The Fascist in All of Us
When, in the mid 1990s, Ontario's socialist government, for which I proudly voted just after having turned 18 the year of their election, was replaced by the "Common Sense Revolution" of Mike Harris's neo-con Tories, I and a lot of my grad-school friends rather lazily derided the new government as a bunch of "fascists."
That term seems to be acquiring even greater prominence now in the US, and not without reason. But its frequent usage can still be an occasion of looseness and imprecision of expression it seems, making it easier to dismiss as vague and vitriolic.
What does it mean to say someone or some movement is or inclines towards a fascist state of mind? Are there more precise criteria, even "diagnostic" criteria, to aid our discernment? Indeed there are, thanks to the essay "The Fascist State of Mind" by the scholar and psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas, who trained in America, practiced professionally for most of his life in England, and now seems to be back in these United States. He is a very prolific author, and I have read almost all of his books, beginning with his first (and, I think, still his best) book, The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known from 1987.
In his 1992 book Being a Character, Bollas bluntly, disconcertingly, but quite rightly insists that given the right circumstances, “there is a Fascist in each of us.” That is perhaps his most important point to keep in mind. It will not, of course, endear him to anybody, but then psychoanalysts at their best rarely do. In making such a universalist claim, Bollas is at one with Freud as well as others, including those of the Jungian tradition who remind us of our own "shadow side"; and the Kleinians, who have so helpfully revealed the universal propensity for "projective identification."
But back to Bollas. He gives us eight concrete criteria by which a fascist state of mind develops, and to just this extent I find him very helpful in bringing greater precision to the discussion. It is amazing (dare we say uncanny?) how much these characteristics, outlined by Bollas almost thirty years ago now, describe the long-standing actions of the current occupant of the White House whose tenure, we pray, will soon be over.
In the early stages of fascism, Bollas says, there arise certain psychic processes which, he argues, if left unchecked are the foundation of what he calls "intellectual genocide" which is usually a precursor to actual genocide (here Bollas draws on the invaluable work of such as Robert Jay Lifton and Raphael Lemkin). Examples of Donald Trump doing all of these are so numerous and widespread as to require no demonstration here--but then we can find examples of many of these in other places, as well, including our own habits and practices.
Distortion: This, Bollas says, involves distorting and slandering one's opponents, making them less recognizably human.
Decontextualization: This is done not just to an argument or a claim, but most worryingly to a person, who is removed from the context in which they normally reside and "isolated for purposes of persecution."
Denigration: The two foregoing processes combine here to produce scorn and belittlement, further dehumanizing the subject.
Caricature: The assigning of "undesirable qualities" from a person to an entire group.
Character Assassination: This is an attempt to remove the person from the scene entirely by rendering their views completely odious and therefore unmentionable. (Cf., in today's argot, "cancelling" or "cancel culture.")
Change of Name: The bestowal of nicknames, usually derogatory (and often racially, ethnically, or religiously constructed or affiliated), as a further means of belittling a person or of assigning his or her characteristics to an entire group. Cf., again, Melanie Klein on projective identification.
Categorization as Aggregation: (Strikingly, when I first read this, I thought it said "Categorization as Aggression," which is not inapt at all!) For Bollas, this is a crucial moment in which the dehumanization is nearly complete. Here a person is no longer a recognizable individual at all, but assigned to a hated mass or group or abstract category whose name has been changed, history distorted and decontextualized, and in general been demonized. (Bollas doesn't say this, but it seems to me one prominent example of this would be "Godless Jew," which term Freud adopted rather proudly as a self-description in part, it seems, to defang those who had already attempted to categorize him thus.)
Absence of Reference: Finally, and in addition to the foregoing, the person or group's unique history, contributions, and characteristics are "disappeared." We refer to them no longer; we pretend they do not exist in unique, singular, recognizable form. If they are discussed at all, it is in the disguised, distorted, dehumanized fashion noted above.
Bollas notes at each stage that, individually, these eight characteristics can be found, sometimes singly and sometimes severally, in virtually any and every debate in virtually any and every human group or encounter. He recognizes that each and all of the foregoing "is ordinary" in many ways. That is not to rob the term of any precision or applicability so much as it is to make us realize, as we noted at the outset, that fascism is not something that only "those people" do, but potentially and frequently something we can all engage in. In recognizing that, Bollas is not seeking to downplay its seriousness, but instead to encourage us to recognize that resisting the descent into a fascist mindset does not require heroic or dramatically self-sacrificing gestures in fraught and singular circumstances: "since it is ordinary, we can do something about it in the simple Freudian way of talking about it in the here and now and therefore partly divesting the act of its potential by addressing it."
So let us continue to discuss fascism if only to remain perpetually on our guard against outbreaks of it in ourselves and others.
That term seems to be acquiring even greater prominence now in the US, and not without reason. But its frequent usage can still be an occasion of looseness and imprecision of expression it seems, making it easier to dismiss as vague and vitriolic.
What does it mean to say someone or some movement is or inclines towards a fascist state of mind? Are there more precise criteria, even "diagnostic" criteria, to aid our discernment? Indeed there are, thanks to the essay "The Fascist State of Mind" by the scholar and psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas, who trained in America, practiced professionally for most of his life in England, and now seems to be back in these United States. He is a very prolific author, and I have read almost all of his books, beginning with his first (and, I think, still his best) book, The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known from 1987.
In his 1992 book Being a Character, Bollas bluntly, disconcertingly, but quite rightly insists that given the right circumstances, “there is a Fascist in each of us.” That is perhaps his most important point to keep in mind. It will not, of course, endear him to anybody, but then psychoanalysts at their best rarely do. In making such a universalist claim, Bollas is at one with Freud as well as others, including those of the Jungian tradition who remind us of our own "shadow side"; and the Kleinians, who have so helpfully revealed the universal propensity for "projective identification."
But back to Bollas. He gives us eight concrete criteria by which a fascist state of mind develops, and to just this extent I find him very helpful in bringing greater precision to the discussion. It is amazing (dare we say uncanny?) how much these characteristics, outlined by Bollas almost thirty years ago now, describe the long-standing actions of the current occupant of the White House whose tenure, we pray, will soon be over.
In the early stages of fascism, Bollas says, there arise certain psychic processes which, he argues, if left unchecked are the foundation of what he calls "intellectual genocide" which is usually a precursor to actual genocide (here Bollas draws on the invaluable work of such as Robert Jay Lifton and Raphael Lemkin). Examples of Donald Trump doing all of these are so numerous and widespread as to require no demonstration here--but then we can find examples of many of these in other places, as well, including our own habits and practices.
Distortion: This, Bollas says, involves distorting and slandering one's opponents, making them less recognizably human.
Decontextualization: This is done not just to an argument or a claim, but most worryingly to a person, who is removed from the context in which they normally reside and "isolated for purposes of persecution."
Denigration: The two foregoing processes combine here to produce scorn and belittlement, further dehumanizing the subject.
Caricature: The assigning of "undesirable qualities" from a person to an entire group.
Character Assassination: This is an attempt to remove the person from the scene entirely by rendering their views completely odious and therefore unmentionable. (Cf., in today's argot, "cancelling" or "cancel culture.")
Change of Name: The bestowal of nicknames, usually derogatory (and often racially, ethnically, or religiously constructed or affiliated), as a further means of belittling a person or of assigning his or her characteristics to an entire group. Cf., again, Melanie Klein on projective identification.
Categorization as Aggregation: (Strikingly, when I first read this, I thought it said "Categorization as Aggression," which is not inapt at all!) For Bollas, this is a crucial moment in which the dehumanization is nearly complete. Here a person is no longer a recognizable individual at all, but assigned to a hated mass or group or abstract category whose name has been changed, history distorted and decontextualized, and in general been demonized. (Bollas doesn't say this, but it seems to me one prominent example of this would be "Godless Jew," which term Freud adopted rather proudly as a self-description in part, it seems, to defang those who had already attempted to categorize him thus.)
Absence of Reference: Finally, and in addition to the foregoing, the person or group's unique history, contributions, and characteristics are "disappeared." We refer to them no longer; we pretend they do not exist in unique, singular, recognizable form. If they are discussed at all, it is in the disguised, distorted, dehumanized fashion noted above.
Bollas notes at each stage that, individually, these eight characteristics can be found, sometimes singly and sometimes severally, in virtually any and every debate in virtually any and every human group or encounter. He recognizes that each and all of the foregoing "is ordinary" in many ways. That is not to rob the term of any precision or applicability so much as it is to make us realize, as we noted at the outset, that fascism is not something that only "those people" do, but potentially and frequently something we can all engage in. In recognizing that, Bollas is not seeking to downplay its seriousness, but instead to encourage us to recognize that resisting the descent into a fascist mindset does not require heroic or dramatically self-sacrificing gestures in fraught and singular circumstances: "since it is ordinary, we can do something about it in the simple Freudian way of talking about it in the here and now and therefore partly divesting the act of its potential by addressing it."
So let us continue to discuss fascism if only to remain perpetually on our guard against outbreaks of it in ourselves and others.
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