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The disease that claims itself as a cure

2023-02-20T10:45:32.679Z


If a characteristic of the fascists of the 20th century was that they came to power through a coup, what seems to characterize the para-fascists of the 21st century is that they leave power with a coup.


"Psychoanalysis is the disease that claims itself as a cure."

This well-known Karl Kraus aphorism is unfair and great.

It is speculated that it was conceived as a reckoning with a psychoanalyst who, together with Kraus himself and an actress, would have formed a love triangle in

fin-de-siècle Vienna.

So what would explain the ingenuity in this case, as in many others throughout the history of Western ideas, would be the most primitive and stale heterosexual passions: competing with another man for a woman.

what the hell

Kraus's invective, regardless of what motivated it, contains only one error: where he says "psychoanalysis" he should say "fascism."

At an iconic rally some three years ago, Italy's new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, gave a master class on the disease that claims itself to be a cure.

Meloni said: "When we no longer have an identity, we will no longer have roots, we will be deprived of conscience, we will be incapable of defending our rights."

And after the apocalyptic forecast, the remedy: “We will defend our identity.

I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian!

You will not take it from me!"

The syntax and intonation of that speech were so perfect that one of those DJs who know how to do his job came up with the idea of

​​remixing

that rally to turn it into a famous disco counterhymn.

But is Meloni really a fascist?

Emilio Gentile, historian of Italian fascism, stated in an interview in this same newspaper that comparing Meloni with the fascism of the March on Rome in 1922 was worthless.

This statement gives academic authority to an opinion, widespread in liberal and conservative circles, that goes beyond Italy: to say that the Trumps, the Orbáns, the Bolsonaros or the Melonis are fascists is a leftist exaggeration.

They are illiberal, identity-oriented and, in some cases, reactionary.

Nothing more than that.

However, the latest events in Brazil, with the assault on the Plaza de los Tres Poderes, and those two years ago in Washington, with the assault on the Capitol, discredit, at least in part, this opinion.

It is true that those countries have not become fascist regimes.

But the reason this hasn't happened, I think, is not because those political leaders are

just

illiberal or identity.

I am inclined to think that the reason why these countries have not become fascist or para-fascist regimes is, above all, because their institutions, with varying degrees of difficulty, have withstood the onslaught of those illiberal aspirants to something more than illiberal. .

The political institutions of the United States resisted, for better or worse, the assault on the Capitol.

And the institutions of Brazil also withstood the invasion of the main organs of legitimate Brazilian power in January 2023. The same, although less dramatic, can be said of Orbán in Hungary: the counter-power exercised by the European Union prevents Orbán from falling into temptation to cross the Rubicon and move from adopting reactionary policies to fascist policies.

The disease that sees itself as a cure fails not when the fascists disappear, since there will always be people seduced by fascism (after all, it is irresistible to think that the solution exists

)

;

rather, fascism gives in, and mutates into something only slightly less alarming, when it collides and succumbs against the monopoly of violence that legitimate democratic authority possesses.

What will happen to Meloni?

History teaches nothing, but this is no reason not to learn from it.

The attempts to assault the legitimate powers in Brazil and the United States suggest two things.

On the one hand, fascism continues to claim itself as the cure for the country's illnesses.

Faced with the alleged electoral fraud, the highest pathological expression of a democracy, we reverse, through fait accompli, the result of that fraud.

But we already know that when cures for non-existent social pathologies are proposed, it is those same cures that end up becoming social pathologies.

And, on the other hand, no disease is more serious, in the minds of the Trumps or the Bolsonaros, than the one that removes them from legitimate power.

It is no coincidence that the most typically 19th century attacks on democratic institutions have taken place when Trump or Bolsonaro have lost power.

The parafascists of the 21st century have legitimate access to the institutions or, what amounts to the same thing, they accept the most purely procedural part of democracy... except when they have already separated their lips from the honey of legitimate power, at which point they pass to repudiate (also) the most procedural part of democracy.

If a common characteristic —although not necessary— among the fascists of the 20th century was the way in which they came to power, that is, through a coup d'état,

It is early to know how Meloni will develop his work of government.

At the moment, like all his ideological contemporaries, he has sworn to the Constitution.

In other words, he has complied with the procedural requirements of Italian democracy, a circumstance that, as we have seen, perhaps guarantees respect for the Constitution when they are in power but

chilossà

when it's time to transfer powers.

It is possibly an unavoidable flaw in the emphasis that liberal democracies place on forms, but it is disturbing that, by fulfilling a mere formality such as the ritual of the oath, it is impossible to know if the Constitution is being accepted genuinely or only for opportunistic purposes. .

This is unimportant when those who swear the Constitution as a mere formality are marginal political forces.

But when it is from the highest authority of the Executive power who we suspect is doing it for mere procedural reasons, the shudder, looking at recent times, is justified.

I confess that when I saw Meloni swear to the Constitution a few months ago I remembered something that happened to me in my adolescence.

One night, a couple of policemen stopped me and, after frisking me, they discovered a stone of hashish in my pocket.

They showed it to me, asking me for explanations, and I, cornered, only knew how to respond: “I haven't smoked in years.

I just carry it with me in case I ever remember my old habits."

The cops' reaction to my response was as skeptical as mine was, more than 20 years later, when I saw Meloni accept the constitutional mandate a couple of months ago.

In any case, the Italians are cured of frights.

Once, when I was living and studying in Italy, a Genoese friend told me that Italy was the only country in the world that after hitting rock bottom continued to fall.

He told me this in the golden years of Berlusconism.

Then it seemed to me a somewhat incomprehensible metaphor and, as far as I was able to intuit, false.

Now I still think that it is equally incomprehensible.

But it doesn't seem fake anymore.

Pau Luque

is an essayist and researcher in philosophy of law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

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Source: elparis

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