‘The Fire This Time’: The Long Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalist Accumulation and Spectre of Neofascism

Abstract

The era since the Great Recession of 2008/9 has witnessed the rise and increased sway of numerous authoritarian-right movements, regimes and leaders across the globe. Such political developments remain inadequately understood; yet several commonplaces have emerged. First, a tendency to eschew critical enquiry of the range of forces on the radical right, in favour of collapsing such political developments into generalisations such as ‘populism’. Second, such over-generalisations have commonly elided analysis of neofascist forces, strategies and processes. Third, despite some engagement with ‘economic’ factors, examination of these political developments has largely eschewed the underlying organic crisis of neoliberal capital accumulation. This article critiques such commonplaces. The first section problematises the category of ‘populism’ as largely inadequate in understanding the complexity of forces and dynamics on the radical right. The subsequent section argues that an emergent or immanent neofascism exists within such political developments, outlining eight theses on the spectre of neofascism and the conditions that underpin the rise of elements of fascistic politics. The final section concludes with key aspects for an antifascism, arguing that opposing neofascism entails the transcendence of neoliberal capitalism itself. And a meaningful alternative to neoliberal state and capital requires us to look again to socialism.

Introduction

The era since the Great Recession of 2008/9 has witnessed the rise and increased sway of numerous authoritarian-right movements, regimes and leaders across the globe. From Trumpism in the Unites States, Brexit in the United Kingdom, the Lega and Brothers of Italy, Golden Dawn in Greece, the National Rally (formerly National Front) in France, Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary and Poland’s Law and Justice Party in Eastern Europe, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India, the Jewish Power party in Israel, and so on. The advance of such leaders and movements are constitutive of a broader authoritarianism, on the rise globally.

Despite extensive commentary, such political developments remain inadequately understood. Yet several commonplaces have emerged. First, a tendency to eschew critical enquiry of the range of forces and strategies on the radical right, in favour of collapsing such political developments into generalisations, such as ‘authoritarian populism’ or simply ‘populism’. Such approaches reduce analysis to a particular facet or trend, failing to grasp the complexity and contradictory dynamics on the insurgent right. Second, such over-generalisations have commonly elided analysis of new or neofascist forces, strategies and processes; at most, neofascism is regarded as a supposed future threat but not generally a present one. Third, and related, despite some engagement with ‘economic’ factors, examination of these political developments has eschewed, for the most part, the underlying organic crisis of neoliberal capital accumulation.

This article critiques such commonplaces. ¹ The first section problematises the category of ‘authoritarian populism’ as largely inadequate in encapsulating or understanding the range and complexity of forces and dynamics on the radical right. The subsequent section argues that an emergent or immanent neofascism exists within such political developments. Contemporary forms clearly differ from the ‘classical’ fascism dominant in the inter-war period across Europe and beyond (Ahmed, 2023; Amin, 2014), with historically distinct characteristics specific to political economy, state forms, culture, historical trajectories and conjunctures. But such political developments are to be understood nevertheless as constituent parts of the larger ‘fascist genus’ (Laqueur, 1996). The article outlines eight theses on the spectre of neofascism, addressed not as a superficial analogical ‘checklist’ vis-à-vis historical fascism, but rather in terms of analysing the political-economic conditions that underpin the rise of elements of fascistic politics. As Robert Paxton (1998: 14) has argued: ‘We learn much more if we focus our gaze on the circumstances that favour the fascists.’

Understanding the historical basis, significance and challenges that arise from neofascist political forces are crucial in recognising the present strategic context, as well as resisting such developments. The final section concludes with key aspects for an antifascism – cognisant that in the current context of global ‘polycrisis’, of which neofascism is both symptomatic and constitutive: ‘There is no next time. It is the fire this time’ (Foster, 2017: 110). Crucially, the conclusion argues, opposing neofascism entails the transcendence of neoliberal capitalism itself. And a meaningful alternative to neoliberal state and capital requires us to look again to socialism.

What’s in a Name?

Much of the literature on the increased prominence of authoritarian-right regimes, movements and leaders has eschewed critical enquiry in favour of a ‘levelling generalisation’ such as ‘authoritarian populism’, which over-generalises a particular trend and postulates ‘a singular convergence’ (Ovenden, 2019). The framing of such phenomenon in terms of ‘populism’ has dominated social scientific, political and mass public discourse such that the ‘populist zeitgeist’ has become ‘the concept that defines our age’ (Mudde, 2004, 2018). By 2018, it was claimed that populist leaders governed countries with a combined population of almost two billion people and populist parties were gaining ground in multiple other democracies (cf. Rice-Oxley and Kalia, 2018). Likewise, the Global Populism Database estimated that the number of populist leaders had doubled over the past 20 years and populist rhetoric has surged (Hawkins et al., 2019).

Portrayal of this ‘populist zeitgeist’ is evidenced across-the-board. Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral success, for example, was widely interpreted as a ‘victory for populism’ in the United States, heralding ‘a populist era’ (Bonikowski, 2019: 110). Likewise, British politics was being ‘reshaped by populism’ through the Brexit referendum, becoming a ‘victim [of the] populist fever that is spreading around the world’ (The Economist, 2017). Italy’s 2018 election saw two ‘populist’ parties, the Five Star Movement (M5 S) and Lega join forces to form a government (Coman, 2018; D’Alimonte, 2019), while the Brothers of Italy’ Giorgia Meloni’s successful 2022 election campaign was deemed ‘pure populism’ (Riegart, 2022). Poland’s so-called populist Law and Justice Party continued to win at the ballot box (Chapman, 2019), while Orbán in Hungary is considered chief among right-wing populists in Europe’s ‘populist surge’ (Mudde, 2016: 25). Populism is also said to have become increasingly prevalent in Israeli politics, with Benjamin Netanyahu labelled a ‘civilizational populist’ (Yilmaz and Morieson, 2022). Within Latin America, the election of Brazil’s Bolsonaro was said to have spearheaded the rise of right-wing populism (Barros and Santos Silva, 2020; Hunter and Power, 2019). Turkey’s president Erdoğan is an ‘inventor of twenty-first century populism’ and ‘a populist colossus’ (Çağaptay, 2020; McKernan, 2019). Meanwhile, India is claimed to have been ahead of the rightward curve, in electing the allegedly populist BJP (McDonnell and Cabrera, 2019; Vajpeyi, 2020), with Modi dubbed ‘the most popular populist’ (Sharma, 2020).

However, despite such widespread usage, ‘populism’ remains highly problematic and essentially contested, lacking any definitive substantive content (Foster, 2017). Margaret Canovan’s influential study Populism, for example, identified multiple subtypes but argued that populism itself could not be defined (Canovan, 1981). The notion continues to lack meaning in much of the dominant discourse: ‘for all the talk of populism . . . it is far from obvious that we know what we are talking about’, there is no theory of populism or even any coherent criteria for determining which political actors are ‘populist’ in a meaningful sense (Müeller, 2017: 2). Indeed, the epithet ‘populist’ has become a catchall so broad and overused as to be rendered, at best, uninformative and, at worst, seriously misleading (Hindess, 2016).

In current discourse, populism as a political style rather than specific ideology consists of exalting the ‘pure’ or ‘true’ people versus ‘outsiders’ including the ‘corrupt elite’ (cf. Kyle and Gultchin, 2018; Mudde, 2018). Yet the sheer number, variety and political differences between those labelled ‘populist’ have rendered the notion an empty shell, which can be filled by vastly disparate and antagonistic political content. Labelling all such anti-establishment forces as ‘populist’, thereby erases radical ideological differences, including the fundamental political distinction between left and right (Traverso, 2019). Rather, the notion has become an expedient political instrument for stigmatising opponents. Thus, the neoliberal order, with its austerity politics and profound inequalities, is taken as the norm and all opposition is automatically deemed ‘populist’ (Cohen, 2018; D’Eramo, 2013). ‘Populism’ as a category is thereby used as ‘a self-defence mechanism’ by political elites to condemn any appeal to the people that seeks to circumvent the institutions and practices of formal, (neo)liberal democracy, the role of which it to contain the impact of the people on government (Traverso, 2019: 16; see also Hindess, 2016).

Relatedly, ‘populism’ has been largely ahistorical, with a demonstrable lack of concern for the historical genealogies, political forms, traditions and cultures on the extreme right, including the interdependence between supposedly discrete movements (Copsey, 2013; Rydgren, 2013). Instead, purveyors of ‘populism’ would have us believe that

something entirely detached from historical or neo-fascism has emerged . . . a populist radicalization of mainstream concerns – a novel form of ‘radical right-wing populism’ . . . that has become essentially different from forms of right-wing extremism that preceded it, and from forms of right-wing extremism that continue to exist (Copsey, 2013: 1).

Mainstream accounts thereby strip political developments from their historical context, occluding the critical role that fascism has played and still plays on the right, including the extent to which it has influenced so-called radical right-wing populism. As Copsey (2013) argues, rather than fixating on novelty and typologies, what is required is more not less diachronic analysis, including serious engagement with (neo)fascism studies. Yet, the notion of ‘right-wing populism’ is deployed within liberal mainstream discourse precisely to set aside the question of neofascism. Thus, ‘right-wing populism’ is simultaneously decried in liberal discourse but, at the same time, the notion provides an obfuscatory ‘cloak’ which proffers a degree of political legitimisation to right-wing extremism (Foster, 2017; Mammone, 2015).

At one level, aversion to the neofascist designation results from the critique of capitalism intrinsic to any serious engagement with this political phenomenon. As Bertolt Brecht (1935) questioned: ‘how can anyone tell the truth about Fascism, unless [s/he] is willing to speak out against capitalism, which brings it forth?’ (p. 2). Related to this, ‘populism’ in the current discourse is portrayed principally in terms of its juxtaposition to the (neo)liberal-formal democratic state, with the ensuing political response tending towards a more vigorous defence of said (neo)liberal democratic state. This position is unable to recognise that such states have embodied and fostered neoliberal capitalist accumulation, complete with the attendant crises and morbid symptoms it unfailingly engenders – including the rise of right-wing authoritarian and neofascist forces (Ayers and Saad-Filho, 2020; Boffo et al., 2019). The classification of such movements as ‘populist’ also appears bound to the belief that (neo)liberal democratic institutions are so deeply and irrevocably rooted, at least within the West, that the rise of neofascism is impossible. Rather, any such neofascist forces are considered politically malleable, affording a useful bulwark against the left (Foster, 2017; Mammone, 2015).

Such rejection of the fascist or neofascist designation has a long history within post-war mainstream discourse. Unquestionably, it is crucial to distinguish between an authoritarian hard-right strengthening the repressive apparatus of the state and actual fascism/neofascism. Not all forms of reactionary radicalisation constitute fascism. And there are analytical, political and strategic concerns with overstating the immediate neofascist threat. However, eliding the category of neofascism altogether in analysing the crisis/crises of the present, undermines analysis and understanding, resulting in a misplaced complacency towards the very real threat of neofascism and how rapidly that threat can grow. It thereby hinders the timely mobilisation of antifascist movements and alliances (Gambetti, 2021; Ovenden, 2019).

Underpinning much contemporary discourse and rejection of the ‘neofascist’ moniker is a flawed methodology of history by analogy. Such approaches focus heavily on the specifics of the inter-war period and the variations which fascism assumed in the past. Yet, as Kevin Ovenden (2019) has argued, if fascism is identified primarily according to those historical parameters, it is arguably tantamount to claiming that there is no fascism beyond that period. However, it constitutes a ‘cardinal error’ to assume that fascist doctrines and movements comprise historical phenomena limited to a particular historical period or to specific states (Wilkinson, 1983: 8; see also Ahmed, 2023; Gambetti, 2021). Fascism assumed particular configurations in the past, but such variants need not necessarily manifest in the current historical conjuncture; indeed, we should be wary of confusing general strategy with a particular variant. Rather, new variants within the ‘fascist genus’ are possible. Asserting such continuity does not imply inattentiveness to differences either in variant or historical context. Rather, it is to reject the notion that fascism is a phenomenon confined to the past and, instead, recognise continuities as well as discontinuities between the historical fascism of the inter-war period and the fascism of our time – or, neofascism. ²

The Long Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism and Spectre of Neofascism

This section outlines eight interrelated theses on the spectre of neofascism, including identifying and analysing the conditions for its existing and potential ascendancy. The article argues that the current organic crisis of neoliberal capitalist accumulation and sociality has set in motion an intensification of neofascist processes and a distinct and identifiable emergent neofascist trajectory, as a global phenomenon (Gandesha, 2020b; Meyerson and Roberto, 2008). ³ These issues are examined at a certain level of abstraction. There are, of course, important historical specificities of particular movements, regimes and leaders. Moreover, fascism is notoriously malleable. But it is not sufficient to treat each national case individually, as if a category in itself (Paxton, 1998). Rather, we must be able to examine the global phenomenon of neofascism systematically, to better understand the scale and multifacetedness of the crisis we face, and to inform the contours of an anti-neofascism.

An Organic Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism

Fascism has been variously defined as an ideology, a doctrine, a movement, and a regime, that encompasses socioeconomic, social-psychological and political elements (cf. Palheta, 2021; Paxton, 2005). Crucial to any serious engagement is an emphasis on identifying the strategy for political power as central to the rise of fascism (Gandesha, 2020b; Ovenden, 2019). Specifically, fascism and fascist processes constitute immanent properties of capital, associated with major organisational changes within capitalist and class rule emergent from a systemic crisis of capitalism. That is, fascism constitutes a specific political response to the management of capitalist states and societies in historical periods of deep crisis. Analysis must, therefore, foreground these crises (Amin, 2014; Meyerson and Roberto, 2008).

The current crisis of neoliberal capitalist accumulation and sociality constitutes an organic crisis; that is, not only a conjunctural disequilibrium, but rather a confluence of disruptions operating at different levels, with the very foundations of bourgeois hegemony increasingly in doubt (Levenson, 2020; Robinson, 2019). Such crises are inherent to capitalism. Neoliberalism itself was originally improvised as a means of addressing the previous major capitalist crisis, that of the early 1970s. However, whereas previous organic/systemic crises have ushered in major restructuring and conditions for a new phase of accumulation, this has not been the case in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008/09. Instead, the global political economy has entered a radicalised phase of neoliberalism – despite its inability to realise any form of shared prosperity, and notwithstanding its potential to imperil the very future of organised human life. The fundamental paradox of neoliberalism is that it has no solution to the current crisis of capitalist overaccumulation, with no strategy for restoring general levels of profitability, let alone for improving the living conditions of the vast majority or averting the impending climate and ecological catastrophes (Ayers and Saad-Filho, 2020; Davidson, 2017).

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated various vectors of crisis. But the problem is far longer and more deep-rooted, exposing the inner contradictions of capital (cf. McNally, 2011; Roberts, 2016; Smith et al., 2021). The global economy is now mired in a crisis of stagflation not witnessed since the 1970s. The major economies are slowing rapidly and heading towards a new slump in 2023/24. Concurrently, pressures from global supply chain blockages following the COVID-19 lockdowns and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have fuelled inflation to 40-year highs. Attempts to curb high inflation through interest rate rises and monetary tightening are squeezing the real economy, triggering banking crises, a collapse in property prices and increased corporate and public debt servicing costs. For households in the major economies, the so-called misery index is at a 35-year high. Meanwhile, the depreciation of most currencies against the dollar together with rising interest rates is generating the prospect of a wave of debt crises across the ‘Global South’ as countries contend with servicing their dollar-denominated debt, falling revenues and collapsing currencies (IMF, 2022; Roberts, 2022, 2023).

Such developments are to be understood within the ‘Long Depression’ in investment, productivity and profitability that the major economies have experienced since the Great Recession (Roberts, 2016). Falling profitability is engendering low investment and productivity growth in the real economy, accompanied by the stagnation or decline of real wages for the majority. Meanwhile, the ultra-rich have gained massively from the speculative booms in financial assets and property, with a huge increase in the wealth of the richest 0.01% of the world’s adult population (Oxfam, 2023; World Economic Forum (WEF), 2023). Such speculative activity has also led to ever-greater asset price bubbles, but those bubbles are now starting to burst. Ultimately, trend growth in the major economies is lower since the pandemic, and in turn, the decade before the pandemic had slower growth than before the Great Recession (Roberts, 2022).

However, limiting analysis to conventional ‘economic’ indicators is to drastically understate the scale and complexity of the current crisis of capitalism. Our present condition is one of ecological overshoot. What is at stake is an ecological-social crisis of the Earth System, which imperils the very future of civilisation. Fundamentally, capitalist accumulation and sociality threaten the basic biogeochemical cycles of the biosphere as we know them. Of the nine planetary life support systems identified as critical to human survival, at least five have been surpassed: loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change, altered biogeochemical cycles (phosphorous and nitrogen), chemical pollution, and climate change (Foster, 2012; Rockström et al., 2009, 2023). ⁴ Indeed, with the United Nations admonishing that ‘no credible pathway to 1.5 C’ is currently in place (United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 2022), catastrophic extreme weather events are already becoming commonplace as we barrel towards the climatic point of no return. Yet, as critics have painstakingly argued, capitalism stands as the most intractable obstacle in the way of the changes that could avert climatic and ecological devastation (Camfield, 2022; Williams, 2010).

‘States of Exception’ and the Denigration of Formal Democracy

In the face of such stark challenges, rather than initiating a transition, crisis has become a hyper-normalised, semi-permanent condition that has fostered ‘states of exception’, whose political powers and ideological tropes are ever-more necessary for the governing classes – given their inability to manage not only economic events but also the underlying ecological-social crisis and its symptoms of morbid decay (Davidson, 2017; Malm and Zetkin Collective, 2021). Significantly, these ‘exceptional states’ do not arise as exogenous or abnormal distortions of the state, but rather as incubated expressions of it in times of crisis. That is, they are extensions of the (neo)liberal capitalist state, not its capture or negation – despite the widespread antisystemic rhetoric.

The rise of these ‘states of exception’ is symptomatic of the hollowing out of formal ‘neoliberal democracy’, itself an indirect consequence of ‘restructured’ economies and polities, together with widespread popular alienation from the political system and institutions of representation. This highly circumscribed and increasingly atrophied (‘de-democratised’) formal model of capitalist democracy comprised the hegemonic political form of neoliberalism over multiple decades. However, faced with the manifold crises of neoliberal accumulation and sociality, this political mode has become increasingly unable to contain or withstand extant crises or to offer more than a semblance of legitimacy to the system (Ayers and Saad-Filho, 2020; Brown, 2015; Robinson, 2019).

A formal or procedural model of capitalist (bourgeois) democracy should not be viewed therefore as the ‘normal’ political form of modern capitalism. Such a model constitutes the ‘best political shell for capitalism’ (Lenin, 1917), but only in times of relatively stable accumulation. In times of crisis, or when the established order is threatened, non-democratic modes of power increasingly come to the fore:

[O]nce the system begins to disintegrate . . . [the bourgeois] commitment to democracy . . . emerges to be not axiomatic and eternal, but pragmatic and ephemeral. Since it is the economic system itself which is now at stake, all political measures needed to save it, including dictatorship, become legitimate (Knei-Paz, 1978: 355).

Rather than the commonplace juxtaposition of authoritarian-right regimes to (neo)liberal formal democratic systems, both models constitute distinct political forms for the management of capitalist society in different historical conditions. Understood in this context, fascism does not constitute ‘in itself an “abnormal” or “rendered abnormal” form of bourgeois rule’ but rather ‘one of the necessary forms of bourgeois rule’ in particular historical conjunctures (Althusser, 1975). Accordingly, fascism is on the agenda if/when ‘the political crisis reaches such a level of intensity that is becomes insurmountable within the framework of established forms of political domination’ (Palheta, 2021). That is, when the governing classes are unable to ensure the stability of the social and political order through the mechanisms of formal ‘neoliberal democracy’ and routine electoral and political processes.

The fascist option for managing capitalist societies in crisis is by definition, therefore, based on the categorical rejection of democracy (Amin, 2014). Hence, the era has witnessed the sustained and widespread assault on formal democratic values, practices, institutions and imaginaries, including the pervasive undermining of checks and balances on the executive branch of the state, particularly by the judiciary and the press, as well as on dissent per se (Ayers and Saad-Filho, 2020). In this sense, the threat exists within not only against formal (neo)liberal democracies (Adorno, 1998; Gandesha, 2020b).

Related to this has been the sustained assault on notions of truth and reason. In echoes of Hannah Arendt, critics have highlighted the widespread appropriation of ‘truth’ in the service of power, with the pervasive peddling of falsehoods and lies and the increasing ‘tribalisation’ of information (Oborne, 2021; Snyder, 2021). ‘Post-truth’ politics is ever more taken in through hearsay, social media targeting and an oligarchical corporate media. These developments are crucial in the rise of neofascism. As Paxton (1998: 6) has argued: ‘Feelings propel fascism more than thought does’, with ‘mobilising passions’ functioning to recruit and bind followers to (neo)fascist leaders. Thought and reason are thereby subordinated to the prowess and historic destiny of the group, whether nation, race, or community.

Meanwhile, the neoliberal evacuation of the political sphere has rendered labour and its’ supporting organisations increasingly unable to resist this assault on formal democratic practices, institutions and values. Indeed, traditional parties and organisations have been increasingly eschewed as avenues for effective dissent. With the social infrastructure of working class life and organisation crushed, avenues for reliable and trustworthy political education are thereby forfeit. It is in this context that the crises in neoliberalism have fostered the personalisation of politics and the emergence of ‘spectacular’ leaders untethered by stabilising institutions such as party structures, constitutional checks and balances, trade unions, social movements and the law. Through demagoguery and the blatant peddling of falsehoods, they cultivate a politics of resentment that ‘mobilises passions’, but have neither the tools nor the intention of addressing the causes of widespread dissatisfaction and despair. Although these leaders often campaign against specific facets or consequences of neoliberalism, in power they invariably implement policies intensifying neoliberalism and financialisation, while attacking all forms of opposition (Ayers and Saad-Filho, 2020; Patnaik, 2020).

The case of Brazil is illustrative here, with the neoliberal capitalist model experiencing a period of severe political instability. As Armando Boito has detailed, the weakening of formal (neo)liberal democratic values and institutions were clearly evident during the crisis that culminated in the 2016 judicial-parliamentary-media coup (‘coup by impeachment’) against President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT). Crucial to this were increasingly egregious interventions by the military and judiciary within the national political process. The administration of Rousseff’s successor, former Vice-President Michel Temer, was unable to secure political stability. This was the conjuncture in which the neofascist movement in support of Jair Bolsonaro materialised, as it became clear that none of the orthodoxly neoliberal parties could gain power in the forthcoming elections. ‘Bolsonarism’ constituted an ‘alliance between neoliberalism and neo-fascism’, underpinned by imperialist capital, the big bourgeoisie aligned with foreign capital, and the upper middle class: ‘an alliance that neoliberal forces were forced to resort to because of the weakness, fragmentation, and decline of their traditional political parties’ (Boito, 2022: 226).

Impasse/Stasis and the Crisis of Alternatives

Integral to this process of neofascisation is a sense of stasis or impasse, in which there exists a collectively experienced imperative to ‘break out’ of a crisis, but which the existing formally democratic bourgeois political formations are immanently incapable of effecting (see also Polanyi, 2002). However, also crucial, is that the left is not in a position to seize the initiative and mobilise around an alternative agenda for social transformation (Patnaik, 2020). This remains a contentious issue. Yet, as Ugo Palheta has argued, fascism is not just the bourgeois rejoinder to an imminent revolutionary threat, but also the manifestation of a crisis of alternative to the existing order and the defeat of counter-hegemonic forces. Of course, (neo)fascists incite fear (real and/or contrived) of the left and progressive social movements. Donald Trump’s fulminations against ‘Marxists’, antifa, Black Lives Matter, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA) + people, the climate movement, and so on, are illustrative here. But, it is in the inability of the exploited and oppressed

to constitute themselves as revolutionary political subjects and engage in an experiment of social transformation (however limited), that allows the far Right to appear as a political alternative and win the adhesion of very diverse social groups (Palheta, 2021).

In this regard, the advent of ‘social neoliberalism’ and the illusory ‘third way’, propounded by erstwhile left and working-class parties, is implicated in the rise and increased sway of authoritarian-right and neofascist movements and regimes. With the shift from vanguard to social neoliberalism, social-democratic parties across the West, as well as developmental states in the ‘Global South’, effectively embraced neoliberalism. Diverse factors and class forces prevailed within different national contexts, resulting in differing trajectories according to historical phases, local circumstances, social forces and relations, state power, and so on. Nonetheless, largely across-the-board capitulation constituted the ‘final stage in the normalization of neoliberalism’ (Davidson, 2017: 622).

The virtual disappearance of an oppositional left, rooted in the working-class and resolved to mobilise for meaningful structural change, has unanchored political systems. Eroded, truncated and deprived of substance, political systems have lurched ever rightwards. Henceforth, as political parties converged around neoliberal policies, the political process was reduced to periodic calls to the ballot box to select between variations of neoliberalism. The net result was an increased alienation from politics and the formal democratic process, as disempowerment morphed into disenfranchisement, fuelling a crisis of representation. Meanwhile, with socialist forces largely in disarray and unable to intervene effectively in terms of an alternative to the existing order, crisis has redounded instead to the advantage of the hard-right. The extreme-centre, it turns out, became the harbinger of the extreme-right:

After decades in which nominal working-class parties clearly represented capital more effectively than labor, workers around the globe have turned to nationalist populists. For all their proto-fascist tendencies, at least these leaders are able to successfully appeal to working-class interests, even if only in rhetoric (Levenson, 2020).

The Class Basis of Coming to Power

This highlights a key aspect of neofascisation. While the rise of fascism as a strategy for political power is associated with a systemic crisis of capitalism, it does not constitute simply a rapidly assembled political artifice of the governing classes, primed to mete out force as necessary. It is that too (see below), but also encompasses the social alliances forged to facilitate an expansion of the popular base of fascist movements and regimes, at least in the initial stages (Paxton, 1998). That is, under the above historical conditions, significant sections of the population, particularly those from the amorphous ‘middle-class’ or ‘petit-bourgeoisie’ but also, in some circumstances, segments of the working-class, rally to fascism as a so-called mass movement (Knei-Paz, 1978; Patnaik, 2020).

Such alliances are highly problematic. Once in power, fascist regimes have historically purged themselves of the more radical elements and lower orders that aided their rise to power, rapidly allying themselves with big business (Foster, 2017; Palheta, 2021). Indeed, as Ishay Landa (2018) has compellingly argued, the commonplace association of fascism with ‘the masses’ is deeply problematic. Rather, inter-war fascism constituted the culmination of efforts by the upper-class elites and their middle-class allies to subdue mass politics and its broader social, cultural and economic implications.

This pattern manifested promptly with the Trump administration, for example (Pierson, 2017). Although somewhat erratic and conflict-ridden, the Trump administration functioned in the interests of capital (in general), with the ‘big bourgeoisie’ (now mainly finance capital) the principal beneficiaries in terms of tax cuts, buttressing the hegemony of Wall Street, regulatory rollbacks, appointments to the federal judiciary from district courts to the Supreme Court, and so on. ⁵ This benefitted not only long-standing sites of economic power, from defence contractors, the energy industry, and Big Pharma, to more peripheral donor coalitions of ‘lumpen-capitalists’ or ‘post-industrial hinterland robber barons’ whose profits derive from real estate, private equity, casinos, and services extending from private armies to payday loan usury (Barrow, 2020b; Davis, 2020; Farber, 2018). Meanwhile, the ‘foundational plank of Trumpism’ – namely the rhetoric of reviving the Rust Belt and kick-starting an economy decimated by decades of neoliberal globalisation and the deindustrialisation it engendered – was ‘a decided bust’ (Palmer, 2020; see also Heino, 2020). ⁶

Such problematic social alliances notwithstanding, it remains crucial to understand the social composition of contemporary movements and regimes. In the United States, for example, critics have challenged the mainstream narrative which averred that Trump rode a wave of ‘white working-class’ disillusionment and resentment, mobilising non-voters as well as alienated blue-collar Republicans and Democrats. More accurately, the overall picture in the key battlegrounds in the Midwest and Southern states was of a decline in working-class turnout and collapse in votes for the Democratic Party among many of its core constituencies. By contrast, the amorphous ‘middle-class’ constituted the primary electoral base for Trump (Davis, 2017; Moody, 2017), as well as being over-represented in the storming of the Capitol in January 2021 (Watters, 2021). ⁷

Nonetheless, sections of the working class in the United States did support Trump in 2016 and 2020. Such support cannot be dismissed simply as petit-bourgeois reaction. Accordingly, there is a ‘popular’ or ‘mass’ element within such politics, at least in the initial stages. ⁸ In the United States, for example, both major political parties have been neoliberal. Trump seemed to offer something different to strata of workers desperate to regain their former position (Foster, 2017; Neel, 2018). But understanding such positions requires inter alia consideration of subjective dimensions of the current historical conjuncture. That is, the existential, affective and psychological dimensions of crisis, particularly the issue of insecurity, that has rendered some sections of the working class, at least in the initial stages, vulnerable to ‘the siren song of fascism’ (Gandesha, 2020b: 7).

Neoliberalism, Inequality, Insecurity

Neoliberalism’s regime of power and form of social existence have been characterised by turmoil, insecurity and devastation. The 2008/09 crisis and decade-plus of austerity have accelerated such processes, as economic stagnation, the rising cost of living, cuts to social security and public services, falling wages/incomes, and rising under- and unemployment have combined to create hugely increasing inequality. As the World Inequality Report details, since the 1980s, the top 1% earners have captured twice as much growth in global income as the 50% poorest individuals (Alvaredo, et al., 2018). In the United States alone, neoliberalism has devastated the working class with upwards redistribution of income calculated at over US$47 trillion from 1975 to 2018 (Price and Edwards, 2020). Significantly, the global ‘middle class’, including across Europe and North America, has also been increasingly unmoored through such processes. Indebted, impoverished, anxious and vulnerable, the vestiges of this ‘privileged’ social strata lament their declining protections, benefits and security, as well as diminishing opportunities for intergenerational social mobility (Ayers and Saad-Filho, 2020; Roediger, 2020).

The impact of neoliberal economic restructuring on labour, employment, social reproduction and community life has been central to such processes, with neoliberalism encompassing the structural as well as ‘organisational’ disciplining of labour (Clua-Losada and Ribera-Almandoz, 2017). Millions of formal sector jobs have been eliminated or offshored, public sector employment opportunities have declined as a result of privatisation and ‘retrenchment’, and job stability, pay and conditions have deteriorated. Meanwhile, the gig-economy, zero-hour contracts, temporary and part-time employment have increased. In general, workers have tended to become increasingly divided, disorganised, disempowered and ‘deskilled’, falling ever further behind capital in political influence as well as wage-share (Boffo et al., 2019).

Increasing economic hardship, together with the widening gap within and across states, has resulted in a growing awareness that neoliberal globalisation has not worked for everyone, engendering an increasingly polarised politics and the rapid growth of right-wing political movements. For the most part, liberals as well as some sections of social democracy have failed to adequately comprehend the long journey of many from the increasingly disenfranchised, alienated, and insecure working-classes and middle strata into the hard-right fold. All too often ‘progressive’ explanations have presumed and reproached such supporters for a putative cognitive impairment, moral failure or both. Largely absent from this ‘progressive’ worldview is an understanding that such individuals and communities are attempting to respond, at least in part, to their experience of the long global economic downturn and its manifold social-ecological crises (Ayers and Saad-Filho, 2020).

The hard-right, in its myriad forms, has been adept at tapping into these sources of increasing mass discontent. Key to the hard-right’s appeal is the possibility that it may avert or reverse downwards mobility and social destabilisation; that is, restore some sense of stability and security (Robinson, 2019). As such, the social disorientation associated with long-term economic decimation, social fragmentation, and the devastation of erstwhile values, ways of life and forms of belonging, has created a fertile ground for the rise of all kinds of zealous self-assertions (Vanaik, 2009) – whether national, ‘racial’, ethnic, religious, misogynist and/or heterosexist. Indeed, routinely inflected by toxic masculinity, misogyny and homophobia, the era has witnessed the rise of increasingly influential antigender and anti-LGBTQIA + mobilisations, for example, in Poland, Hungary, the United States, Russia, Turkey and Brazil.

Such processes are widely framed in terms of the notion of a so-called backlash (Faludi, 2006) to collective mobilisations – which inevitably provoke a reaction in terms of racist, hyper-masculinist and patriarchal radicalisations. The latter take various forms and trajectories, including ‘female antifeminism’ and sexual politics as a ‘primary vector of fascisation’ (Marasco, 2021), ultimately realising their full political coherence in the neofascist project (Majewska, 2021; Palheta, 2021). Yet, understanding the scale and intensity of such opposition to racial, gender and sexual equality is not only about a ‘backlash’ but is also to be understood in the context of neoliberalism (Graff and Korolczuk, 2022). The rise of aggressive self-assertions, whether framed in (overlapping) terms of national, racial, ethnic, religious, gender or sexual identity, can function as a form of consolation, the affirmations of which provide a balm for social despair. Indeed, in times of crisis, when the present is experienced as unsatisfactory, and the future looks increasingly bleak, it is the ‘unchangeable’ past, albeit an idealised and mythical past, that appears to provide a sense of security and stability (Vanaik, 2009). Accordingly, for some, appeals to ‘blood’, ‘nation’, ‘fatherland’, ‘family values’ or ‘tradition’ may appear as the only feasible form of collectivity still available – particularly in a putative context of TINA where any systemic alternative to capitalism had ostensibly collapsed in 1989–91 (Davidson and Saull, 2017).

Imperialism, Nation, and ‘Race’

A key factor in such political upheavals is modern capitalist imperialism and its attendant ideologies of nation and ‘race’. At least prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the relationship between neofascism and the specific character of imperialism, as a geopolitical force and as a metapolitics, had been curiously absent within much of the debate on new fascisms – despite the crucial nature of the relationship in 20th-century fascism (Walker, 2021). Indeed, Nico Poulantzas (1974) modified the well-known dictum on capitalism and fascism to read that ‘it is [s/he] who does not wish to discuss imperialism who should stay silent on the subject of fascism’ (p. 17).

Modern imperialism is motivated fundamentally by the dynamics of capital accumulation. Multiple capitals seek their self-expansion in competition with other capitals, including through imperialist finance, investment, production and trade in the ‘Global South’. Such state strategies mobilise countertendencies to generalised crises of profitability, notably during times of systemic crisis, thereby generating the conditions for increased political-military rivalry between imperialist powers (Patnaik and Patnaik, 2021; Post, 2023). However, it is possible for more than one ‘variant of imperialism’ to simultaneously coexist, albeit on different scales. What pertains today are both an ‘ultra-imperialism’, in which a dominant coalition of relatively autonomous imperialist states act to maintain the unity of the capitalist system despite other antagonisms between them (evidenced in the ultra-imperialism which spans the north Atlantic, unifying North America and Europe as two potentially rival ‘blocs’ within a common political and economic coalition). But also pertaining is an ‘imperial rivalry’ between this combined transatlantic bloc and China, Russia, and allies. Hence, we have both ultra-imperialism in the broad sense and rivalry between three imperialist forces: North America-Europe, Russia and China (Banaji, 2022, based on Rowthorn, 1971). ⁹

Global capitalism in the earlier decades of the neoliberal era, particularly following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, witnessed the predominance of ultra-imperialism. The crisis of capitalist overaccumulation in the 1970s gave rise to expansion into non-capitalist or undercapitalised social relations, including internationally, as North American and European as well as Japanese capitals invested heavily overseas. Hence a key underpinning of the ultra-imperial model today has been the internationalisation of capital, with the intensified integration of the global economy, and the increased interpenetration and collaboration between national capitals – notwithstanding complex stratification within the ‘imperialist chain’ (Gordon and Webber, 2020). This variant of imperialism continues to characterise most capital accumulation internationally (Banaji, 2022).

Yet, the era since the Great Recession, in particular, has also witnessed accelerating militarism worldwide and the spectre of intensifying inter-imperialist rivalries, particularly between North America-Europe, China and Russia. In the case of the latter, tensions between the transatlantics and Russia is rooted in a resurgence of West–East rivalry. Thus, the war in Ukraine is not only one of national self-determination by Ukraine against Russia, but also, and increasingly, an imperialist proxy war by NATO against Russia (Unkovski-Korica, 2022). Meanwhile, to-date, the rivalry with China has been heavily economic, with intensifying rivalry not due to profound ideological differences but rather increasing competition between Chinese and US capital worldwide, since China began aggressively exporting its overaccumulated capital to the rest of the world in the wake of the Great Recession (Ho-Fung Hung, 2020).

At one level, such intensifying rivalry mirrors the dynamics of inter-capitalist competition in the early 20th century – which saw the rise of fascist forces across Europe and beyond and culminated in two world wars. Yet the internationalisation of capital in the neoliberal era and the interpenetration of US and Chinese capital, in particular, renders 21st-century imperialism a complex, competitive but asymmetric global system which cannot be reduced to the inter-imperialist rivalry between nation-states in the manner of the early 20th century (Robinson, 2019; Spectre, 2021).

Nonetheless, this does not hinder the appeal, to many, of an imperialist worldview concomitant with the rise of its attendant ideologies of ultra-nationalism, racism and xenophobia. Classical imperialism was justified by recourse to forms of ultra-nationalism and Europe’s ‘civilising mission’. Class was thereby displaced by national identities, enabling the bourgeoisie to garner the support of the lower petit-bourgeoisie and other classes whose social precarity rendered them especially insecure and susceptible to xenophobia and extreme forms of nationalism in the context of an imperialist project (Gandesha, 2020a). Likewise, in our time, the potential for global working-class solidarities is further undermined by increasing political and economic nationalism, accompanied by nationalist fervour and rising xenophobia, manifest, for example, in the ‘America First’ agenda and the US–China trade war, as well as increasingly evident in the US/NATO conflict with Russia over Ukraine (Boylan et al., 2021).

However, the ultra-imperialist neoliberal globalisation of production, global division of labour and global labour arbitrage had itself further entrenched structural divisions in the global working-class through inter alia international outsourcing, immigration and temporary work visas. Accordingly, in addition to hyper-exploitation in the Global South (Smith, 2016), migrants have been permitted, under highly circumscribed terms and conditions, to enter labour markets within advanced capitalist economies, opening-up labour markets to competitive pressures on wages and increased levels of exploitation. This has fuelled the perception, and arguably at times the reality, of greater competition from migrant labour for work within increasingly insecure and precarious working-class locales (Parekh et al., 2017; Portes, 2016; Wadsworth et al., 2016). While immigration is not a key driver of low pay, ‘blaming migrants’ has become politically expedient in diverting attention from the real causes of low pay. Such increasingly racialised processes have fuelled a so-called crisis of white identity in conjunction with the destruction of structures and institutions of social solidarity rooted in class (Davidson and Saull, 2017: 712).

Hence, it is also crucial to examine the impact of imperial tropes on the neocolonial imaginary – cognisant that imperialism generates ‘a kind of cultural boomerang effect’ with colonial technologies and apparatuses (re)constituting the metropolitan political condition, incubating processes of racialisation (Walker, 2021; see also Césaire, 1972). ¹⁰ Pro-fascist theorist Carl Schmitt emphasised the articulation of imperialism with fascism. And a clear historical trajectory can be identified from formal imperialism and formal fascism to the neofascism of our time – the essence of which is the internal application of previously external modes of governance, with techniques of division, including technologies and apparatuses of racialisation, transferred from the ‘macro-level of states and territories, to the micro-level of bodies, categories of citizenship, the policing of language, physiognomy, and markers of difference’ (Walker, 2021; see also Gambetti, 2021).

Significantly, the authoritarian-right have been able increasingly to recast the ontological insecurity of neoliberalism within this imperialist worldview, propounding an ultra-nationalist, xenophobic and more-or-less explicit racist politics that obscures the class dynamics of neoliberalism. Under increasing pressure, the centre-right and the centre-left have often also adopted such racially coded themes, including ‘getting tough’ on immigration, crime and welfare dependence – in addition to collaborating in the rollback of the non-market protections secured by the workers in the previous phases of capitalism (Ayers and Saad-Filho, 2020).

The spectre of neofascism does not result directly or necessarily, therefore, from economic insecurity or loss of status, per se, but rather is actively produced and indeed ‘normalised’ or ‘banalised’ across much of the political spectrum through the translation of economic insecurities into cultural anxieties (Gandesha, 2020b). Such political processes are integral to the rise of states of exception and the Schmittian concern with the political characterised by the ‘friend/enemy’ relation (Johal, 2020).

This worldview leads to the dehumanisation and targeting of specific groups with the ‘enemy’ construed either as ‘external’, such as migrants, asylum seekers, radical Islam, China, Russia, the European Union, or ‘internal’, in the case of ethnic minorities, immigrants, ‘antifa’ and the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and the United Kingdom, minority religions and lower castes in India, the ‘vagabonds’, ‘bandits’ and darker-skinned and disproportionately impoverished population in Brazil, and so on. In all cases, this ‘violently toxic mix of reactionary nationalism and racism’ (Robinson, 2019: 169) pivots on the psychosocial mechanism of attributing to ‘the Other’ responsibility for the systemic crisis, thereby displacing fear and anxiety onto scapegoated communities – in the context of an organic crisis of capitalism and the impeding prospect of ecological collapse (Ahmed, 2023; Ayers and Saad-Filho, 2020; Gandesha, 2020b).

‘The One True Fascist God, the Market’

This relation bears emphasising. The existential, affective and psychological dimensions of crisis that underpin adherence to fascist ‘solutions’, is commonly viewed in terms of the political domain defined primarily in terms of the nation and ‘national identity’. The overarching narrative is framed primarily in terms of reversing supposed national decline through national restoration (Palheta, 2021). Yet, the simple correspondence between fascism and the nation remains problematic (Walker, 2021). The notion of extreme forms of nationalism as inhering intrinsically within fascism is itself largely devoid of meaning without acknowledging the concrete class composition of such ‘nationalism’, together with the way that ‘national “palingenesis” was itself predicated on the bedrock of imperialistic-capitalistic triumph’ (Landa, 2012: 320). In actuality, ultra-nationalism was ‘embedded in, indeed subservient to, ultra Social Darwinism’ or the survival-of-the-fittest matrix:

In the fascist axiological hierarchy . . . the nation comes only after a fetishized Nature whose graces are conferred upon those who are successful in the business of imperialism and capitalism, those ‘strongest in courage and industry’ (Landa, 2012: 319–320).

Rather than based on the mystified theory of origin of the ‘imagined community’ – generally the nation – the ultimate protagonist of fascism is arguably ‘a fantasy of a Law of Nature, a sort of evolutionary narrative inhabited by “winners” and “losers”’, whose positions are determined by this ‘Law of the Strong’ – which is nothing other than the modern capitalist conception of the market (Walker, 2021). What preceded Trump in the United States, for example, were not repeated upsurges in fetishisation of the nation but rather decades of the neoliberal economisation of all aspects of life and the denigration of ‘society’. This depreciation of society is not a direct derivation from the category of the nation, but rather results from the ‘telescoping of the concept of “the market” into a kind of alternate form of sociality, in which there are nothing but “winners” and “losers”’:

In such a schema, the Lump that we are all becoming can only dream of ‘winning’, not of emancipation, not of freedom, but only of a dwarfish and stunted vision of the classic Spenglerian . . . ‘Great Politics’ . . . [And] most importantly, for contemporary fascist tendencies, a form of racial taxonomy as a kind of ‘measure’, itself a form of ‘money’ or ‘wealth’ – the proof of being a ‘winner’, and the fear that, since Natural Law dominates all, we might all become losers (Walker, 2021).

It was this social imaginary that Trump, for example, inflamed, allowing US proto-fascists to fantasise of becoming ‘winners’, of overcoming all that obstructed ‘the sentiment of accumulation’. In the process, it was not sufficient to ‘win’. Rather, the ‘losers’ had to be ‘brought to heel, “civilised” and adapted to the one true fascist God, the market’. In this, tellingly, the centre-right and centre-left shared the same deity as Trump’s foot-soldiers: ‘the dollar, the number, the market, the empire’ (Walker, 2021).

Such delusions of ‘winning’ and the spurious political claims which underpinned them are, at one level, indicative of a collective delusion and/or hysteria. But, at another level, are signs of a mass of angry, wretched and downtrodden people, clutching at ‘an idea, any idea, any myth, anything to feel part of a collective experience of politics, of life’ – after the ravages of neoliberal capitalism and the manifold destruction and social atomisation it has wrought (Walker, 2021; see also Giroux, 2019). Trumpism presented an opportunity for people to view their dreams and aspirations as integral to some grand narrative of human redemption, contra centre-right and centre-left bland managerialism, technocracy and timidity. But, asWalker (2021) argues, ultimately, ‘[s]o long as the doctrine of the [capitalist] market remains at the centre of institutional politics, fascist solutions will continue to emerge from this ground’.

Political Violence, Repression and Coercion

Finally, characteristic of these emerging ‘states of exception’ are ever-increasing levels of political violence, repression, coercion and social control, as these exceptional states seek to manage the crisis of accumulation and attendant political, social and environmental conditions – including the fear that crisis could lead to uncontrollable revolt. As such, a key part of the rising militarism worldwide is the strengthening of the authoritarian repressive state at home. Across North America and Europe it is evident in the expansion of the prison-industrial-military complexes, pervasive and paramilitarised policing, technologically advanced surveillance systems and crowd control techniques, the criminalisation of protest and dissent, the racialisation of criminality and the repressive policing of communities of colour and working-class youth, specious wars on drugs and ‘terrorism’, as well as the increased policing of boundaries and nation through border-keeping, anti-immigrant legislation, detention centres and deportation regimes (Ayers and Saad-Filho, 2020; Robinson, 2019).

Such murderous state policies include Fortress Europe’s policing of the Mediterranean and eastern European borders, where illegal, systematic and lethal ‘pushbacks’ further endanger migrants’ lives. State-sponsored special armed units operating with elite coast guard and police forces have been documented intercepting, beating and torturing refugees, unlawfully and violently expelling them from within the EU’s external border. Such actions not only contravene the Geneva Refugee Convention but also belie the EU’s claim to uphold the rule of law, given its financial and logistical support to border protection and the widespread legal violations thereof. Members of these shadow units have been identified on social media displaying right-wing extremist and fascist symbols (Christides et al., 2021; Ovenden, 2021). Far-right armed vigilantes have also endeavoured to patrol borders, for example, on the German–Poland border where groups with suspected links to neo-Nazi groups have blocked migrants crossing.

The role of extra-state violence in the form of broad-based paramilitary organisations has constituted a key element that distinguished the rise of fascism from other reactionary movements. For now, most neofascist movements are not based on mass militias. Moreover, as Palheta emphasises, extra-state militias remain subordinate to the strategy of the fascist/neofascist leaderships. The formation of mass militias depends on historical context and the demands of general strategy in terms of their ability to deploy, depending on historical circumstance, both legal and violent tactics. Integral to that consideration, is the extent to which states in our time wield across-the-board technologies of surveillance and repression incomparable to that of the inter-war period. Thus, at present, state violence may for the most part be sufficient to annihilate any and all forms of opposition – including physically, when necessary (Palheta, 2021).

Nonetheless there are multiple and burgeoning cases of violence by armed militias with links to the state. Vigilante groups allied with the ruling BJP in India have threatened, harassed, attacked and lynched minority religious and community members with impunity, including the Gujarat pogrom and that in Delhi in 2020 following the Citizenship Amendment Act (Khan and Chakrabarty, 2021). The neofascist street gangs of Golden Dawn and its offshoots in Greece have carried out acts of violence and hate crimes against immigrants and refugees, ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA + individuals and left-wing political opponents. In Hungary, the violence of far-right militias has targeted predominantly Roma people, claiming to increase the security of the ‘Hungarian’ population vis-à-vis the ‘Gypsy crime’ problem (Mireanu, 2013). And in Brazil, violence by Bolsonaro’s shock troops, especially during the 2022 election campaign, resulted in the deaths of Workers Party activists and the physical assault of hundreds of others (Purdy, 2022). Meanwhile, the Trump-emboldened Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, the boogaloo movement and other far-right vigilante groups and armed militias terrorise the streets of US cities such as Charlottesville, Portland, Kenosha and Salt Lake City, turning these cities into ‘proving grounds’ for the far-right, ‘priming’ vigilantes for a period of political violence (Evans, 2021).

Conclusion: Confronting Neofascism

These are dangerous times. Crucial to any understanding of the insurgence of neofascism is an awareness of the historical conditions under which fascism comes to the fore – that is, in periods of capitalist crisis. With the systemic crisis of capitalism set to worsen, the threat and reality of resorting to neofascist solutions becomes ever greater. However, insofar as it derives from a crisis of capitalist accumulation and sociality, including the hardening of social confrontations, the process of neofascisation is both contradictory and highly unstable: ‘There is by no means a royal road for the fascist movement’ (Palheta, 2021). Indeed, as Saladdin Ahmed (2020) has emphasised, classical fascism never enjoyed a day without resistance; likewise neofascism.

That the process of fascisation does not lead necessarily to neofascism ultimately depends on the ability of the exploited and oppressed to successfully contest the multiple terrains of political struggle, constituting themselves as autonomous political subjects to effect a fundamental transformation of our societies and world. Such transformation must be congruent with the ecological conditions of existence on this planet: ‘Whereas past revolutionary struggles have strived for an emancipation of labor from capital, we are challenged not just to imagine, but to demand the emancipation of the earth from capital. For the earth to live, capitalism must die’ (Estes, 2019: 257).

Unquestionably, this involves resisting the forces of reaction, confronting the far- and fascist- right who populate the electoral and institutional terrain, as well as more broadly in society, the workplace and on the streets. But also crucial is that antifascism is conceived as a necessary complement to related struggles (antiracist, anti-imperialist, antimilitarism, feminist, ecological, and so on) not just a struggle, waged independently, against the organised hard-right. Hence it involves creating a plurality of types of tactics, organisations and strategies – the infrastructures of dissent – to fight neofascism on the basis of common action of the oppressed (Burley, 2022; McNally and Post, 2021).

Ultimately, opposing fascisation and neofascism entails the transcendence of neoliberal capitalism itself. Overcoming the monster of neofascism demands that we reject and transcend the capitalist morass from which it emerges, takes root and spreads. A meaningful alternative to neoliberal state and capital requires us to look again to socialism (Barker et al., 2021; McNally, 2021). ¹¹ This presents a major challenge for the radical left today, but necessarily involves taking-up the class questions which the far- and fascist-right seek to exploit but cannot resolve. It necessitates turning, understanding and building outwards to the mass of the population, to recohere a mass-based, genuinely anticapitalist, radical left primed for the transformative struggles of our age.