WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, Sicilie Libertaria #453 - Edited: The Demofascist Horizon (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Is there a tolerable level of fascism? A limit beyond which we say we

live in a fascist regime? From time to time, on some more progressive
television programs or in some liberal-democratic newspapers,
controversy breaks out over whether Meloni's fascist government is a
fascist government. And many illustrious thinkers argue that it is
idiotic to talk about fascism today, historical fascism is dead and no
one can resurrect it. Of course, if we expect this or other governments
to be in a position or have an interest in declaring parties and unions
illegal, in emptying the functions of parliament and the judiciary, in
limiting freedom of the press, in various ways repressing any activity
of political and social opponents, those who believe that fascism today
is unthinkable (at least in our closest horizon) are probably right. And
they might also be right in saying that denouncing a government of
fascism at every turn is ultimately counterproductive.

However, perhaps the question should be seen from another perspective,
that is, which form of fascism is more suited to a society, to its power
structures, to its historical evolution, to its class relations. Now it
is known that historical fascism in Italy was the response of the ruling
classes to the extraordinary season of struggles that the subaltern
classes and proletarian organizations had led in the red two-year period
to bring about a democratic change in an authoritarian and extremely
unjust society. In that context, that fascism imposed itself with a
violence that was largely tolerated in a society that had experienced
the bloodiest and most pervasive armed conflict in human history. It is
clear that those conditions do not exist today and it is natural that a
fascism with those characteristics cannot be affirmed. Fundamentally, an
essential element is missing: a widespread social conflict that
threatens the existing order and calls class domination into question.
What interest should the ruling classes have today, therefore, in
pushing for an openly violent control of society? On the other hand, a
social and economic structure that is based on the drive to consume must
necessarily provide for forms of freedom that cannot be compressed and a
perception of oneself that is not compatible with an idea of limitation.
The consumer is sovereign is the slogan of liberalism, the one that
advertising throws in our faces every day, even among those large strata
of poverty that are growing ever larger.

And yet the development of contemporary capitalism, a globalization
under the sign of economic domination, the frenzied competition to grab
resources and sources of profit, the resulting imbalances, among many
the migratory pressure, push towards more stringent forms of social
control and towards more illiberal forms of government compared to the
recent past. It is a phenomenon that affects all so-called democratic
governments and of which the electoral success of the European far right
is a relevant aspect. In the last two decades the concept of governing
and of the relations between the powers of the state is evolving in an
openly authoritarian way. The assumption is simple: to face the multiple
crises arising from the troubled passage we are going through -
ecological transition, digital transition, geopolitical upheavals, to
use the current expressions - it is necessary that there are strong
governments, capable of a decisionism that does not tolerate any
compromise or hesitation. From this point of view, whether a government
defines itself as right or left makes little difference: the tendency is
to govern phenomena. Where governing means controlling and imposing,
while phenomena concern maintaining the dominion of capital and the
primacy of the economy. The evolution of Italian governments - all of
them, without exception - in recent years is, from this point of view,
paradigmatic: the prevalence of the government over parliament,
emergency legislation, through decree laws and questions of confidence,
weakening of the so-called intermediate instances, denigration and
criminalization of social movements, the square has returned to being an
expression of low instincts and irrationality. For example, the way in
which the migration issue is addressed reveals a common vision and a
continuity of measures that goes beyond the differences in position that
are present. If the right propagandistically appeals to the sacred
defense of borders, the left invokes the defense of abstract
humanitarian principles, but for both sides the phenomenon must be
governed, in the sense mentioned above, and migrants have a reason to
exist only in terms of their economic utility.

Of course, one's own ideological and cultural horizon also counts, one's
own political references and there is no doubt that those of Meloni and
her companions (or would it be better to say comrades?) refer to
Mussolini's fascism, from which they take, certainly updated, language
and symbolism. And it is also certain that that reference is at the
basis of all those measures and those directions that pursue the
objective of a government capable of imposing itself on all
articulations and of a regulated and disciplined society, prone to
obedience. The new security decree that is about to be approved by the
Senate, without civil society and the political opposition having
managed to articulate an adequate response, the clash of the last few
weeks between the government and the judiciary, where even the most
basic principles of the fateful division of powers have been called into
question, with a government that claims not to have to suffer any
hindrance in its activity, are clear and worrying signs of a fascism
that is trying to take measures.

Let us return, then, to the initial questions which, in their being
rhetorical and a bit paradoxical, express apprehension for a drift that
sees a society folded in on itself and a government intent on
controlling and regimenting it. But to defeat implicit and incipient
fascism it is not enough to refer to an abstract (Western) democracy,
which already in its maximum splendor - coinciding with the glorious
thirty years of the triumph of the Western capitalist and consumerist
model -, has never given proof of a real democratization of civil life
and has always presented itself as "acting democracy", as a
representation in which the popular classes have played the role of a
simple extra or, when it was the case, of victim. It will therefore be
necessary to reject not only the resurgent fascism, but also the more or
less underground authoritarianism of the realized democracies. On the
contrary, fascism, if it does not triumph, will be the horizon within
which they will force us to live.

Angelo Barberi

http://sicilialibertaria.it
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