STIGMERGY: The C4SS Blog
The Origins of Fascism In Democracy

People are quick to criticize the labeling of authoritarian political movements as fascist, saying it minimizes the term’s significance. This is both the right and wrong approach. This views sees fascism as a rare and exceptional mode of political rule, but democracy is shot through with the logic of fascism. Fascism is the absolute of all absorption of all private interests and power structures into the state. All within the state. Nothing outside the state. Democracy on the other hand says: All through the state. Nothing without the state. We see democracy as a method for solving all problems and as something we all take part in. Democracy is just a more diffuse valorization of power.

Many often advertise it simply as the best means to direct the activities of the state, but what could be presented as evidence against this ability? We’ve seen now the religious regard our society has for democracy by its mass celebration over our military “liberation” of foreign nations. They too need the practical sense inherent to democratic order, and damn the consequences!

Democracy prepares us for fascism. It teaches us to identify ourselves with political power by arming us with the illusion that we too possess it. All interests are at least political. Then that political power quickly becomes what is seen as unifying us. Through the state we are one and we are nothing without it. Then when someone comes to us, offering us nothing but the strength to harness that power, to do away with the state’s inefficiencies and its disloyalty to the people, its foreign influences, the people will clamor for it. National greatness becomes the measure and the source of all value.

Anarchy and Democracy
Fighting Fascism
Markets Not Capitalism
The Anatomy of Escape
Organization Theory