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Characteristics • Stresses rebirth, “new creation” myth, NEED for new community/outlook • Creates distinct hierarchies with father figure at top—focus on youth • Emerges during/at a crisis period • Breaks radically and absolutely from decadent past • Develops trope of young, healthy body • Excludes contagion or weak element • Maintains relationship with phantom “other” • Collapses social body, national body, and individual body • Combines traditional with modern to evoke progress • Recruites believers by being psychologically hegemonic (you can only see fascism when you are outside of it) Fascist Economic System • • • • • Corporate Capitalism Anti-liberal Strictly Nationalist State-run Hermetic Performance of Fascism • Style: – – – – – – – – – – – Charismatic national identity is goal Relies heavily on ritual and ceremony Immediate, rational appeal Not imposed by visible force Emphasis on iconographic repetition to evoke unity Fun, light mood that develops into terrorizing apparatus People allow control to avoid conflict Psychological splitting as a result of trauma Surveillance as leader’s right Ultimate goal is to create citizens and believers Cooperation with other countries is not an option Performance of Fascism • Rhetoric: – – – – – – – Creation of a community, bond Seductive use of sensational tropes One body, One nation as fantasy Emphasis on pyramids/apex = leader Fear of becoming/being the invisible Other Based on Platonic model (catharsis, purgation) Consumer/citizen roles defined in relationship to demographics (age, $, etc.) Performance of Fascism • Body: – – – – Body is naturally diseased, needs cleansing Fetishization of clean, male body, hairlessness Still, contained gestures; ideal stillness Hand-in-air equates some form of hierarchical power/status – Anxiety of acts/relationships that do not progress the fascist state-homosexuality – Heavily policed boundary between homosocial and homosexual – Elimination of feminine after breeding function is fulfilled How to do fascism • Believe that we are living in a classless society • Continually gauge your proximity to messianic leader (physically, hierarchically, ceremonially) • Pit workers against intellectuals—do not tolerate those who critique “One people/One land” ideology • Offer affirmation/security/recognition to fellow members of the One body Colonialism---Fascism • System of domination • No need for popular compliance: violence • Rhetorically, missionary in aim • All is Self/Other • Typically international • Self policing the land/others • Audience is at distance • System of compliance • Need for the popular compliance: persuasive • Discursively, there is no apparent other • All is One • Typically intranational • Self policing the Self • Audience is immediate Self/Other according to . . . • Colonialism: – there are always two parties involved – the social body is represented as fractured: the haves and the have-nots • Fascism: – the self presentation of a totality – the whole social body is represented in identical bodies at the service of the One – the whole social body is endangered by “outside” contagion or external disease – the militarization of body that determines an individual’s value by that individual’s biological and physical condition Related topics of interest • • • • • • • • • Fascism RE: computers, viruses, function of contagion now Difference between art and propaganda Saddam in hole—need for cleansing, unhealthy, diseased Arab body Saddam before hole—Western, well-groomed appearance Racialized body now—anti-assimilation, terrorist’s body, need to mark the body so that difference is visible Body as open/Body as closed: permeable boundaries/policed boundaries Family as policing body—micro structurally and macro Pathologized youth—alienated and a threat Importance of technology in propagation of fascism/the fascist state Fascist scholarship and speech trends • Scholarship: – Political systems are on an evolutionary, hierarchical scale – Agenda is selfconsciously revisionary – Fascism is viewed as a successful, necessary project • Speeches – Subtly persuasive – More clearly propagandist – Potential danger lies largely in its performance – Use of “WE” – Naturalized and in-themoment