A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilie Libertaria #452: CAESARISM - THE ADVANCE OF FASCISMS IN EUROPE (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

It is not true that history does not repeat itself. The generalized 
advance of the extreme right in Europe retraces paths already traveled, 
perhaps with a different intensity, a different speed, fewer bloody 
outcomes, but adopting institutional models, "documents of intention" 
(Marc Bloch, Apologia della storia, ed. 2024), "measures" (Deleuze, 
Difference and repetition, 1968) and cultural drifts (Prospero, La 
scienza politica di Marx, 2015) that belong to a tragic past. All this 
makes it necessary for us too to deal with the "ghost" of that fascism 
that disturbs the sleep of so many self-proclaimed democrats.

Irrational, instinctive, reactionary, hyper-nationalist impulses have 
always animated world politics since the fall of the ancient regimes, 
both as a factor of resistance to modernity and social and technological 
development and, in the opposite sense, as a push to recreate a strongly 
centralized and authoritarian State. What has allowed these forces to 
acquire a mass base and aspire to conquer the State, in addition to an 
intrinsic capacity for transformation and adaptation, has mainly been a 
phenomenon that has been little studied but in many respects decisive, 
which goes under the name of "Caesarism".

The term "Caesarism", with its variants and digressions, is now 
conventionally accepted to define or "classify" events, even if 
different from each other, which have as their purpose the establishment 
of a "system of government characterized by a strong power centralized 
in the hands of a single leader" (Fascism. Dictionary of history, 
characters, culture, economy, sources and historiographical debate, 
1998), through, and here is the novelty, the use of democratic and 
constitutional instruments. In order to found a party that would allow 
them to enter the democratic and electoral game (Pombeni, La ragione e 
la passione, 2010), the fascists assume the role of flag-bearer of a 
varied class, composed mainly of small and medium-sized bourgeois, 
farmers, employees, military personnel and ex-military personnel who, in 
periods of political instability and economic crisis, fear losing their 
acquired privileges, pointing out as hypothetical enemies the 
"expropriating" left, immigrants, taxation, and capitalists from other 
nations. Once they have conquered power through universal suffrage, and 
legitimized it through plebiscites and referendums - passed off as 
instruments of direct and popular democracy -, the fascists proceed in 
various ways, exploiting the illusion nourished by old liberals and 
technocrats of being able to use them for their political and economic 
ends, to all sorts of limitations first, then deprivation, of popular 
rights and freedoms, up to creating a totalitarian dictatorship, that 
is, one that claims to invade and control every aspect of social life.

Caesarism - in this last case "totalitarian Caesarism", as Emilio 
Gentile defines it (Fascismo. Storia e Interpretazione, 2002) - 
therefore does not find its privileged vehicle in a violent revolution 
or in coups d'état but in the democratic and constitutional system that 
it intends to overturn and undermine, often without making a mystery of 
it. So much so that it has been hypothesized that it is nothing more 
than an extreme variant of that same system, to be activated in the 
event that, for internal reasons (e.g. out-of-control inflation) or 
external ones (e.g. protests from below), the capitalism that is 
intertwined with it and supports it does not risk capitulating in turn. 
This is what Clara Mattei (Operazione austerità, 2022, and L'economia è 
politica, 2023) argues most recently, reviewing the support that 
economists and technocrats of high finance have given and continue to 
give to fascisms, and the opportunity that these represent to "shape 
society on the ideal of their models". The fact is that fascist regimes 
have almost always brought about profound political upheavals but almost 
never economic interventions that radically affected property and capital.

In any case, the "vulnus" of the democratic system, what prevents it 
from creating sufficient antibodies to repel fascist "advances" (as 
proclaimed by many inveterate voters), is so evident today that it has 
even been noted by Luciano Canfora (La democrazia, 2004, and, lastly, 
Dizionario politico minimo, 2024), one of those old-Marxist repentants, 
or false repentants, who still aspire, despite repeated failures, to 
occupy the State by electoral means.

For Canfora, however, the "vulnus" does not lie in the democratic method 
and universal suffrage but in a distortion of them, obtained by 
switching from proportional representation (which is the "obvious 
counterpart" of universal suffrage) to majoritarianism. It essentially 
saves the electoral system and democracy, and at the same time 
certifies, resoundingly denied by many recent facts, that through 
proportional representation fascisms cannot take power.

For us anarchists, however, the "vulnus" lies precisely in the electoral 
process, in the mystique of the vote and in the delegation of power that 
legitimizes the State and allows every form of corruption of the 
individual and popular will, depriving of antigens the living forces 
that animate society, including truly anti-fascist movements.

Canfora also argues with those who believe that historical facts cannot 
repeat themselves. For him, Italian fascism remains "a model for 
experiments and methods already tested and returning" (id., Fascism has 
never died, 2024). In this he finds us in agreement. Far from a cheap 
sociologism (Bobbio, in his Lezioni di filosofia politica, 2021, warned 
historians against trying, like certain sociologists, to harness the 
continuous flow of history), militant historians should agree that, 
under certain conditions, even the darkest past can reappear in a more 
or less similar way.

The debate and the ongoing struggles to prevent the establishment of 
fascist or para-fascist regimes should therefore find us in the front 
row, if only to discard easy illusions and compromises to the downside, 
and propose truly alternative solutions.

Natale Musarra

http://sicilialibertaria.it
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