How should the rise of right-wing populist and fascist parties be categorised? How can fascism be conceptualised and what are its roots? What can effective anti-fascism look like? In the following, we will approach these questions from the perspective of the Kurdish mastermind Abdullah Öcalan, who deals intensively with the question “What is fascism?” in his paradigm of democratic modernity.
“Whoever is not willing to talk about capitalism should also keep quiet about fascism”
On the eve of the Second World War, Max Horkheimer, one of the leading minds of the Frankfurt School, stated that there was a connection between capitalism as the economic order of bourgeois society and the emergence of fascism with the statement “Whoever is not willing to talk about capitalism should also keep quiet about fascism”. As a reaction to the crisis of capitalism, fascism sought to maintain capitalism by despotic means.
Öcalan also views capitalism, or the age of capitalist modernity, as a crisis regime and a crisis civilisation. For him, capitalism is “not intend to define capitalism simply as a system with cyclical crises but as a systemic structural phase of crisis in a civilization system prone to ongoing cyclical crises” in which three crises are currently unfolding in parallel: The crisis of the five-thousand-year-old central civilisation, the crisis of the five-hundred-year-old capitalist civilisation and the cyclical financial crisis. The usual ways of overcoming the capitalist crises to date no longer offer a solution, but merely represent crisis management in which “depressions and crises that were once exceptional have become generalized and stable, while “normal” periods have become the exception.”
In this phase of the dissolution of capitalist modernity, also referred to by Öcalan as the chaos interval, there is the possibility of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary developments or democratic-liberal offensives and totalitarian-fascist coups: “Determining what political and economic formations might arise from the world system’s structural crisis requires intellectual, political, and moral work not prophecy.”
Ontological connection between the nation state and fascism
In his defence writings, Öcalan emphasises that it is not possible to think of fascism without the nation state. One of the fundamental mistakes made when discussing fascism is either not to consider and explain its connection to the system of the nation state at all or, if it becomes unavoidable, to dismiss it with a few subordinate clauses. According to Öcalan, the various analyses of fascism, especially the Marxist ones, but also those from a liberal, conservative and anarchist perspective, are misleading because they produce a definition of fascism as an exceptional phenomenon that afflicts the system from outside capitalism. But “fascism and the nation state are essentially the same thing” and “fascism is the norm. What is an exception is reaching a compromise with democratic structures.”
It is therefore a central theme in Öcalan’s political philosophy to clarify the real function and role of the nation state and to work out the ontological connection with fascism and nationalism. He defines the nation state and its connection with fascism in this context as follows:
“The nation-state can essentially be described as society being identified with the state and the state with society, which also constitutes the definition of fascism. Naturally the state can no more become communal than society can become the state. Only totalitarian ideologies can assert such a claim. The fascist character of such claims is obvious. Fascism, as a form of state, always has the seat of honor at the bourgeois liberal table. It is the form of rule in times of crisis. Since crisis is structural, so is the regime; called the nation-state regime. It is the apex of the crises of financial capital era. Capitalist monopoly’s state, which has currently peaked globally, is also generally fascist during its most reactionary and despotic period. Although there is much talk of the collapse of the nation-state, claiming that democracy will be constructed in its place is simple credulousness. It may be that both macro-global and micro-local fascist formations are on the agenda.”
“While Hitler, Mussolini, and their like were defeated, their systems were victorious”
Since the fascist quality of nation-state existence as a maximised state and power was most clearly seen in German fascism, Öcalan also looks at the process of the German nation-state model from close up. The backwardness of the German and Italian bourgeoisies and the difficulties they experienced in their efforts to achieve national unity thus brought with it an even more pronounced form of nationalist politics:
“The bourgeoisie was compelled to embrace a chauvinist-nationalist state model because of the external threat of occupation, as well as the continuing internal resistance of the aristocracy and the working class. Defeat and crisis – these are the two things that brought many countries, especially Germany and Italy, at a crossroads “either a social revolution or fascism”, with the fascist state model prevailing in this dilemma. While Hitler, Mussolini, and their like were defeated, their systems were victorious.”
Öcalan sees the fact that the only way out for the German bourgeoisie was the monopolistic concentration as a nation state as a special characteristic of the German model: “The most important work and success of the German bourgeoisie and ideologists were to produce this type of state both ideologically and materially throughout the nineteenth century.” Secondly, the German model, unlike others, is based on culture: “The German model is based on the culture unique to the German nation and this is the underlying precondition both for citizenship and nation-state. The fact that it is more prone to descend into fascism is closely related to the way in which the German nation-state developed.”
The societal model of fascism in the financial age
Öcalan assumes that the first attempt at a “society of the spectacle”, fascism, was not actually defeated. Its protagonists were indeed liquidated. But the system enforced the society of the spectacle everywhere during the Cold War and afterwards through the nation state and global finance companies. The term “society of the spectacle” comes from the major work of the French philosopher Guy Debord, in which he denounces modern labour society, capitalism, the world of commodities and the alienation of labour. The current “society of the spectacle” in the West is a society that celebrates the superficial, wants to find fulfilment in consumption, looks at and admires itself in the media, considers everything to be measurable and purchasable and “in which the commodity looks at itself in a world it has created,” Öcalan also speaks of a mental conquest of societies. The hegemony of the capitalist system is thus maintained not only by political and military force, but also by controlling and paralysing the cultural industry. Öcalan therefore emphasises that the struggle against the cultural hegemony requires the most arduous “intellectual struggle”: “Until we are able to develop and organize the essence and form of a counter-struggle against the cultural war waged by the system through invasion, assimilation, and industrialization, not a single struggle for freedom, equality, and democracy has a chance to succeed.”
It is therefore particularly important to take a closer look at the society of the financial age: “Societies that have gone through the filter of nation-state nationalism are societies that are constantly ready to produce fascism.” Fascism as a system means the transformation of society into a herd and the spread of power down to the smallest cell. The goal is to construct a “homogenization on a global scale and to create a mass-like, herd-like society.”
The nation state plays a central role
The nation state plays a central role here, imposing a uniform mentality and emotional world on the level of the individual and all social structures: “The nation-state does not create a uniform mentality and emotions on the individual alone but also instills them on all the societal structures. As a result, it is able to spread its power to the whole of society but it can also create a uniform society: the nation-state society. It aims to form a corporatist (fascism’s model) society. One should not misunderstand their concept of society’s hold of power. The opposite is true. The nation-state positions its agent individuals and institutions into all the pores of the society in order to multiply its power in depth and width. Herding society can only be realized through such a method. Indeed, the spread of power in society means war against the society. This does not mean that the society holds the power.”
The capitalist nation state is using various instruments and methods to create the profile of a citizen that has never existed before in history, explains Öcalan: “This citizen’s real aim in life is to have a car, a family (to find a husband or a wife, to have one or two children), and to own a house; in other words, to become a daily standard consumer. The meaning of sociality can be easily brushed aside for menial selfish ambitions. The citizen’s memory is wiped out and consequently it is detached from history as well. History is thought to be nothing but all about chauvinistic national clichés. The citizen has no philosophy and does not believe in the existence of any other philosophy of happiness than narrow pragmatism. In appearance, the citizen looks modern. However, at issue is the individual of the “herd of citizens,” “mass society,” or, indeed, lack of individuality that has been created and prepared to work for the most obscure aspirations (such as fascism) which are hollow and devoid of substance.”
According to Öcalan, this type of citizen played a central role on the road to fascism and is the subject of many famous novels. One example in this context is the novel “The Conformist” by Alberto Moravia, which tells the story of a man who becomes a compliant civil servant under the new fascist government in Italy. Öcalan considers nation states and societies that produce this type of citizen to be among the greatest obstacles to democratic modernity. Therefore, a central task of democratisation and anti-fascist practice is “to analyze the nation-state and the society that produces such a lack of individuality (where the individual is considered non-existent) and to raise egalitarian, free, and democratic individuals (free citizens) who can construct the democratic civilization.”
The nature of the middle class is fascist
In his remarks, Öcalan also rejects the dominant understanding that the middle class is the basis of a republican and democratic regime. Rather, this depiction is a “narrative of liberal propaganda”. The “middle class has played the key role in the negation of the republic and democracy.” For Öcalan, the middle class is the reservoir from which fascism, not democracy, draws: “Just as the relationship between fascism and the nation-state is structural, the relationship between fascism and middle class is also structural.” In this context, liberal democracy essentially relied on the middle class, and he describes the nation state as the “modern god of the middle class“: “It lives in its own mentality and passion with the dream of reuniting (through attainment of task and benefit) with this God. A position within its bureaucracy or monopolies means salvation.” Capitalism uses the liberal bourgeoisie and the middle class in its fight against democratisation and social justice by making concessions and creating illusions, pointing to the lower strata of society and keeping the middle class in constant fear.
The understanding of anti-fascism in the theory of democratic modernity
Öcalan sees it as “the most important weakness of all the anti-fascists, but especially that of socialists, was their inability to notice the systematic bond between nation-state, monopolies (state and private monopolies), and fascism. Moreover, the ontological bond between capitalist modernity in general and fascism had not been determined.” Central to his understanding of capitalist modernity is the trio of nation state, industrialisation and capitalism. Modernity, which is based upon this intertwined trio, is in a position to wage both internal (fascism) and inter-state national, regional and world wars.
Democratic modernity as an alternative system, on the other hand, “responds to the homogenization (uniformization), herd-like, and mass-like society that the modern nation-state strives to achieve by adopting a universalist, linear-progressive, and deterministic (methods closed off to probabilities and alternatives) method with pluralistic, probabilistic methods that are open to alternatives and make democratic society visible. It develops its alternative through its ecological and feminist characteristics that are open to diverse multicultural, non-monopolistic political structures, as well as with an economic structure that meets basic social needs and is controlled by the community. Democratic modernity’s political alternative to capitalist modernity’s nation-state is democratic confederalism.”
