Why the Battle of Now is Capitalism Imploding Into Fascism Versus a World Waiting to be Born
by Umair Haque in Medium 11/4/2019
When I look at the world these days, I see a kind of unnamed struggle erupting. It asks a central question. The struggle is between global consciousness, and global fascism. And the question is: will humanity develop a global consciousness before it’s too late?
Let me explain, backwards.
By now, you should be able to see neo fascism, ripping through the world like a black tide. From America to Brazil to Europe to Turkey and beyond. Why fascism? Why now? When it’s understood what fascism is, the answer becomes obvious.
Fascism is a defense mechanism against the end of the world. Or the end of a world. It says that these things only belong to the pure, who the strong, who are the virtuous. Everyone else is impure, and therefore weak, and therefore sinful, hateful, and deserving of either annihilation, enslavement, or extermination.
What are “these things” that fascism says only belong to the pure? Everything. From the most superficial — land, money, jobs, incomes — to the less visible — like dignity and belonging and esteem and trust and respect — to the true foundation of it all: personhood itself.
Fascism is a defense mechanism against the end of the world, which says that the pure are the only ones who deserve a share of a society’s dwindling resources. The pure deserve them because they are the industrious, the intelligent, the courageous, and the brave.
Now. That is also almost a perfect description of capitalism. The only way in which capitalism differs from the above definition is the word “dwindling” — and fascism’s ascription of weakness to biogenetics. Otherwise, the two are precisely the same.
That should give us a clue as to why fascism is erupting across the globe. It is arising in the wake of capitalism’s failure to provide people with lives rich in all those ways — whether materially, with money and belongings, or psychologically, with belonging and respect, or humanistically, with personhood and dignity.
The paradox is that capitalism’s predatory logic teaches people to rip those things away from others. It’s moral logic is simple — and eminently fascist — the weak perish, the strong survive, and all that is what is fair. Therefore, the point of all existence becomes to annihilate the weak, and therefore to prove you are strong. The only difference, really, between the fascist and the capitalist is that the violence is more explicit and organized.
Fascism is erupting in the wake of American capitalism’s profound and total failure to create good lives for the globe. But that should only have been logical. American capitalism didn’t even create good lives for Americans. What was it ever going to do for the Indian or the Chinese that it exploited — except teach them to become little Americans, seeking to exploit in turn?
So capitalism imploding into fascism created a world where people have become little predators, like Americans — desperately seeking things to exploit, abuse, and damage, in order to prove that they are strong, not weak, and therefore don’t deserve to perish.
In that sense, fascism is a defense mechanism against the end of the world. Because when a world is ending, my friends, that contest to prove you are strong, and the rest are weak, has never mattered more.
And yet the end of the world doesn’t care very much about these foolish matters of pride. When a world ends, it ends. Our world is ending in a very real sense. Climate change is reaching a critical point. Mass extinction is accelerating. Inequality is skyrocketing. Capitalism failing has produced fascism as a defense.
Now, these are all global problems. They can’t be fixed the way that Western liberals think they can — with rich white people deciding to eat less hamburgers, or cycling to work. That makes absolutely no difference whatsoever — because, again, these are global problems.
To solve these problems therefore requires a global consciousness. And that struggle has just begun to be born. It is less advanced yet than even fascism. Extinction Rebellion shutting down cities is the birth of a global consciousness. Greta scolding the UN General Assembly is the birth of a global consciousness. Malala teaching a world to educate every child is the birth of a global consciousness.
These are all embryonic things — if even that. They are barely pulses of life in the womb of time. But they are stirrings of a heartbeat nonetheless.
Let me put these two movements, ways of thinking, ways of being in the world, in opposition, to make their battle crystal clear. Fascism says that these things only belong to the pure. In America, the pure are the white Trumpists. In India, they’re HIndus, perhaps of a certain caste or creed. In Turkey, they’re “true” Turks. In Europe, they’re a mishmash of ancient blood that claims to be “real” European. In China, they’re ethically pure Chinese.
And so forth. Do you see how funny it all is? In every society now, there is a movement that says these things only belong to the pure — but the pure are different in every society. So who are the true ubermen? The white Trumpists? The pure Hindus? The faithful Muslims? The Han Chinese? Perhaps you see how comical it is, the idea of a “global fascism.” LOL — the pure, indeed.
But also see how lethal the point is. In every society, there are now movements that say these things only belong to the pure. But “these things” — healthcare, retirement, education, rights, dignity, belonging, personhood — add up to life itself. So in every society, there are movements that say life itself only belongs to the pure.
Now think of a Malala. When she travels the world, her message is that education belongs to every human life. That every single child on planet earth should receive the benefit of history’s wisdom, knowledge, and learning — and that we as a world must invest in it. If, that is, we want to prosper and endure as a civilization.
Now think of a Greta Thunberg. When she scolds the UN General Assembly, she is saying that life belongs to every being. She is saying that no one should really own a tree, forest, river, ocean, mountain, or sky. But that those things deserve self-determination and self-governance and dignity and respect in the same way that every human life does. Do you see how that message is even more expansive than Malala’s?
Now think of an Extinction Rebellion. When they shut down a city, and you, the good middle class burgher groan in exasperation, they are trying to say to you: life is every being, and every being deserves rights, privileges — fundamentally, the right to live in freedom, and reach one’s potential. The potential of the tree is to touch the sky. The potential of the sky is to nourish the soil. The potential of the soil is to become the tree. To interfere with these things — to possess them, and rip them apart, as the capitalist does — isn’t just to commit a kind of folly, but also a kind of moral crime. To trespass on life itself.
Now. I’d bet that you don’t agree with that. And that is the point. Where do you fall, in this struggle between global fascism and global consciousness? Do you see the struggle yet? You should. On the one side — Trumps and Farages and Bannon and violent men of all races and creeds and nations, bellowing the same thing: “Life itself only belongs to the pure! The pure are the strong! And the strong must prey on the weak, abuse and exploit the weak — that is the moral law! Whether the weak are the rivers, oceans, forests, skies, animals, or the subhumans!!”
On the other, the Gretas and Malalas and Extinction Rebellions, who say: “Life belongs to all beings, to each being. Each being must live free, to realize itself, in the highest and truest way. The river is born to flow to the sea. The sea is made to become the sky. The sky was created to rain down into the soil. And soil was made to to be held by the sun. Life belongs to all beings. We have no right to exploit or abuse it. We must become its shepherds and guardians. We must become pilgrims walking towards it.”
Do you see the difference? For one side, the fascists, life is a thing to be exploited, according to the moral law of the strong annihilating the weak. For the other, life is a thing to be cherished, nourished, treasured, and protected — because weakness, like the sapling, like the stream, is the seed, the beginning, the instant of grace, the moment of truth.
Now, the question in this struggle is very much about you. I think that most people think they would like to fall towards the side of global consciousness. But few do. That is why globally, fascism is winning by leaps and bounds. I think that most people pay lip service to the Malalas and the Gretas — but when it comes down to it, secretly, they sneer, and support the Trumps and the Farages, in ways they wouldn’t like to admit. How else did we get here?
In other words, this struggle exists just as much in us as it does outside us. And that’s OK. Nobody is pure. The fascist is wrong. I will tell you that I am on the side of life, not death — the side of global consciousness, not fascism. But I eat my meat and wear my leather. I am a hypocrite of a terrible kind, perhaps. Or perhaps I am just not an extremist. Perhaps my line is children in concentration camps, and rainforests being ripped apart. The question is where your line is, my friend.
(Hypocrisy is one thing. Yet from what I can see, these days, too many of us don’t have a line, really. Take the average American. Quite happy with concentration camps — yet bitching about Trump daily on Twitter. That’s not a line, my friends — that’s an illusion. But I digress. I don’t think that I or anyone else aids the side of the light in this struggle by scolding or warning or criticizing you. We are blinded by the light only by looking deep into our own darkness.)
Will the world develop a global consciousness before it’s too late? Most days, my friends, I have my doubts. The world, in other words, must have a kind of awakening. If, at least, the question is the survival of the world as we know it. The question isn’t just how that awakening will come to be — but if it will come to be, at all.
So how do our minds, hearts, and souls expand, soar, transcend, unfurl? Well, facts and charts are useless in this battle. Everyone knows we have maybe a decade until climate change and mass extinction become catastrophic — and no one much really cares. We are fighting this battle in embryonic ways, still.
What I’ve learned about consciousness, by journeying to the edge of death and back, is that a mind, a heart, a soul unfurl there, in that moment of truth. When death reveals himself to you — not like a reaper, but like a brother. “I am here to free you from all this suffering,” he says, holding his arms out. “Come back to the place where all life begins.”
In that moment, when you see death, as clear and true as summer’s first day, then you also begin to know the pain, the suffering, that you have left behind you in this world. You being to see, with terrible clarity, all the hurt that you have done, even to those you have said you have loved. So what about those you haven’t?
Fascism is a defense mechanism against death. The death of a society, the death of a world, the death of an age. But because consciousness only expands in the sight of — in the arms, perhaps, of — death, fascism, of course, is a reduction in global consciousness. It is a way to say: “I am not responsible for any of this dying!! Dying is just and noble — the weak deserve to perish!!”
Fascism is so, so seductive because we live in an age of collapse my friends. Who wants to experience all that pain, all that suffering, all that torment — of a collapsing world? Who wants to imagine a rainforest, dying? Who wants to empathize with a refugee, who’s travelled the world just for bread, shuddering from the abuse? How much easier it is to rage at them, imagining you are the strong one. How thrilling that is. What a kind of orgasmic pleasure there is in the violence of the fascist mind. It’s like a fix of pure heroin, in a collapsing world — the pleasure of rising atop the rubble.
So fascism attracts the weak-minded, not just with the pleasure of superiority, the thrill of violence — but also by defending against any moral reckoning with all the things collapsing around us. The fascist never has to feel the pain of a collapsing world.
The battle for global consciousness will be a difficult one. It hinges on this question. How do we teach people to feel all that pain? Can we? Can it be done? Can the human spirit accept the terrible grief and suffering and torment of a dying ocean, of the extinct species, of a planet with third-degree burns? How do we teach people to accept and hold all that pain? Who wants that discomfort, that burden? How do we teach each other that death holds the beauty and truth and grace of each and every life in his hands — and it’s up to us to hold it back, not to smash it?
That is what a global consciousness really is. Every being has uncountable worth, not because you or I say so — but because death does. And therefore our job is to create a world where every life realizes itself — from the insect to the ocean to the blade of grass to the outcast. We are all one, we are all equal, from the smallest to the largest — and none have the right to take life from any other. Our obligation is to give life, to nourish it, to tend it, to celebrate it. That is death’s truest message — and greatest gift. But we are not at the place where we are ready to learn it. We are not even at the place where we know how to teach it.
So the middle class commuter sighs in exasperation at Extinction Rebellion. The American nods when Malala speaks — and then goes on hating their neighbour. Nobody much wants to bear the terrible pain of an age of collapse. Nobody knows how. Fascism goes on rising, across the globe. Thanatos rises, laughs, and leads us into the labyrinth where souls slumber.
And death is silent, watching. He grieves, for all the roads we have yet to walk.
Umair
November 2019