by WALDEN BELLO
Why we now need to spell out the “f” word.
Donald Trump’s electoral defeat in 2020 and Jair Bolsonaro’s loss to Lula in Brazil in 2022, along with Rodrigo Duterte’s leaving the presidency of the Philippines last year, gave some quarters hope that the far-right or fascist wave had crested globally.
Two political earthquakes, taking place just in the last two weeks, have shattered this illusion. In Argentina, Javier Milei, a Trump-like, self-described anarcho-capitalist who brazenly denies that human rights abuses took place in that country during the so-called dirty war waged by the army in the late 1970s was overwhelmingly elected president. Two days later, in the elections in traditionally liberal Netherlands, the Freedom Party led by Geert Wilders emerged as the country’s biggest party. A Trumpist long before Trump showed up, Wilders wants to ban the Koran, describes Islam as the “ideology of a retarded culture,” and calls Moroccans “scum.”
When far-right personalities and movements started popping up during the last two decades, there was, in some quarters, strong hesitation to use the “f” word to describe them. Indeed, as late as less than three years ago, I had to defend the use of the word fascist in the Cambridge Union debate against academics who were squeamish about employing it to describe far-right movements in Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world. What Donald Trump and the Jan 6, 2021, insurrection have shown, however, is that the distinction between “far right” and “fascist” is academic. Or one can say that a “far-rightist” is a fascist who has not yet seized power, for it is only once they are in power that fascists fully reveal their political propensities.
A movement or person must be regarded as fascist when they fuse all or most of the following five features: 1) they show a disdain or hatred for democratic principles and procedures; 2) they tolerate or promote violence; 3) they have a heated mass base that supports their anti-democratic thinking and behavior; 4) they scapegoat and support the persecution of certain social groups; and 5) they are led by a charismatic individual who exhibits and normalizes all of the above.
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