05 A New Fascism? – G. M. Tamás

Symposium: A New Fascism?
Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Chantal Mouffe, G. M. Tamás
17 December 2016, Fridericianum

G. M. Tamás – Fascism Without Fascism

The triumphant spread of the extreme right (mislabeled as “populist”) is almost everywhere, without doubt, the most important political question of the day. Alarming as it is, it most certainly will not change everything, especially not the class structure, the redistributive strategies of capitalist societies and it will continue the dismantling of the welfare state.
The strengthening of the state is exclusively repressive. At the same time, this historic turn will end some of the ideological hypocrisies of the age. Class conflict has been hidden behind a façade of ethnic and gender equality, mostly rhetorical orideological, but now, under the weight of the immigration crisis and similar problems, it will take the shape of the struggle between races, ethnicities, and nations. This is the opposite method to neutralize (and, of course, to win) the class struggle and the attempt to forge popular majorities in order to attain real equality— and it remains to be seen whether it is more successful.
The dangers are obvious, from authoritarian rule, repression and, censorship to a new wave of military conflicts and ethnicist mobilization. For all this, totalitarian rule is not necessary. The perennial contradiction between capitalism and “democracy” can be solved in many ways—and ethnic strife is a time-honored part of the tradition of modernity. There is nothing new in launching popular campaigns against the interests of the popular majority, but this is what we see again, with a difference though: the countervailing powers, including the “adversary culture,” are unprecedentedly weak.

G. M. Tamás is a Hungarian philosopher and dissident essayist, born in Transylvania (Romania). Forced to emigrate to Hungary in 1978, he taught at the University of Budapest (ELTE), from where he was fired for having published illegal tracts. As the leader of the Alliance of Free Democrats, he was elected Member of Hungarian Parliament in 1990 and Director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1991. Tamás was visiting professor in New York, Oxford, Paris, Chicago, Berlin, and Georgetown. He is the author of "Tribal Concepts: Collected Philosophical Papers" (1999), "Telling the Truth about Class" (2006), "Innocent Power" (2012), "Postfascism and anticomunism" (2014), "Communism after 1989" (2015).