Consortium News: 19-08-2024,
Fascism is an insufficient term, as it denies the intimacy between liberal and far right forces. Here are 10 theses to understand this “intimate embrace” and the rise of this far right of a special type.
By Vijay Prashad
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
There has been widespread consternation about how to understand Donald Trump’s emergence as a serious candidate for U.S. president since 2016.
Far from an isolated phenomenon, Trump rose to power alongside other strongmen such as Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary since 2010; Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey since 2014; and Narendra Modi, prime minister of India since 2014.
People like this, who came to power and cemented their rule through liberal institutions, seem to be impossible to permanently remove through the ballot box. It has become clear that a rightward shift is taking place in liberal democratic states, whose constitutions emphasise multi-party elections while allowing the space for one-party rule to be gradually established.
The concept of liberal democracy was and is a highly contested concept that emerged from European and U.S. colonial powers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Its claims of internal pluralism and tolerance, the rule of law, and the separation of political powers came at the same time as its colonial conquests and its use of the state to maintain class power over its own societies. Liberalism today cannot be easily reconciled with the fact that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) countries account for 74.3 percent of world military spending.