There are those who say that there is no longer any danger of fascism returning. Among all the ineffable master of thought Paolo Mieli. I say, however, that there is a deeper fascism, which survives and expands, not only in Italy and not only on the right. Fascism, as Pier Paolo Pasolini intuited, is not only that invented by Mussolini. Fascism is not a historical ideology, as some deluded nostalgics believe, which assigns to the proud individual the heroic task of cleansing the world of the last, the useless, the defenseless, to create an iron race. Fascism is, however, a psychology, a way of conceiving politics, relationships, life, the world. It is a profound pathology of the human psyche. A pathology that was very much alive before historical fascism, still present today and which will remain in the future. Even in the minds of many who today call themselves anti-fascists, babble on talk shows, ask others to declare themselves anti-fascists, without ever relying on a psychoanalyst instead.
True fascism is when we believe that good is on one side and evil is on the other. When, being in power, we do nothing to heal the world even from fascism, but even before that from inequalities, from the shameless use of financial power, from cultural homologation, from the mystification prevalent in the same media that declare themselves anti-fascist. True fascism is when we would expect our political party to always be in power, thus reducing democracy and alternation to mere simulacra. True fascism is when we limit political controversy to pure slogans. True fascism is when we who proclaim ourselves anti-fascists distinguish ourselves almost nothing (except for small details) from the new, everlasting fascists, when, having gained power, we are only capable of appearing as the faded copy of the right where it really counts: in economics, in society, in foreign policy.
Pasolini understood these things well. And he wrote them clearly, among other things, in an article published by Corriere della Sera on 24 June 1974 (now in “Scritti corsari”). For him, fascism was the “new Power” that established itself after the war, “his passion […] cosmic commitment to fully implement Development, produce and consume”, to culturally standardize Italy, to force us to adopt “a language of behavior […] completely conventionalized.” And he added: “We didn’t do anything so that the fascists weren’t there. We have only condemned them by gratifying our conscience with our indignation; and the stronger and more petulant the indignation, the calmer the conscience”. Words that seem to have been written specifically for certain local commentators – all rhetorically anti-fascists – who however, when it comes time to move from slogans to facts, are more fascist (in the Pasolini sense of the term) than the neo-fascists themselves.
Here, on the day of the liberation from Nazi-fascism, I like to remember exactly this heretical thought. “Because – as Pasolini concluded – the old fascism, albeit through rhetorical degeneration, distinguished: while the new fascism – which is something completely different – no longer distinguishes: it is not humanistically rhetorical, it is Americanally pragmatic. Its aim is the brutally totalitarian reorganization and standardization of the world.”
*Lawyer and writer
