Aphorism #3: Fascism as Nietzschean Drive

Fascism: neither dumpster fire nor dirty secret

Fascism is a slur amongst Leftists — in symmetry with SJW among the radical right. There is no greater crime. Like a dumpster fire or a dirty secret, it is hoped a failure to engage will suffocate the problem. It’s naïve but its naivete is obscured by taboo.

Metamodernists and Integralists see it as a developmental regression. Like good Hegelians they believe society is progressing — happily heading up the dialectical spiral. Anomalies like Fascism or Populism are dismissed as regressions. Mighty is the oak whose dialectical development trumps the law of entropy and grows towards acornhood.

There is another way of understanding Fascism and Populism: Nietzschean drives.

Fascism/Populism is less a secret you can suffocate than a baby crying in the next room. Sure the crying is an emotional response. Sure it’s irritating. And sure you can ignore it and it might eventually stop. But the crying is a symptom. Something needs to change — a need is unmet. A reprieve from the crying does not equal resolution.

Alan Watts described the Earth as people-ing. Society can Fascism-ing and Populism-ing. Our society is Populisming (despite what Leftists say, Fascism is a specific historical phenomenon; our Populism may be from the same genus but it is a different species). There is a cause to this Populismising.

The rhetoric of the Populists may induce wincing and cringing but ignoring it will not cause it to disappear (as contemporary political trends eminently testify. You may believe it will if you see it as a suppressible secret or a dialectical regression but not if you see it as a drive. When you don’t eat, you get hungry; when you don’t drink, you get thirsty. When a society doesn’t 𝑥, it gets Populist.

What is 𝑥? One hypothesis: the collapse of connection. Third Space ingrouping has distintegrated. The walls of community end at the four walls of the home. Long live individualism. Something starves. Anxiety, depression and suicide rise. The craving for some cohesive ingroup emerges. Myths of our people become appealing. Chthonic blood and soil allure. Outgroups become easy to find — those who aren’t from here; those who have turned their back on the greatness of here. Make Here Great Again.

A baby is crying; ignoring it will not solve the problem.