Remediating the Social: Impacts of Historical Fascism on Academic Fascism

Introduction

Fascism evokes unease in people. Hearing the word reminds people of concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, the Nurenberg trials, international court in the Hague, and dealing with those who were justly but also unjustly stigmatized as fascists. When thinking about fascism, people also think about special historical events in Europe between both world wars, and the use of this word in the present, which often is not sufficiently thought out or said quickly, perhaps in attempt to politically disqualify an opponent. As early as World War II, George Orwell warned of the dangers of the inconsistent use of the term fascism, as it was applied to denote phenomena that have very little in common (1944). When thinking of fascism (the term originally denotes Italian corporatism), people also think of the German National Socialism and the segregations it introduced and spread (Hitler 1925; Rosenberg 1935). Similarly, when it comes to violence, segregation, and stigmatization of certain social groups, the practice of fascism can be partially linked to Orientalism defined by Said (1978) in terms of a particular modality of the political unconscious, and the emergence of authoritarianism in the psychology of masses (Reich, 1933). The topic of homo sacer, discussed in Agamben’s (1998) book with this title, refers to the banned person being excluded from society and deprived of all rights, can be included in present discussions on fascism as well. Fascism denotes irrational and violent social phenomena (Woodley, 2009), which are not only outdated (i.e., German National Socialism or ethnic cleansing during the war in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda), but are still present. Like many other phenomena, fascism can be said to have mutated, found new subjects, and manifested itself through new carriers of irrationality, new iconography, and new vocabulary. In one of the modalities of today’s fascism, the emphasis from the macro scale shifts to the individual and their desires, fears, and hatreds.

“Rural fascism and city or neighborhood fascism, youth fascism and war veteran's fascism, fascism of the Left and fascism of the Right, fascism of the couple, family, school, and office: every fascism is defined by a micro-black hole that stands on its own and communicates with the others, before resonating in a great, generalized central black hole. What makes fascism dangerous is its molecular or micropolitical power...” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, pp. 214-215) With regard to the spread of fascism-like phenomena in the third world, mention should also be made of nano-fascism, considered in the sense that fascism has travelled across the borders between the West and the East, and has been transformed into nano-fascism in Turkey (Aracagök, 2018).

In the second form of fascism-like phenomena today, people face the implicit principle of blood and soil in terms of forcefully emphasizing Asian people as those who will rule in the 21^st century (emergence of the Asian century ideology), while in the third, people are dealing with discrimination and group violence against individuals who stand out. This is an example of the academic fascism that is discussed in this chapter. Some peculiarities of academic fascism include features of fascism-as-we-know-it, such as: