be against you.
Except, your enemy was not your enemy, and your “hope” was not even real.
What is Fascism?
Why is it so difficult to identify fascism until it is too late?
Because it happens slowly, by manipulating your inner biases and exploiting democratic vulnerabilities.
People often mistake Totalitarianism or Authoritarianism as fascism. But they are not the same.
The 21-month Emergency (1975–1977) under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was an authoritarian regime. But it was not a fascist regime. Totalitarianism means total state control over public and private life, but is not necessarily fascist. Fascism is a specific, far-right, ultranationalist type of totalitarianism. It is built on pride in the past, frustration of historic injustice, and hope of a new Golden Age.
Benito Mussolini: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
Upton Sinclair: “Fascism is capitalism plus murder.”
Ignazio Silone: “Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place.”
To understand it, we have to go back a century.
The Restless Kid
Born in a small town in Italy, his leftist father named him after revolutionaries Amilcare Cipriani and Andrea Costa. He got his revolutionary ideas from his father, and religious influence from his catholic mother. Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an intelligent child, but restless, rebellious and ambitious. After the loss in World War II, Italy’s economy suffered. There was hardship, social unrest, unemployment and political instability. Mussolini used people’s frustration to come to power.
Mussolini popularized and coined the term fascism (fascismo) when he founded his political movement in Italy in 1919. He based the name on the Italian word fascio (plural: fasci), meaning a bundle.
Mussolini heavily relied on the myth of Rome (romanità), positioning himself as a modern Augustus Caesar. Italian pride was anchored in the Roman past, a Golden Age, and the frustration over the historical injustice of the devastating military defeat at Caporetto in 1917.
Mussolini gained people’s trust by propagating the myth of national palingenesis (rebirth). He argued that the war had forged a new elite, a “trenchocracy” made up of heroic war veterans who were destined to sweep away the old, decadent liberal order and lead a new Italy. He increasingly viewed himself as a Nietzschean homo novus (new man) called by destiny to announce a new era. To unify the masses, the regime manufactured an elaborate cult of personality around Mussolini, calling him Il Duce, meaning “The Leader”.
It was easy for the masses to support him because to them he was the embodiment of national pride, strength, discipline and unity.
Once he seized power, he worked towards total transformation of Italian society. He spearheaded massive modernisation projects. He slowly dismantled the democratic institutions, suppressed opposition, went after socialists and trade unions, controlled the press, education, public organizations and the economy.
In the 1930s Mussolini moved closer to Adolf Hitler. While Hitler exerted uncompromising, fanatical control over the Nazi state to achieve his horrifying racial utopia, Mussolini was forced into heavy compromises with traditional conservative institutions, such as the Monarchy, the Catholic Church, and the traditional elites. Consequently, Mussolini’s regime remained inefficient and polycentric, ultimately failing in its totalitarian goal to fully “fascistize” the Italian people or create the promised “new man”.
What Roman pride was for Mussolini, German pride was for Hitler. Hitler’s key aim was Lebensraum (meaning ’living space’) for the German people in Eastern Europe.
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!
Hitler grew up under the strict supervision of his father, who tried hard to discipline him, only ending up making young Hitler more adamant. Hitler did well in school, was good at singing, and he wanted to be an artist. When he was young, his brother died of measles. To make matters worse, he was buried in a cemetery that was visible from the window of Hitler’s room. It must have traumatised him. Hitler performed poorly in High School.
Hitler’s ideology was shaped by his history teacher Dr Leopoldo Poetsch, who instilled in him a strong sense of nationalism. He developed a passionate love for the Aryan German race, and at the same time a fierce hatred for the Austrian state that allowed the Slavs/Serbians to dominate Germany. He resented the House of Habsburg for letting foreign races weaken the German people, and he wished to unite them.
He had to fend for himself after the death of his parents, while still in his teens. So he moved to Vienna, determined to make something of himself. It was in Vienna that he formed his opinion of the “Jewish Problem”. He was influenced by the anti-Semitic propaganda in Vienna and Dr Karl Lueger’s Christian Socialist Movement. Hitler also learned about Zionism in Austria. His hatred for Jews grew over time.
Like Mussolini, the loss in WWI, made Hitler angry. He wrote, “There followed terrible days and even worse nights – I knew that all was lost…in these nights hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible for this deed.”
Hitler has argued in private that most people were desparate to have faith in something, and once someone was able to channel their anger, tap into their fear, and gave them a reason to rally behind, they will stop being too critical of that person and blindly follow him. Hitler understood human nature very well. Hitler exploited people’s desire for faith by targeting their fears, anger, and need for a unifying cause. Posing as a humble patriot, he used inflammatory speeches and false devotion to unite his followers while ignoring their actual well-being.
He manufactured a binary struggle using massive lies, scapegoating Jewish people to offer a simplistic, seductive narrative for Germany’s problems.
Hitler used the anger of the Germans, and their frustration with the previous government, to rise to power. Then, like Mussolini, he suppressed his opponents and controlled the media to spread his agenda. He blamed the past leaders for all present problems, especially for letting minority “foreigners” weaken the nation. He created a larger-than-life image, like a cult figure, a saviour. Brilliant, well-directed movies were made to show him as a great leader justifying his actions. He made laws that made it easy to arrest his opponents, and anyone whom he thought was a threat to him and his ideologies.
Hitler made his followers believe that those who question him are against the nation. He turned people against people, his conservative base against liberals. People whom he fooled with false propaganda were ready to die for him, and branded those who opposed him as traitors. All independent organisations were, bought, forced to follow him or shut down.
Hitler spent a lot of money on advertising and Propaganda. His face was advertised everywhere and his voice was brought directly into every living room using radio. He made the citizens proud of their past, rather than the present. Turned them into ultra-nationalists. He made the individual feel small and the “national community” feel huge. The primary slogan of the Nazi Party was Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!, which translates to “One People, One Empire, One Leader!”
He used state power to destroy opposing institutions. He slowly controlled the election process. He made his followers believe that minorities and Leftists had sinister motives to destroy and rule them. His propaganda made people believe that the minorities were outsiders and had a lot of babies. Their conspiracy is to one day become more populated than them.
Hitler declared that he was doing God’s work to save his country and race. ‘I offer you a good time,’ he has said to them, ‘I offer you struggle, danger, and death,’ and as a result, a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Textbooks were rewritten to include “Racial Science”, false pride, and distorted history.
It worked for him, but not for long. What happened in WWII is history.
But fascism did not end with the brutal end of Mussolini and Hitler.
Fascism post-WWII
Post-World War II research shows that fascism is a recurring political phenomenon. It has emerged across the globe, from Europe and South America to Asia.
Studies, especially done by scholars like Roger Griffin, found some common patterns in fascism, making it easier to recognise them.
One of the key features of fascism is what he calls Palingenetic Populist Ultranationalism.
Terms like this are so fancy that most people neither relate to them nor can identify fascism.
In short, if any political power tells you that your nation, religion, or any in-group identity was once great, but has been degraded by some out-group, and only this political power can bring back the golden age by purging the out-groups, you know that they have a fascist tendency. Mussolini did that with the myth of Rome, and Hitler with the myth of the Aryan race. Totalitarianism or Authoritarianism without Palingenetic Populist Ultranationalism, is not fascism.
Since they seem to be on your side, and against your out-group, it becomes very difficult to dismiss them or go against them. Most humans inherently have a tribal mindset. It seems like someone is finally thinking about you. As long as they are in power, you are in power, even if it means exploiting fellow humans. It seems fair because you believe that you have an advantage.
Fascism centres on a myth of national salvation led by a charismatic figure who claims to embody the will of the nation. Except that nation does not mean the people of a country, but only a particular group. They expect the crowd, belonging to that group, to back them up, and thus can stir them at will to act against those who do not belong to the group.
Fascists don’t want to go back to the “golden” past as earlier thought. Mussolini was not recreating the ancient Roman Empire, but bringing forth a new-age Roman Empire. Hitler was not going back to the ancient Aryan Golden Era, but taking Aryans to a new Golden Age.
Fascists embrace state-of-the-art modern technology, but anchor the future on the pride of a mythical past, thus weaponising a “Usable Past”. Griffin calls it “rooted modernism”. Technology is used for surveillance, to control voices of resistance, and for propaganda.
Once elected, fascists slowly start to control the information flow by taking over media and all key government institutions. They change the education systems and laws in a way that allows them to manufacture pride through mythical history, language, rituals, flags, anthems and salutes. Pride is used as a tool to control mass behaviour, and channel hatred.
This makes it very difficult to get them out of power.
It is a common misconception that Hitler “seized” power in a violent coup. While he used violence to intimidate rivals, he largely used the existing legal loopholes of the German constitution to dismantle democracy from the inside. Once he had the mass and election process under control he could do anything he wanted.
Once the fear of the “out-group” is easily implanted in the minds of the people, it is not so hard to imagine an event – be it an economic recession, a terrorist attack or a political assassination – that could cause a decisive slide away from democracy and toward fascism.
Surveys show that democracy is on the decline in around 70 countries. One of the reasons is social media, in which people inhabit their own media bubbles, which reinforce biases against out-groups. People are less and less willing to listen in good faith to the arguments of their political opponents. Parties that can control what the mass consumes, can easily control the mass. This manual for building a dictatorship has remained strikingly similar throughout history.
The whole propaganda works in a way to form a loyal support base, or a tribe who becomes emotionally connected to the ideology. The tribe were excited by the promise, they found their hero, and they voted their hero to power. They have defended them for so long that the ideology became their identity. Now criticising their leader feels like criticising themselves. Saying that the leaders were wrong is like saying that they were wrong all along. It feels like their life was a lie. They are stupid. That brings cognitive dissonance.
It’s a myth that intelligent people cannot be brainwashed. Studies show that the more intelligent a person is, the stronger logic they find to hold on to their bias. Bigotry has nothing to do with stupidity.
So, instead, the tribe fight to keep their identity by justifying the party at all costs. It’s a very difficult psychological trap to escape.
Every victim who complains against the tribe is taken as politically motivated, a traitor or anti-national. When normal people blindly give that power to any political party (esp one with power and money), they have every reason to turn into a fascist regime.
Dangers of Obedience
One way to control the masses is by building “obey,” “order” and “command”. Obedience is an integral part of most conservative cultures. We obey laws, we obey our managers at work, or parents and so on. Without obedience, society might not function properly. But blind obedience can be dangerous.
History is proof that blind obedience has caused genocides and war crimes by turning ordinary people into murderers and torturers. Experiments, like the famous Milgram Experiment, have consistently shown that normal people can exhibit violent behaviour just to obey an authoritative figure.
Blind filial piety is the leading cause of child abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual) in India. Older relatives, extended family members, trust figures, and sometimes even parents, are the primary perpetrators. If you force kids to respect someone only because that person is old and holds an important position, you are simply depraved. No family, no culture, and no school should ever teach blindly respecting people who don’t deserve it, just because of their age or authority.
This leads to hero worship. Ambedkar warned us about it long ago.
We must raise our kids in a culture of strong values, where we respect any person…irrespective of gender, age, caste, religion, or status…only because they DESERVE it.
The moment people start questioning, the foundations of fascism start to crack. The problem with fascism is that the promise of a new Golden Age is false. Time reveals the hollow lies. While a large chunk of the brainwashed population will work together with ultra-nationalistic pride, citizens will eventually realise that their efforts are only serving the new pro-government elites. That’s when protests and resistance start building up. The stronger the government tries to enforce its will on its citizens, the more the foundation starts to crumble.
How to not Fall for Propaganda
One can get frustrated by the sheer volume of propaganda. That’s why one needs to know how to navigate through it in this post-truth world. You need to educate yourself and your children about how propaganda works. You need to teach your kids to value all people of all genders, castes, religions, colour, etc, without prejudice. Teach children to ask questions to teachers, parents, seniors and any other authoritative figures. Be logical with your answers when they ask you. Ask your kids questions so they can think deeper. By practising liberal thinking from childhood, our brain changes.
Brain scans suggest that conservatives have a very active and larger right amygdala compared to liberals. The amygdala is sensitive to threats and is the region of the brain responsible for flight or fight response. This makes conservatives sensitive to negative emotions, especially to news and posts that trigger fear and disgust. They are also more sensitive to emotional faces, especially the ones that are threatening.
One of the reasons human beings live in communities is to avoid threats. Groups had more chance to survive than individuals. Such a form of preference for own race is seen even in 3-month-old infants. Conservatives tend to be group-based thinkers, and their brains can easily categorise in-groups and out-groups. They tend to prefer security, predictability and authority.
A study by Nam and her colleagues, published in Nature, suggests that people with more active amygdala tend to consider social systems as legitimate and desirable, even if at the cost of injustices and inequalities to few.
Liberals, as per the studies, tend to use their anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) more than conservatives and also have increased grey matter volume in the ACC. ACC is responsible for compassion, detecting errors and resolving conflicts. They tend to be more at ease with novelty, nuance and complexity.
This means that when faced with conflict, liberals are okay with spending some extra time to process the information before reacting. In the wild, that extra time could mean certain death.
According to Jonathan Haidt, there are six universal moral foundations that humans use to judge right and wrong: Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, Sanctity/degradation, and Liberty/oppression.
Liberals tend to value care, fairness, and liberty more than the other foundations. To them, morality is about protecting the rights and welfare of individuals, especially the oppressed and marginalized.
Conservatives, on the other hand, value all six foundations more equally, and they see morality as preserving the order and stability of society, especially the institutions and traditions that bind people together.
Simply put, conservatives have group-based thinking, putting groups above individuals. For them, the sum becomes greater than the parts through symbols, like flags, religion, culture, etc. They can react violently when they think such symbols are being insulted. This makes it easy for them to fall for fascist regimes.
Liberals have individual-based thinking putting individuals above groups. So, they would want to maximise individual freedom and minimise interference from the government or any body of authority. Such thinkers would generally put less value on symbols than on the lives of individuals.
What differentiates us from other animals is our symbol-centric brain. It is that structure of our brain that helps us comprehend stories better than facts. Our imagination, not intelligence, took us to the moon while monkeys still jump around naked. Symbolism is the superpower of our species.
Our imagination creates ideas like freedom, democracy, liberalism, secularism. These ideas do not exist outside our brain. Lack of imagination turns one into a bigot – a tribe fighting another tribe.
It’s our symbol-centric brain that turns pictures into symbols…and symbols turn into resistance.
It is the same brain power that allows fascism to flourish, by making us blindly fall for symbols like flag, anthems, slogans, and holy books. They are used by fascist regimes to create obedience.
The moment we realise that the genetic ties of humanity is deeper than the fictional cultural memes that creates ‘us’ vs ‘them’, we begin to to weaken fascism from within.
The strategic adversary is fascism… the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.
Michel Foucault
