Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely. The lure of fascism is the glint of collective supremacy through the fog of individual inferiority.
In Gilead, the dystopian country version of the United States in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the handmaids are enslaved as reproductive vessels for the elite Commanders. But now and then they are unleashed for a "Particicution" in which they tear a political prisoner limb from limb. "As the architects of Gilead knew, to institute an effective totalitarian system . . . you must offer some benefits and freedoms . . . in return for those you remove . . . When power is scarce, a little of it is tempting."
What the far right does – what it is doing now – is to make power very scarce. In the mathematics of fascism, the sum total of all power is one: the "uno duce, una voce" of Benito Mussolini, Hitler's "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer". One man embodies all dominion. He invites all citizens to surrender their power to him.
The world is against us, we are being swamped, invaded, subverted. We must respond by concentrating all our power in a single superman: Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Viktor Mihály Orbán, Donald Trump. "I am your voice!", Trump said as he accepted the Republican Party's nomination for the presidency in 2016. "I alone can fix it." Last November, asked about US foreign policy on his propaganda channel Fox News, Trump said: "Let me tell you, the one that matters is me. I'm the only one that matters, because when it comes to it, that's what the policy is going to be."
Rugged pioneers
It is easy enough to understand how this works in a fragile society with weak democratic traditions and a well of masochistic self-pity. But why is it working so well in a democracy such as the United States which has so long valorised the idea of the autonomous individual? The American self-image is an image of the self, of the rugged pioneer, the self-made man, the lone striving immigrant. The slogans on the flags that fly from the porches are “Live Free or Die” and “Don’t Tread on Me”. These are mythic notions, of course, but all the more potent for that. How can they be so easily set aside?
In part, because of the pornographication of politics. The thrill is voyeuristic and vicarious. You don’t do it yourself, you get your kicks by watching it being done. You don’t exercise democratic power, you experience it second-hand. Maybe the ubiquity of porn feeds this habit of ecstasy at one remove. Maybe exposure to video games also helps – the idea of the avatar, the second self who has all the power you lack, who can kick ass while you kick your heels. Maybe the displaced world of online trolling where timid little men can be giants of transgression and threat is not just an expression of these desires but in part their creator. Maybe, when exercising real democratic power is so difficult and complex, there is a pure pleasure in surrendering it, the paradox being that the one way you can feel really powerful is through a chosen and willed submission.
But there still has to be a payback. In the US at least, that first phase of submission has been accomplished – not, of course, for the majority of Americans but for the solid 40 per cent that Trump regards as enough to allow him both to dominate the political agenda and to control and corrupt the institutions of state.
Compensation
The next question is, in Atwood’s formulation: what benefits and freedoms does this authoritarian system offer in return for the power its acolytes surrender to it? The task of making power scarce by concentrating it in one man is being accomplished but what little bit of it do you give back in order to sustain the belief that there is adequate compensation for what is being lost?
In western Europe, the far right understands that the compensation must be tangible and social. It poses (ironically) as the protector and renovator of the social democratic welfare state. Benefits must be protected from the hordes of undeserving strangers who have come to steal them, but they must also be restored after the depredations of neoliberal austerity. These promises are false, but they are alluring. Trump, however, can make no such promises – on the contrary, his underlying agenda is the destruction of whatever is left of the New Deal settlement.
So what other compensation is available? There is only the Particicution, the primitive joy of tearing enemies limb from limb. The collective supremacy that is the quid pro quo for individual surrender can, in the end, be sustained only by some form of violence. The usual outlet, of course, is war. Trump may well resort to it, but it has become hugely problematic after Iraq – getting people to believe its pretexts is hard. The objects of domestic violence are more readily at hand and Trump has always been clear about who they are: immigrants, Muslims, the independent media, uppity blacks. Such violence does not at first need to be physical, but there is a relentless logic of escalation. The more powerless people become, the more they will need those corrupting compensations.