What is fascism? (philosophical perspective)

How did a philosophy of absolute state control capture some of the twentieth century's most brilliant, avant-garde minds? To understand fascism beyond mere political slogans, we must examine its unexpected intersections with technology, aesthetics, psychology, and metaphysics. Here are four intellectual rabbit holes that unlock the deeper, often unsettling dimensions of fascist philosophy. ## 1. The Aesthetics of Destruction: Expressionism and the Futurist Manifesto > "We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman." > — F. T. Marinetti, [*The Manifesto of Futurism*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_Futurism) (1909) * **The Hook:** What if fascism was born not in a political assembly, but in an art gallery obsessed with speed, youth, and industrial violence? * **The Connection:** Fascism did not merely use art for propaganda; it conceptualized politics *as* art. Walter Benjamin famously warned that fascism results in the "aestheticization of political life," where self-destruction becomes an aesthetic pleasure of the highest order. * **The Insight:** Exploring this path reveals how modern technology and speed can be weaponized to replace rational democratic discourse with raw sensory experience. * **Primary Source:** Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s *The Manifesto of Futurism* (1909) offers a startling look at the artistic movement that demanded the destruction of museums and libraries to pave the way for a mechanical, militarized future. ## 2. The Myth of the State: Ernst Cassirer and Neo-Kantian Rationalism * **The Hook:** How did modern society, armed with science and education, succumb so easily to political myths and secular magic? * **The Connection:** While many view fascism as a chaotic explosion of violence, neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer argued it was a highly sophisticated, deliberate technique. Fascism represents the triumph of mythical thought over rational thought in times of acute social crisis. * **The Insight:** This concept shifts our focus from economic or military causes to cognitive vulnerability, illustrating how modern political structures can manufacture "secular myths" to bypass human rationality entirely. * **Primary Source:** Ernst Cassirer’s posthumous masterpiece, [*The Myth of the State*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_State) (1946), analyzes how twentieth-century politicians successfully engineered myths using the same precision applied to industrial manufacturing. ## 3. The Reactionary Avant-Garde: Georges Sorel and the Power of Violence * **The Hook:** Why did both Benito Mussolini and extreme left-wing syndicalists find their ultimate inspiration in the same French philosopher? * **The Connection:** Fascism is often placed on the far-right, but its philosophical roots are deeply entangled with revolutionary syndicalism. Georges Sorel argued that society is rejuvenated not by peaceful compromise, but by the "myth of the general strike" and cataclysmic, purifying violence. * **The Insight:** This investigation collapses the traditional left-right political spectrum, demonstrating how anti-liberal thinkers from opposing sides united under the banner of anti-parliamentary action and vitalist energy. * **Primary Source:** Georges Sorel’s *Reflections on Violence* (1908) is indispensable for understanding how violence was elevated from a tactical tool to a moral and spiritual necessity. ## 4. The Psychology of Submission: Wilhelm Reich and Mass Desires > "The suppression of natural sexuality in the child, particularly of its infantile sexuality, makes the child apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, good and adjusted in the authoritarian sense..." > — Wilhelm Reich, [*The Mass Psychology of Fascism*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_Psychology_of_Fascism) (1933) * **The Hook:** What if the most terrifying aspect of fascism is not that it was imposed on people, but that they actively, passionately desired it? * **The Connection:** Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich argued that fascism is not merely a political ideology of the ruling class, but the expression of the sexually and socially repressed character structure of the average human being. * **The Insight:** This perspective moves the critique of fascism into the household and the human psyche, examining how authoritarian family structures lay the biological and psychological groundwork for fascist obedience. * **Primary Source:** Wilhelm Reich's *The Mass Psychology of Fascism* (1933) bridges Marxism and psychoanalysis to explain why the masses chose authoritarianism over liberation during the collapse of the Weimar Republic.