Populism, on the other hand, is focused on welfare benefits, the product of an ageing — and in places like the former East Germany, dying — population. Today’s western world, with a median age now well over 40, is just too old for fascism, and also too rich, Weimar Germany having a GDP per capita of around £3,000. We’re all too fat to fit into size XXL black shirts, and a country in which 36% of adults are clinically obese is not going to march anywhere any time soon.
There are fascist parties today in Europe, such as Golden Dawn of Greece, and Jobbik of Hungary, but not many. As for Right-wing street protest groups, English Defence League marches gather literally tens — sometimes ones — of people. Even an ageing Paul Mason could probably take them on. Sure, there are fascist organisations and groups, just as there are groups dedicated to shoe fetishes or translating great works of fiction into Klingon, but in countries comprising tens of millions of people it’s not especially noteworthy or frightening that a few thousand people are interested in a dead political cult.
In cognitive behavioural therapy, you are taught to avoid the tendency towards seeing the worst possible scenario, something I’ve always done. I can’t get on a plane without picturing it blowing up in mid-air and all my fellow passengers being plastered over the papers underneath the headline “TRAGEDY OF DOOMED FLIGHT”. In politics, we have an entire industry set up to do just that, equating every move away from runaway globalisation as being the start of Au Revoir Les Enfants. We saw it during the Brexit debate, when some of the hysterical reporting clearly frightened people into thinking they were going to get deported.
Much of this political hypochondria stems from the work of Theodore Adorno and his “F Scale” test, which was used to assess fascist personality types, asking questions about obedience, sexual relations, lifestyles and so on. The F Scale was tested in post-war America, where it was found that fascism was latent everywhere. In the 1950s Adorno warned that fascism was the real danger to America — despite that whole Communism thing — and was convinced that fascism was finding “a new home” there. Soon his prophecy turned true, and America famously fell to fascism, with the Civil Rights act, Flower Power and Woodstock.
What the F Scale was measuring was not fascism but conservatism, and to a political hypochondriac it’s easy to mistake them: conservativism is, after all, parochial, drawn to attachments that are local and national rather than global. Conservatism is defined by more traditional gender norms, a greater respect for parental authority, a harder line on crime, and it has a certain disdain for intellectuals — which is unsurprising when you consider the insane ideas thought up by intellectuals.
Labelling all conservative politicians as fascist is a political tactic often used by Communists — they even called the Berlin Wall the Anti-fascist Protection Rampart — but this isn’t the main reason for the proliferation of this phobia.
One of the curious things about the Trump era was that so many American journalists seemed to fear a fascist dictatorship that they actually desired it. They longed to be part of a heroic struggle against the forces of darkness, one in which all doubt and anxiety and everyday blandness was washed away — ironically like so many bored young men of the Belle Époque.
Everyone needs to be the hero of their own narrative, and it’s far more comforting to imagine you’re Indiana Jones battling Nazis when cheering someone being punched in the street, or the ousting of an academic you might disagree with. The truth, that we’re living in a free society and that the path to heroism has been cut off; that we have nothing greater than the worries and regrets of our everyday life, is too much to bear.
And so Trump’s opponents retreated to a world of fantasy, citing quasi-mythical modern folk tales in which good vs evil is binary and uncomplicated; on the one hand Harry Potter, and on the other Star Wars. This fantasy caused people to refer to themselves, without any irony or embarrassment, as “the Resistance”, a reference both to the Lucas space opera and to occupied France. But the point about being part of the “resistance” is you can’t openly talk about it; otherwise you’re not really resisting, you’re indulging yourself.
Trump was a bizarre, unpredictable figure totally unsuited to the role; his embarrassing time in the White House ended with the outgoing President inciting some of his followers to march on Washington, a dangerous and deluded finale to a four-year ego trip and personality cult. But it was never going to be a “coup” any more than his regime was going to be the Fourth Reich; the clown act turned deadly in the end, but it was still a clown act that never seriously threatened a 250-year-old constitution.
In my experience, the only way to avoid hypochondria is to just stop worrying and focus on other things, and maybe something else will kill you in the meantime. The same, I suspect, is true of our civilisation.
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