History's Transcript, Fascism's Return: A Conversation with Morad Farhadpour

The following interview is an unprefaced and unprepared conversation with Morad Farhadpour, conducted on the eve of the American elections and prompted by them, its scope extending to issues such as the failure of left-wing populism and the dangers of right-wing populism at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Morad Farhadpour is a thinker and intellectual, the translator of works such as Theodor Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment and Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, and the author of the essay collections Fragments of Thought, Western Winds, and Melancholic Reason.

The world today, especially the Middle East, is in a state of turmoil. The Syrian war and the US presidential election are both good examples of a situation in which it is no longer easy to discern a clear front of right, truth, justice, or freedom; in Syria, what remains of the clash of civilizations and can be seen is nothing but a war among barbarisms; a war that has, of course, had a transregional impact, its consequences affecting Europe and America as well. Given these consequences, and of course considering the instability and insecurity (economic, security-related, etc.) prevailing over citizens' lives and the growth and spread of the far right and the emergence of phenomena like Trump, the horizon in the West also appears far from bright. What is your analysis of the global situation we find ourselves in?

Morad Farhadpour: There is no doubt that over the past few years we have witnessed various political failures whose net result has been precisely the transformation of the clash of civilizations, or even the war between civilization and barbarism, into a conflict among various forms of barbarism. The destruction of the movements that began in the Middle East about seven years ago, especially the set of Arab revolutions that almost all (in Egypt, Libya, and worst of all, Syria) led to outcomes worse than their starting points, the pitiful defeat in Greece and the collapse of Syriza, the loss of emancipatory hopes in Spain, the surge in terrorist attacks in Europe and America and their entanglement with various individual and collective insanities—all indicate increasing ambiguity and darkness across the entire world. Look at what we are facing today in the Middle East: the bombing and killing of Yemeni civilians by America, Britain, and Saudi Arabia on one side, and the killing of civilians in Aleppo by Russia and Syria on the other, and the fact that both these global powers, by virtue of the powers they hold, including the veto, block the necessary efforts and measures to end the catastrophe and ultimately answer the other side's crime with another crime, justifying their own actions... This reality, alongside other dark realities in the world, convinces or compels me to say that a dystopian world awaits us, one of whose looming dangers is the return of fascism. The main problem is the absence of any progressive, emancipatory solution that can stand against these various forms of barbarism; a solution that would not allow everything to be reduced to the politics of fear, to the politics of choosing between two forms of barbarism, or at most to a choice between bad and worse; unfortunately, today we are confronted with such a logic everywhere, including in the American elections.

■ Let us go back a bit, to the beginning of the nineties, to the era after the fall of the Wall, to the so-called beginning of the "end of history," which was also a time of the freezing and stasis of history. With the end of the ferment and upheaval of the sixties and seventies, we entered a period that could also be called the era of "electoral promises"; the era of "extremism of the center," where the mechanism embedded for change—namely, elections—had a limited horizon, and power continuously passed between moderate center-left and center-right parties that were practically indistinguishable. With the beginning of the twenty-first century, changes and transformations occurred that initially suggested a transcendence of this framework and limited horizon; simultaneously with the growth and spread of the far right, specifically, with the emergence of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, and later Bernie Sanders in America, a form of left-wing populism also emerged. How much value and importance do you ascribe to this left-wing populism? Can figures like Corbyn and Sanders, and this form of politics in general, not alter the equations and the dystopian horizon ahead? Or at least open a narrow road toward a less dark future?

It seems that this very example of Sanders demonstrates the degree of the situation's stasis and the inability to bring about real change. Although all movements or political figures speak of change, and these days "change" is considered a fundamental political slogan for everyone, we see that everywhere political movements, including left-wing populist movements, cannot in practice transcend the framework of the status quo, and within that very framework they are also controlled and neutralized…

■ Meaning they are not a real option for change? Or does their behavior in practice differ from what they claim?

One should not, as in the Syriza affair, enter into debates about the rightness or wrongness, or the honesty or dishonesty, of political leaders. I think the issue is precisely that these very examples have shown us that we are operating and advancing within a system that ultimately leaves no possibility other than the reproduction of the logic of capital and the logic of the state; and ultimately, wherever these two logics, individually or jointly, lead to crisis, they simply offload the cost of this crisis onto the people's shoulders, not only in the form of unemployment or poverty or a harder daily life and the expansion of inequality, but even in far more horrific forms such as mass killings, localized wars, the spread of terrorism, and so on.

All these manifestations of crisis are ultimately signs of the incapacity and the overall cost of that system which today, under the name of liberal democracy or capitalist parliamentarism (or whatever other name we might wish to give it), has established and imposed itself as the best choice before human beings, and which usually places political forces before a dilemma of choosing between bad and worse, the result of which is nothing but the affirmation of the status quo and the endorsement of the totality of the game.

All the forces that, in some form under the title of left populism, find the possibility to represent the people's demands or to recount and represent the people's exhaustion and hatred of the status quo and their reaction to their pain and discomfort, are practically neutralized because they remain within the framework of the official political game and get nowhere, and in most cases are defeated by their right-wing rivals, that is, the right-wing populists. This is because it is precisely these right-wing populists who, given that they have no practical opposition to the rule of capital, can play a more radical role, make grand hollow claims, and display the gesture of supposedly standing against the system, corrupt politicians, and elite groups that have done nothing for the people in past decades. And we see that the people also turn to them. To the extent that this confrontation with the system or established politicians is limited to presenting proposals, say, for controlling Wall Street's greed or preventing the excesses of corrupt power-holders who use political rent, they may mobilize and organize forces for a while and to a degree, but ultimately, because they do not change the game itself, practically, even if they win the electoral game in exceptional cases, they still can do nothing but continue previous policies, and become, so to speak, a tool, an example of which can be seen in the evolution undergone by the British Labour Party.

■ Do you think this inability of left populism is intrinsic and inherent, or is it contingent and dependent on circumstances? This discussion is important because some Marxist critics who favor traditional forms of political organization believe that left populism is inherently and necessarily doomed to failure. What do you think?

I think there is a contingent possibility for creating change, meaning I do not see failure as resulting from the automatic operation of mere economic laws. Moreover, in a situation where the history of the last thirty or forty years has truly hollowed out the word "left" completely, and what we have in reality is at most nothing but a kind of centrism, repeating this word does not help matters. Generally speaking, a historical possibility may exist within the heart of elections, but that possibility, if it is to open a window for us beyond the status quo, depends solely on bringing about a fundamental change in the game itself. In simple terms, instead of choosing between the dilemma that reality places before us, a third way must be opened by changing reality itself.

■ You say that the inability and failure of left populism has been its failure to transcend the pre-existing and determinate framework and horizon of politics, to change the situation and, so to speak, overturn the game board. Could it not be argued, in contrast, that this failure is because these forces do not sufficiently take conditions into account and cannot see the game through to the end? After all, the insecurity and instability that have surfaced as a result of years of neoliberalism in various forms, such as unemployment or terror, have today become the engine and source of the identitarianism and nationalism from which right-wing forces feed. Perhaps leftist forces do not know the conditions of the game well enough; for instance, they do not pay attention to the fact that in this climate of expanding and growing identitarianism and nationalism, it might be better to take this climate seriously and harness its power; for example, similar to the supporters of Lexit (left-wing Brexit), who want to absorb the force of nationalism to some extent while simultaneously neutralizing its dangers.

To answer very broadly, in the face of the logic of capital and the crisis it has created (which, to understand, it might be better to return to the early twentieth century and address the interwar crisis and the rise of fascism), what is being overlooked, and was probably overlooked in the early twentieth century as well, is the question of the logic of the state; and that the return to a kind of nationalism, or turning inward and confronting the globalizing logic of capital that we face today, can be part of the problem rather than the solution. In the example you mentioned, namely Britain's exit from the European Union, given the coordinates of the historical event—that is, the absolute majority of Conservatives in the British Parliament and their hold on power—we are faced with a thoroughly right-wing exit, the immediate and direct result of which is nothing but the spread of racism, right-wing politics, right-wing populism, and the retreat of many progressive or liberal forces. Therefore, one must consider both of these—the logic of capital and the logic of the state, and of course the interaction between them—and see under what specific conditions what kind of politics allows and enables us to confront and resist both of them, because if we are to exchange one for the other, we will ultimately be defeated by both. Perhaps the true meaning of fascism's victory at the beginning of the century also lay in this point: that fleeing the crises capital created on a global level and retreating into a kind of national capitalism had no result other than world war and the emergence of the worst forms of extreme and acute nationalism, which left no room for creating real change in the whole game.

■ Struggle on the national level, however, is mentioned in the Communist Manifesto itself, or, for example, Gramsci specifically speaks about this; on the objective and concrete level, if we set aside the case of Iceland, we can still imagine a form of national containment of the global circulation of capital that proceeds through the nationalization of banks, but at the same time does not entail closing borders, expelling immigrants, and turning inward; are you opposed to such a project?

No, I think that at the end of these four decades of neoliberalism and the unbridling of global capitalism, we must undoubtedly witness a kind of inward turn; for the simple reason that it is fundamentally impossible for something like a global movement to emerge that could spontaneously encompass the entire world and all these issues and conflicts, and respond to the demands of all the different groups—women, workers, minorities, migrants, and so on. There is no doubt that some kind of return to particular conditions is essential and necessary. The false logic of globalization must be halted; however, whether this inward turn will lead to an emancipatory politics, whether this return (which allows us to organize the people) will be accompanied by a break from the universal, from universal truths, whether it will create the possibility of coordination among forces even within that national framework—all of these are fundamental questions whose answers are determined in practice and depend on specific local and situational conditions. That is why I say that in many contexts and cases, one must assess the situation based on direct historical conditions and data. The situation may be one way in Europe and another in the Middle East; even within the Middle East itself, conditions can be completely different from one country to another. Syria today is a very good example of how the multiplicity of forces involved, the ethnic, organizational, religious, and military complexity of the situation, can lead us to a point where our choice goes beyond bad and worse, and we settle for the worst merely for survival. On this basis, I think the assessment of situations must be carried out separately, although comparison, especially historical comparison, can be illuminating; for instance, discussing the situation of the US election in connection with fascism is meaningful.

■ The US election takes place in another week, and it is once again a choice between bad and worse; between Clinton, who does not have a brilliant record and for whose sake many are already sounding the alarm about the start of a new war in the Middle East, and Trump, who seems to be the human embodiment of all kinds of evil, and it is unclear whether a victorious Trump is more dangerous or a defeated Trump. In the face of this situation, what can be said, and how can framing the discussion in relation to fascism help us understand the situation?

If we want to make the situation as tangible and perceptible as possible on a general level and give it a concrete character, perhaps a comparison with the history of the early twentieth century is telling; that is, a period of capitalist growth followed by the creation of all kinds of crises (arising from the heart of that very growth), both in the Third World and in the developed world, then the inability of leftist forces to find forms of social organization other than what had occurred in the Soviet Union to respond to this crisis, then the failure of the left to respond to the crisis of capital, the continuation of the crisis, and finally the far-right's response to it in the form of Nazism and fascism, followed by world war. Now, my intention here is not a precise comparison and recounting of history, but to a large extent we can see a set of these elements and the progression of these same stages in today's conditions as well; that is, the globalization carried out during the years of Thatcherism and Reaganism's dominance, the liberalizations, privatizations, successive periods of primitive accumulation of capital, various forms of plunder and dispossession both in the Third World and of workers and people in the First World, which ultimately—contrary to the claims supposedly lying behind concepts like postmodernism, post-industrial society, the global village, the third or fourth wave of technology, and other such justifications—can be seen to indicate a kind of de-globalization, the Euro crisis, the lack of economic growth in the European Union, the halt of economic growth in America, and the unprecedented expansion of the debt problem and the devaluation of the dollar and what future generations will probably have to pay the price for; all of these are signs of the crises of capital, to which, again in the existing conditions, the left seems to have no answer or alternative. In cases where we encounter spontaneous movements in various forms, such as the Arab revolutions or, in smaller forms, people's resistances like Syriza, these movements still lead nowhere. If we put together these social and historical puzzles (which lie behind the US election), we can hear the footsteps of fascism.

■ That was a question I wanted to ask. Do you think the catastrophe of the twentieth century will be repeated? Is fascism on its way?

At this global level, prophecy may not be the right thing to do, but what seems clear is the presence of a series of similar elements: on the one hand, a turning inward, right-wing populism, its entanglement with ideological demagoguery, the fact that the crises of capital are blamed on a set of enemies, and the people who are victims of these crises, faced with a complex global logic that is incomprehensible to them, are willing to accept that all their grievances be pinned on a particular social group. Perhaps the only difference in America's conditions today is that Trump has not been able, like Hitler, to single out a specific target social group such as the Jews; instead, he points to a collection of groups—Muslims, Mexicans, women, asylum seekers, immigrants. In a sense, we are faced with a kind of raw fascism that lacks the political, aesthetic, cultural, and historical coherence and formation of Nazism; for this reason, its leader is not a petty bourgeois who fought in the previous war, but someone who never went to war or military service at all and, as it happens, is also a billionaire. But, well, these very things have allowed Trump to distance himself from the system, that is, the totality and combination of state and capital, and to present himself as an independent solution that is supposed to miraculously solve everything. With this degree of lying, stupidity, with this extensive demagoguery and the people's easy acquiescence to lies and their readiness to regard a specific group of their own as the enemy onto whom all problems are projected, unfortunately, it must be said that the situation resembles the early twentieth century, plus the fact that today the left is in far worse shape, is not organized at all, and the Soviet Union no longer exists. The sum of these factors could, in some accidental manner, crystallize in a form or shape other than what we now face—that is, a ridiculous populism whose leader is a showman. In short, in many respects, today's situation can be compared to the early twentieth century, and it can be shown that many common elements exist in both periods. At the same time, however, these elements have not yet properly coalesced into a mass movement like Nazism or fascism. We are also faced with a multitude of differences that do not allow us to make an easy prophecy by rereading history. Perhaps the occurrence of a traumatic event as a catalyst could melt these elements, arrayed side by side, in a hot historical furnace and, from their fusion, cast a fascist movement. The important point is that the election itself seems to be offering this catalyst to history. Despite the extensive propaganda against Trump, his forty percent of the vote has not diminished, and the core of his vote—that is, the same racial, religious, and traditional group of poor white working men—has remained steady; and this group now holds a general belief stemming from an argument Trump has made (and given his psychology, its roots go back even before his entry into the election), namely the claim that I never lose, and if I lose, I will disrupt the game, because if I lose, it is a sign of fraud and manipulation in the election. This claim is now being repeated not as the talk of a mad demagogue, but as a general belief among that forty percent.

■ A belief that, of course, is not mere delirium, and has roots in reality as well, especially in that newspapers and the media seem capable of altering the fate of elections.

In Sanders' case, we witnessed that the presence of these factors did not cause the entire game to be called into question; even in its peaceful forms, Sanders himself was neither willing nor able to organize an independent ten-million-strong force from the Democratic Party. But regarding Trump's fraud claim, we are faced with something more than a complaint about unfair media positioning; we are, in fact, confronted with the stoking of a kind of racism, when it is said that non-white cities are places where fraud will likely occur. Many Trump supporters have announced that they will go to these places on election day. This forty percent, with their thoroughly petty-bourgeois mentality and their readiness to accept all kinds of conspiracy theories and their susceptibility to the boiling over of their racial and xenophobic sentiments, may create conditions that cause the matter to spiral out of Trump's control as well, and a mass, widespread reaction may take shape in the aftermath of Trump's electoral defeat. This is a catalyst that may suddenly cause a set of elements from the crisis of capitalism, the crisis of the federal state, the absence of a left alternative, the existence of right-wing populism, the pressure on the middle classes and a section of workers that we witnessed in the phenomenon of fascism, the explosion of extremist politics in small towns, to bring about a repetition of history.

■ So, from the perspective of the ruling system, is Trump more dangerous than Sanders?

I think so. Because Trump has both a higher vote count, and the base of this vote is, historically and socially, more legible in terms of the foundations for the formation of a fascist movement. Sanders' supporters were intellectuals, students, and non-religious, secular, modern, and progressive groups. Trump's supporters are different people.

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History's Transcript, Fascism's Return

A Conversation between Amir Kianpour and Morad Farhadpour

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