FASCISM BY THE BOOK / PROJECT SYNDICATE

Fascism by the Book

Anyone who thinks that fascism had been vanquished for good in the mid-20th century should look to Minnesota and other American cities. In Donald Trump's America, and perhaps coming to other countries soon, the panoply of fascism's strategies requires remarkably little updating.

Yanis Varoufakis

ATHENS – Imagine that the fascists we thought we had vanquished for good in the mid-20th century had deposited a blueprint in some vault – a plan bequeathed to their spiritual heirs determined to make fascism great again. 

What would it say?

It would begin with a strategy of plagiarizing the left. Start by taking aim at crony capitalism, it would recommend. 

Copy the leftist arguments against the corrupt financial sector and the central banks’ role in supporting it. 

Then criticize the electoral system relying on two factions of the same oligarchic regime or “uniparty.”

After that, target the state for doing Big Business’s bidding. 

At the same time, repeat the neoliberal mantra, presenting yourselves as more neoliberal than Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan combined. 

Call civil servants lazy freeloaders leeching off the working class, thus driving a wedge between public- and private-sector workers.

To forge a movement, unite the victims of neoliberalism with people who maintain a fond memory of Thatcher or Reagan. 

To turn them all against the neoliberal centrists, portray those who cut their political teeth fighting and neutering the left – leaders like former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US President Bill Clinton, along with the political parties they remade – as Marxists. 

To solidify this alliance, promise a return to some fictional Golden Age. 

Wax lyrical about a national rebirth that requires defeating both the decadent bourgeoisie and the treacherous left.

Above all, never underestimate the power of the cult of racial purity. 

No one, of course, is “pure.” 

We are all mongrels. 

But people can be excited into a frenzy of enthusiasm if you portray their cities as crawling with foreign, dangerous influences (US President Donald Trump prefers the word “vermin”) and promise to purge the impurities that spread like viruses in their communities. 

The “impure” to be targeted may be Jews, Muslims, trans people – whoever can be stigmatized at little cost. 

This requires that you infect the souls of society’s dispossessed with a moral panic that they are being replaced by people even more wretched than themselves. 

Then and only then promise to make them great “again.”

As your new fascist coalition takes form, animate it with misogyny and promises that a Great Leader – a wise Daddy – will put the national house in order. 

As you do this, be sure to hint at white men’s current inability to put their own homes in order, but take great care to blame “woke” feminism, and never mention the true causes (austerity, securitized housing, and savage cuts in public education and health).

Offer, instead, a simple social contract: We shall look after you, make you proud again. 

You, in return, must grant us absolute power so that, released from the restraints of the liberal state, we can purify the body of the nation, reach into the halcyon past, and retrieve your sense of power and superiority.

Make sure you tell people that this is not a one-off, momentary rupture. 

Portray the nation as a battalion at war, where insubordination and opposition pose an existential threat to the collective body. 

Proclaim that your movement is planning a never-ending process of militarizing society, and advocate immediately for a huge defense budget.

At the same time, denounce the left-liberal cabal’s fixation with global government. 

Signal that deterrence is your game, but also imply that your army will be as adept at protecting the nation from domestic “terrorists” and defending the newly electrified border fences as it is at managing external threats.

To join or lead a government, exploit the fact that conservatives and centrists are more afraid of the left than they are of you. 

Espouse ultra-Zionism to whitewash your Nazi legacy and make yourselves more palatable. 

Forge an alliance with them, exploit their delusion that they can beat you in the contest for popular support with their fascism-lite and, once they feel safe, shove them to one side, take over fully, and put them in the same concentration camp (perhaps in posher cells) as the leftist rabble that they feared more than you.

Once in power, you should first ban all migrants (except white supremacists from failed apartheid states). 

To show you mean business when promising to hunt the most impure, marginal people, declare there are only two genders. 

Create a Praetorian Guard of masked men to whisk people off the streets and transport them to domestic concentration camps as well as in virtual colonies or occupied lands. 

To advertise your unconstrained power, send stormtroopers into your major cities to shoot and terrorize.

Behind the scenes, get into bed with the financial and tech oligarchs you rebuked while in opposition. 

Send a techlord and his minions into government offices to emulate Gleichschaltung, the Nazi policy of firing public-sector employees, and install flunkies to siphon off citizens’ personal data to be used for future surveillance and control. 

Pardon your felonious allies, attack universities, take over cultural centers, and use the courts to pursue the people who opposed you.

Most importantly, prepare for the moment your base grows impatient, seeing your promises to look after them go up in smoke amid the cacophonous enrichment of a ruling class you were meant to rein in. 

It is then that you must turn to the geopolitical version of the “flood the zone” strategy. 

Withdraw from multilateral organizations. 

Abrogate treaties. 

Wreck what remains of international law. 

Call your regime-change wars what they are: imperial takeovers. 

Luxuriate in vile displays of unbridled power. 

Above all else, keep escalating.

And if it all blows up, make sure you leave an updated blueprint for the next generation of fascists. 

After all, as long as the wealth of the few depends on the poverty of the many, fascism will always be necessary.

Yanis Varoufakis, a former finance minister of Greece, is leader of the MERA25 party and Professor of Economics at the University of Athens.