Exploratory Notes on the Origins of New Fascisms

This essay interrogates whether existent analytical tools remain adequate to identify and assess what is perceived as the revival of fascistic tendencies today, ultimately arguing that they are not. Fascism cannot be expected to assume the same forms it did a century ago. Class structures, resource distribution schemes, communication potentials, and modes of belonging and exclusion have undergone significant changes. To determine which of the traits of the contemporary power paradigm would foreground new fascistic tendencies, this essay first revisits some of the most crucial insights in Hannah Arendt's study of the origins of totalitarianism. Arendt's perspective is highly valuable in moving the discussion of fascism beyond the delineation of specific historical events toward a theory of fascist power. The point is to distill from Arendt's insights into the connections among imperialism, fascism, and totalitarianism a number of techniques of government that would enable us to repeat the gesture today, but this time within the biopolitics-security-neoliberalism nexus. The power paradigm that this essay (re)constructs is meant to contribute to identifying fascistic and totalitarian trends irrespective of ideological and historiographic differences.