"I see fascism as a radical effort to domesticate the masses": Interview with Ishay Landa (original) (raw)

Fascism as an Ideological Form: A Critical Theory

Critical Sociology , 2022

This paper argues that fascism is an ideological form rather than an ideological system. An ideology form can best be understood as a set of overall characteristics that distinguishes a class of ideologies from other classes of ideologies. This theory enhances our capacity for recognizing, problematizing, and critically analyzing both existing and potential variations of fascism. Fascist movements in different sociohistorical and geopolitical circumstances vary in terms of their belief systems, strategies, and politics, so conventional comparative methods and approaches that deduce their criteria from a particular model have restricted the area of fascism studies. I argue for a trans-spatial and trans-historical concept with flexible theoretical applications. My central claim is that fascism denotes a class of ideologies that have a similar form, just as a concept such as egalitarianism, socialism, sexism, or sectarianism makes sense as a form of ideology rather than a particular ideology or philosophy.

Exploratory Notes On the Origins of New Fascisms

Critical Times, 2020

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.

"Fascism Now? Inquiries for an Expanded Frame" / by Alyosha Goldstein and Simón Ventura Trujillo

Critical Ethnic Studies, 2021

Authoritarian political leaders and violent racist nationalism are a resurgent feature of the present historical conjuncture that will not be resolved by electoral politics or bipartisanship. Responding to the urgency of the current moment, this introduction to the "Fascisms" special issue of Critical Ethnic Studies explores what the analytic of fascism offers for understanding the twenty-first century authoritarian convergence by centering the material and speculative labor of antifascist, anti-imperialist, and antiracist social movements and coalitions. We emphasize fascism as a geopolitically diverse series of entanglements with (neo)liberalism, racial capitalism, imperialism, settler colonialism, militarism, carceralism, white supremacy, racist nationalism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and heteropatriarchy. By emphasizing fascisms in the plural, we seek to address two problematics in particular. First, our intention is to highlight the global proliferation of fascist formations within and beyond the United States and Europe in an expanded historical context. Second, we aim to center the historical, political, and epistemological work of antifascist collective organizing undertaken by Black, Indigenous, and other racialized peoples across the planet.