Fascism debate-the F-word | nd-aktuell.de

“The fascism debate is over,” recently the philosopher Jason Stanley said in an interview on his decision to leave the US University of Yale and go to Canada. He wanted to set an example to point out the urgency of the situation. What is meant is whether current developments in the United States can be understood as fascism. “Yes, of course,” said Stanley. “What other terms should we use?”

He received left -liberal encouragement for the clarity because he names a dramatic escalation that is still often downplayed in the media. Many who have apparently felt this as discomfort for a long time speaks from the soul. But he also unintentionally refers to a problem: We have to call it fascism because we have no better terms – that is, no better understanding of the conditions that condense into ever greater disasters. Even if the term “does not fit perfectly”, as he says, it is about “understanding the strategies of this movement”. The analysis becomes a skipping act in intellectual helplessness towards the world.

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Because year (tenth) elong, the strengthening of the right was downplayed and misunderstood as populism – so that it still appears like a democratic phenomenon – or on the right – so that it appears like a sudden movement from outside. Now you jump to the concept of fascism in order to catch up to do the seriousness of the situation. But the problems remain that neither causes nor the broad -shaped fascination of fascist policies are explained. The situation is undisputedly drastic: aggressive is conjured up with the trade war and “America First” until the war, the enemy is marked, deported, blocked in warehouse in El Salvador, there are broken fractures with a system, government by executive order, equality against equality, fascism researchers must leave the country.

These are all fascist tendencies, but it still makes a difference whether they are at the same time general development tendency in society. At least such a provision is a highly demanding matter, about which Marxist theory has broken the head for at least 150 years – including against the resistance of bourgeois science, which has always contested such a possibility of reducing over complex social reality to a concept. For such hair splitters, the present is no longer left in the urgency of the present.

One might think that if you don’t want to speak of fascism now, it is best to be silent. This hits the moral nerve of outraged middle class, which gives the nimbus courageous truth, sets strong signals and facilitates feelings of fainting. But it does not change the urgent problem: If you want to talk about fascism, you cannot remain silent about capitalism – i.e. the real social conditions.