The Future is Fascist

Techno-fascism

The last century has shown us the rise and fall of many political ideologies. And each ideological environment embodied its own socio-economic cocoon. From the birth of fascism in the 1900s to the fall of communism and existence of hermit nations we’ve seen several forms of governments and political ideologies. Liberalism as an ideology has been most successful in its manifestation in society. We saw how after the end of the second world war and the cold war, capitalism emerged as victorious.

This blog ideates on the possibility of a fascist revolution that the world may witness.

Fascism, like most political ideologies is a system of struggle for power. In fascism, the idea of centralized power forms the moral base and crux of this ideology. It tries to establish a state where power is in the hands of a few and they have the ability to control society in a way the power wielder wishes to.

It is an undisputed fact that in today’s day and age the power of data and technology makes people more powerful in some aspects. Almost every second day we hear or read about some technological development in the field of medicine and science. Scientists and researchers have reached unparalleled heights in these domains. They have come so far as to develop and create brains and bodies. Often, what happens is that large corporations and companies that invest in these medical research programs tend to (indirectly) start gaining power. When they begin to manipulate and manufacture brains, they then start to possess power unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

An extremely important characterization of a fascism is the ability to control the minds of the people. In the past, we’ve seen this being done through the mechanism of propaganda or force. For example, Hitler and the regime of the Third Reich was, impressively, able manipulate 86% of the German population to support their agenda. Their methods were to get into the minds of the people through propaganda like movies, books, words, posters etc.

Now, imagine this in a world like ours, where scientists and corporations are able to get into the minds of the people, not just in a figurative sense but a literal, physical sense. The ability to manipulate will become so much easier and far more effective than the way it was carried out in the regime of the Third Reich. Since we live in a world where technology knows us almost better than we know ourselves, techno-fascism’s level of efficiency and totalitarian potential can easily lead to repressive systems that will not tolerate dissent.

The primary characteristic of all fascist modernizing movements is conformity of thinking and behaviour, which is directed and controlled by total surveillance systems that track people’s thoughts, behaviours and relationships.

It is important to recognize that fascism differs between cultures. Italian fascism was different in several important ways from German fascism. Techno-fascism is characterized by the ways more aspects of daily life are becoming dependent upon digital technologies that lead to many benefits while at the same time reducing the diversity of cultural ways of knowing and by increasingly subordinating human thought and behaviours to the dictates of machines.

As a child of generation Z, technology is something that I have grown up with. I think it is essential to recognize the indispensable use of technology in our lives today. From medicine to scientific research, monitoring and maintaining the society’s economic infrastructure, education and nearly every facet of the industrial and consumer-dependent culture; technology has a pivotal role. Which makes the techno-fascist nature of these disruptive technologies extremely potent and a possibility.

Coming to the end of this missive, the critical question is whether a majority of the public recognize the dangers that lie ahead and will they be able to articulate the importance of what is being lost? And that is individualism in the age of techno-fascism. How far are we from a time where these technologies begin to undermine local democracies?

I always believe in trying to analyse possibilities that the future holds and the way I do this is through observing what I see in the present -- I attempt to granulate and extrapolate that and make my predictions. This blog aims to do exactly that. I do not say that the content of this narrative is what I see in the future as nor that it is an absolute event that can happen... but I do believe that it is a real possibility.