Fascism debate-Caesarism: A question of violence

With US President Donald Trump’s decision to mobilize the national guard and the military over the head of California governor Gavin Newsom in order to suppress protests in Los Angeles against the brutal deportation policy of the government, there is a risk of further authoritarian exaggeration. “This is what autocracy looks like,” commented the “New York Times”. Others went one step further and spoke of fascist seizure of power. The question of how the current authoritarian developments can be found conceptually is currently being discussed lively.

It was only at the beginning of May that the literary scholar Carolin Amlinger and the sociologist Oliver Nachtwey intervened with a “Jacobin” contribution into the ongoing debate and turned against a too close and too wide application of the concept of fascism. On the other hand, they propose to speak of a “democratic fascism” because, unlike historical fascism, this takes place “in the normal operation of parliamentary democracy”. They rely on common fascism definitions and emphasize the ideology of ethnicized ultranationalism and violence as a key characteristic. Based on Klaus Theweleit, they also take the practical experience of violence as an elementary for fascism. This contributes to the formation of a patriarchal body armor in the men’s association. Fascism therefore always includes militias with their unleashed dynamics of violence.

Is that already the UN state?

Violence is also about the question of political order. Amlinger and Nachwey discuss them based on the materialistic analysis of the National Socialist rule of the lawyer and political scientist Franz L. Neumann. He had caught the Nazi state as a “Behemoth”, the negation of the Hobbesche “Leviathan”: the competing gangs such as NSDAP, SS, Wehrmacht and SA, which detached itself in National Socialism from the shackles of the general law imparted by Parliament. For example, they gained unexpected access to the executive violence for their respective areas. According to Neumann, the elementary characteristic of the NS is the regression of the state that the state of emergency is relocated to the “interior” and that the rule of law is dialectically turns into tyranny. In National Socialism, this dynamic radicalized cumulatively up to the anti -Semitic delusion of the Shoah.

Amlinger and Nachtwey note that what is currently referred to as fascism does not “power cartel of an unleashed Behemoth” and is also not to be equated with Italian fascism. It is “more of a joint venture”, that is, a loose merger that is bound by economic interests. But there is a “fascist moment” in a contradictory situation: there is still a real political competition for power, “elections take place, even if the authoritarian incumbents make the conditions of political competition asymmetrical”. The “Trump-Fasism” is not “about the creation of a new Behemoth, a state monster”, but about the removal of democracy “from social liberalism”.

But Neumann took the Behemoth with a view to the Nazi Racket rule as a “UNSTETTH” and not as “state monster”. The state theory difference is that the Behemoth, unlike the Leviathan, does not have a uniform center as an association of competing rackets. And that raises the question of the meaningfulness of the conceptual construction proposed by Amlinger and Nachtwey. Because the assumption that there is a democratic variant of fascism may apply with a view to the strategy of some actors because they can implement parts of their ideological program as part of parliamentary democracy. As far as the political order is concerned, the proposal is rather causing the analysis. However, this is crucial to understand what we are dealing with – and to develop adequate counter -strategies.

Rule of the plebiscit

In Neumanns after the “Behemoth” work there is a term that is much more appropriate against the background: Caesarism. The Neumann, fled to the United States as a Jew and Socialist in 1933 before National Socialist persecution, had been torn in the “Behemoth” for the first time in the United States. But only in his last lecture immediately before a fatal car accident in the Swiss mountains did he provide a conceptual sketch entitled “Fear and Politics”. At that time, as a professor of political science at the Columbia University in New York, he worked on a general theory of democracy and dictatorship, which he developed based on the critical theory of Max Horkheimers and Theodor W. Adornos and in exchange with the sociologist Helge Pross.

With Caesarism, the dictatorial potential of authoritarianism can be deciphered that is inherent in democracy.

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The fragmentary draft for Caesarism brings a necessary differentiation into the debate. Because this enables the dictatorial potential of authoritarianism to be deciphered that is inherent in democracy itself. In his essay, Neumann lists a number of historical epochs to justify the concept. According to Neumann, the various caesaristic movements grabbed the decline of society to be fought and staged themselves as an authentic expression of the “folk will”. He describes this program as a “historical picture of the wrong concreteity”, which is closely linked to conspiracy ideologies. He refers to the Caesaristic tradition in the North America of the 19th century in the era of the Jacksonian Democracy. Nowadays, Trump starts this historical heir by having Andrew Jackson hanged up a portrait of the namesake of this era immediately after his re -entry into the White House. The supporter of slave holder democracy was US president from 1829 to 1837.

Caesarism is based on a certain understanding of democracy, which recurs mythical ancient images. It is also no coincidence that during the conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February on displays, Trump’s portrait in the style of Caesar: dressed with a toga and a laurel wreath, the highest military award in ancient Rome. Above and below it was read in white letters on a black background: »Third term project. For Trump 2028… and Beyond! «In this caesaristic understanding of democracy, the double character of modern democracy, on the one hand to be» folk rule «, on the other hand, to be contradictory (and unequal) social interests over parliament is dissolved towards rule the plebiscitive.

In this way, “folk will” and executive power are increasingly placed in one in Caesarism, which can also be observed with a view to the current transformation of statehood, which is intended to adapt to the state of changing economic requirements and is characterized by substantial deportation to strength within the part of the powers in favor of the executive. In the “era of the deal”, the rule is necessary on the basis of decrees and measures in order to be able to react agile to global economic and geopolitical faults as well as, and that is crucial from a materialistic perspective, to the increasing concentration of economic power. A development that occurs periodically in capitalism and is currently particularly evident in the tech industry.

Politics of power concentration

In a situation in which the state has to regulate increasingly economic individual cases, the legal form becomes a hindrance, as Neumann emphasizes. In a structurally, parliamentary function as a mediation between social power groups erodes. Their objective contrasts can be lifted less and less in laws that generally apply to everyone. In addition, the separation of powers and thus also the parliamentary power are hollowed out by attacks on the budget right of the legislative. This goes hand in hand with a weakening of the dishes that stand in the way of the necessities of the executive through and staging potency. Comparable attacks on the judicatives can currently also be observed in Germany if the Federal Government announces that they ignore court resolutions, for example in relation to border controls.

With the growing concentration of economic and political power, an increasing social fainting goes hand in hand, as Neumann emphasizes. This forms the ideological condition of caesarism, which is currently fueled by economic faults, inflation or the climate crisis. Existing “neurotic fears” in capitalism are being reinforced and increasingly lead to projecting fear coping, for example in anti -Semitic delusion. This is where the role of social media comes into play because they digitize the plebiscitarian acclamation of the Caesarists, the cheering corners of the popular will. The calling of the plebiscitive, i.e. the suggestion of the mass part of political power, for example by platforms such as X, Truth Social or Tiktok, serves the apparent compensation of the power of attorney. On the one hand, the suggestion obscures the growing access of gangs that is currently still legally inserted to the executive power. On the other hand, the participation is only simulated, which creates a destructive vicious circle.

This can result in an unleashed dynamics of violence from both fascist gangs on the street and the executive rule, the first signs of which are quite recognizable. However, analytically differentiating is of crucial importance so that the concept of fascism is also available as an instrument and can have an effect as a political concept if the legislation is tyranned.