The Road to Fascism Is Lined With Liberals Demanding Civility

Liberal civility politics silences the oppressed while giving a megaphone to the fascists

Nigel Farage and Donald Trump: smart-suited fascists (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Say what you want about old-school fascists, but they wear their hatred and their bigotries on their sleeve. They scream their transphobia, their racism, their misogyny, their ableism, their nationalism, and their authoritarianism from the rooftops with their chests fully out.

That’s the good thing about old-school fascists. They’re easy to spot. Their ideas aren’t usually cloaked in niceties, but stated clearly, the horror clear for all to see. It’s easy to point to fascist ideas and say “Wow, that’s pretty disgusting”.

At least, it’s easy to point out fascist ideas and denounce them when they come from frothing-mouthed extremists.

Not so much when those same horrible ideas are given a civil veneer —  spoken from the mouths, or pages, of so-called liberal institutions and talking heads “just asking questions” or hearing “both sides”.

The thing is, when one of those “sides” wants the other groups wiped off the face of the planet, hearing them out isn’t balance, it’s tacit support. It’s the platforming of harmful ideas as if they’re equal to marginalised peoples’ demand for rights and respect.

It’s the legitimisation of fascism, plain and simple.

Past and present, liberals have excelled at this. In the 1930s, the liberal media and intelligentsia helped normaliseNazism, while liberal governments appeased Hitler. Their modern liberal successors have helped bring Trump 2.0 to the US. They’re partly why the UK might have Nigel Farage — a pint-wielding, RP-accented Trump wannabe — as Prime Minister in a few years.

You aren’t going to like this

I’ll address the elephant in the room here: the term “liberal”.

As a word, “liberal” has many meanings. I’m going to kind of fudge it by mashing a few definitions together.

I realise I’ll get this wrong in some people’s eyes, but if you get what I mean, then that’s enough. I’m not here to discuss the history of liberal ideology or get into a debate about etymology. There are greater things at stake.

In the US, a liberal is someone broadly to the left of centre, maybe even a centrist — a “progressive” or someone who believes in gradual social reforms within the existing capitalist system.

I realise some people firmly on the left also identify with the term liberal, but might I suggest that if you are in any way opposed to capitalism, you are not a liberal? Conversely, if you support capitalism, you are not a leftist; capitalism is inherently a right-wing political and economic ideology built on exploitation and an unequal, quasi-authoritarian hierarchy.

Outside the US, liberalism typically refers to liberal democratic (in the UK we have the Liberal Democratic Party, for instance), or liberal capitalism. But in the UK, and I’d imagine elsewhere since we Europeans just love to take up Americanisms, many people have started to use the term “liberal” in the same way as it is commonly used in the US.

Also —just in case I haven’t pissed enough of you off already — there is no such thing as a “centrist” because there is no political centre. This a term people use to delude themselves into believing they are neutral or above the disagreements between left and right.

These people aren’t centrists, they’re supporters of the status quo. The status quo in the West has always meant the marginalisation of certain groups, domestic and foreign, via capitalism and its intersecting forms of oppression. Supporting the status quo is not neutral, but very much of the political right.

So, after that meandering explanation, here’s my definition of “liberal”:

liberal

/ˈlɪb(ə)rəl/ noun

• Individuals and institutions who think of themselves as either on the political centre or centre left, who are supportive of market capitalism, and vaguely believe in equality so long as it doesn’t upset the existing system of capitalist oppression, which they are comfortable with because they ultimately benefit from it.

Think Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton, Keir Starmer, the BBC, NYT, and the Washington Post. Think that white man claiming to be an ally while chastising you for using a swear to denounce transphobes and racists, demanding that you be civil and listen to the “other side” (the fascists).

You all know who I mean, don’t you?

The liberal — fascist continuum

Here’s something else that you won’t like: liberal, capitalist democracy and fascist authoritarianism aren’t binary opposites, they’re on a continuum. One, as history has shown us, so often leads to the other.

Another way of thinking about this is that the seeds of fascism lie within the liberal capitalist democratic system that is often portrayed as the very antithesis of fascism.

The authoritarianism of fascism is present in our systems of carceralism (prisons, immigration detention) and policing — just look how easily those systems are being turned to the needs of Trump’s fascist regime right now.

It’s not because they are easily corrupted or contain a few bad actors but because these systems are authoritarian by their very nature. ICE, the police, the UK Border Force, and various other law enforcement agencies are and always have been tools of state-capitalist oppression.

These institutions enforce the rule of law for a system which is racist, sexist, queerphobic, and ableist. We are forced to defer to this hierarchy, and, by and large, we are not allowed to question it —at least not in any meaningful way. The authority of these institutions is maintained through the state’s monopoly on violence.

That’s authoritarian.

The only thing that stops that liberal system — the state, the justice system, the police, and all the hierarchies therein — from crossing over into authoritarianism are some of the specific laws we have. but laws are not moral by default, and neither is following the law.

Remove a few checks and balances and change a few laws within the current system and hey presto, you have a fascist state.

Our modern liberal democracies are just fascist regimes in waiting, with all the infrastructure and normalisation of authority and hierarchy built-in, ready for people like Trump or Farage to take over. And when they do, most people obey, because liberal democracy has conditioned us to be obedient to authority.

Take Joe Biden’s presidency, for example. His administration aided a genocide in Palestine. He signed bills that hurt trans people. He was nationalistic and anti-immigration. He kept immigrant kids in cages. Under his administration, the carceral system flourished. He still jailed people of colour and queers at a disproportionate rate. He still persecuted other states that didn’t agree with US imperial hegemony. He still oversaw a welfare system that demonises the economically and socially marginalised. He still fully supported a market capitalist system that kept millions of Americans in poverty as wage slaves.

I’m not picking on Biden or the US; we can say all the same things about Keir Starmer and the UK, or The European Union. We can say the same things about most liberal, capitalist, democratic states and institutions.

And yes, the liberal capitalist democratic system is certainly more free and equal than Stalin’s Russia (yes, left-wing authoritarianism exists) or Hitler’s Germany, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good, just less bad. It doesn’t mean it’s not authoritarian, just less authoritarian. It’s a stepping stone on the liberal capitalist continuum and certainly not fascism’s antithesis.

Those liberals who say it’s the best we’ve got, better than fascism, are entirely missing the historical and contemporary evidence that shows that liberal capitalism doesn’t just prepare the infrastructure for fascism, but it creates the conditions that inevitably lead to fascism, too.

Laying the groundwork and setting the stage

So, back to that guy in your social media feed telling you to play nice with fascists.

Liberal reply guy thinks he’s defending the centre — which, as I highlighted, is politically to the right — to hold what he views as the middle ground between fascism and left-wing extremism (which, let’s be real, essentially just means non-reformist social change and an overhaul of the current systems — anathema to a liberal).

What liberal reply guy is really attempting to maintain is fascism’s precursor. And in that sense, it’s a losing battle.

The inherent inequalities coupled with the latent authoritarianism of liberal, democratic capitalism will always create the conditions from which fascism will arise.

We saw this in 1930s Germany, and we see it now, as large sections of the working class, tired of being screwed over by the capitalist economic system and feeling powerless in the face of a faux democracy, turn to alternatives.

I say faux democracy because any meaningful kind of democracy is impossible under a capitalist system wherein the ruling capitalist class holds massive sway over our media and political establishment. A small but incredibly wealthy political and cultural elite controls both the range of political debate and the information we are fed as a populace, and so, in a very real sense, they control what most of us think and feel.

The far-right is very good at offering an alternative to liberal capitalism because that “alternative” is really just all the inherent xenophobia, nationalism, racism, queerphobia, misogyny, and ableism of the current system turned up to eleven with the mask ripped off and the tenuous checks on power removed.

There is also an inherent critique of the left here, too, in that we are terrible at offering alternatives. A lot of us are still too busy arguing about the merits of Leninism (horrifically enough) and engaging in futile debates about the finer points of Marxism to produce a coherent, viable alternative to the problems of the 21st century.

Of course, it doesn’t help that when we try to point out that all of these fascist ideas are often latent in our cherished liberal, capitalist democracy, we are shouted down as extremists or “loony lefties” — I can guarantee some of you are doing it right now while reading this.

A fascist foot in the door

One of the main differences between fascism and this pre-fascist “liberal” system is that in the fascist system, the mask is fully off, whereas in the liberal system, there is a facade of equality, justice and, yes, liberty — for some; namely white, middle-class, able-bodied, cis/het liberals.

The irony is that despite these bigotries being inherent to both liberal capitalist democracies and fascism, albeit at different ‘volumes’, the implicit nature with which one perpetuates these bigotries allows the far-right to claim they are being “open” and “honest” when they just say the quiet part out loud.

And in recent years, they’ve gotten very good at saying the quiet part out loud, but in just the right way as to appear inoffensive to those who are more or less okay with the existing issues with the current system — liberals.

Unlike the old-school fascists of the mid-20th century, modern fascists have learned that strutting about in jackboots with skull lapels will probably give the game away a bit. Instead, they wear suits. To the liberal media, they just look your standard politicians.

The liberal media thinks “hey, I guess some people like what they’re saying, so we should give them more attention — that’s how democracy works, right?”

It also helps that many of these liberal institutions, politicians, and journalists already harbour the kind of bigotries the smart-suited fascists espouse.

It also helps that these liberals are vaguely antagonistic to those on the left — the “other side” — who have, rather annoyingly, been pointing out the current system’s flaws and asking for the kind of real change that might upset the privileged position these liberal institutions and individuals hold.

Change like trans and queer people being equal to cis/het people, or working-class people not being economically marginalised by default, or women not being systemically oppressed in almost every facet of life, or our taxpayer’s money not being used to slaughter civilians in other countries.

And so, the liberal media gives the smart-suited fascists a platform under the justification of hearing out “both sides”.

Now with their foot firmly in the door, the smart-suited fascists make inroads with their populist ideologies. Playing on society’s existing bigotries, they drag the Overton Window to the right. This means all those liberal centrists and centre-leftists get dragged to the right with them, making far-right ideas seem more acceptable along the way as they gradually give them a seat at the table.

This process becomes self-perpetuating: the more fascists and their ideas are given a platform, the more acceptable they seem, and the more of a platform they are given.

Then the liberal media starts promoting the fascist’s ideas for them, no platform required.

When the liberal media puts out stories that demonise all trans women as would-be rapists or talk about the rise of “transgender ideology”, while platforming ‘gender critical’ so-called feminists like Helen Joyce or Posie Parker, they’re promoting fascist ideology.

When they start talking about the so-called “migrant crisis” or the supposed problem of “small boats”, and migrants taking jobs (they aren’t) they’re promoting the xenophobia, racism, and nationalism that is the bread and butter of fascist ideology.

When they focus on alleged Muslim grooming gangs while ignoring the far more common grooming gangs led by white men (and women), they’re promoting the same islamophobia and xenophobia that fascists like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson do.

When they run stories about benefits cheats or the rising “benefit bill” that demonises benefit claimants, the poor, and the disabled, they reinforce a productivist logic rooted in eugenic ideas about survival of the fittest and the inherent worthlessness of the underclass.

When they put out countless “law and order” documentaries that function as copaganda and the glorification of the police and immigration enforcement, they are lionising authoritarianism and reinforcing obedience to powerful authority figures.

Civility politics: fascism’s doormat

These are all fascist rhetorics. But they’re now a staple of our liberal mainstream media, thoroughly sanitised and normalised and ready for people like liberal reply guy to regurgitate at minorities in the guise of political debate.

He’s “just asking questions” — the problem is, those questions were put in his mouth by fascists via the liberal media.

Worse, now that the fascists themselves, in their smart suits, have also been sanitised and normalised, liberal reply guy is demanding that we listen to their “concerns”. He suddenly feels an affinity for right-wing ‘gender critical’ activists, Trump supporters, and tough border enthusiasts. He can have a nice, civil debate with these fascists and quasi-fascists because their horrific ideas don’t affect him (yet).

He invokes the need for political debate to be civil, as is the norm in liberal democracy. Now, because fascists and their ideas have been made mainstream, the people espousing the same kind of ideologies we once (ostensibly) bombed a continent to oppose are now apparently worthy of respect and civil debate.

Civility politics has this obsession with aesthetics, where the way we say something becomes more important than whatwe’re saying. Thus, you can effectively call for the genocide of entire groups or spread harmful lies that demonise minorities and it’s fine as long as you don’t use actual slurs or swear words.

Civility itself becomes a tool for oppressing and silencing minorities, while the far-right uses it as a vehicle for promoting extreme, violent ideas without challenge. It sounds nice, so it must be nice, right?

Critical thinking has been killed by a preference for nice-sounding words and a desire to appear “neutral” in the context of a political debate where neutrality is an utter myth.

Paradoxically enough, the liberal media still believes that fascists are terrible, dangerous people. To call someone a fascist is a grave accusation. It’s uncivil to call someone a fascist if they aren’t. It violates the tenets of their civility politic.

The problem is that they’re thinking of those old-school fascists with the jackboots and the skull lapels. Not these charming, smart-suited fascists, they’ve helped elevate to normality. Not the self-identified liberals espousing fascist rhetorics.

Pointing out that these nice-sounding fascist talking points are, in fact, horrific bigotry is an affront to the liberal ego, which is built around the idea that their ideology — liberal, capitalist democracy — is the most equal and fair and un-authoritarian ideology there is (which is, incidentally, why its okay to wage wars on other countries to enforce it).

“We’re liberals, we’re progressive, we’re democratic!” They say to themselves. “We couldn’t possibly be fascist or bigoted. It must be those pesky, uncivil minorities that are the problem!” They’ve become more extreme, not us!”

The irony is excruciating. It’s deadly, in fact.

Here’s the thing: if you think that the opinions of a fascist deserve respect, then, much like the pre-fascist liberal system you’re attempting to uphold, you aren’t very far off being a fascist yourself. And, much like that system, you might find yourself turning into a fully-fledged fascist without even realising it.

You’re doing it right now

Before you know it, and with the help of the liberal media and liberal reply guys popping up on whichever social media platform is the poison of your choice, these now-palatable fascists are winning seats in parliament — or running the US government — and beginning the not-so-nice genocide they told everyone they were going to do with nice-sounding words.

By platforming fascist ideas and simultaneously decrying any dissent as “uncivil” or even “extreme”, often deploying the notion of free speech, which will almost certainly disappear once their fascist friends are in power, liberals have once again paved the way for fascism.

By failing to recognise the latent fascism in the liberal capitalist democratic system, we failed to learn any lessons from the last mass outbreak of fascism in Europe.

By failing to address the failings and the inherent inequalities of the liberal capitalist system, liberal institutions have guaranteed that fascism would return. The fascists were just waiting for the right conditions.

So yes, the road to fascism is lined with liberals preaching civility politics, while asking nice-sounding but distinctly uncivil questions and having lovely chats with smart-suited, charming, fascists and their supporters.

Don’t believe me? Look around you. It’s happening right now.

Are you going to do something about it? Or are you still in denial?

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