The Fall Of State Fascism And Rise Of Individualized Fascism

The thousands of prominent voices who took out a full-page ad in the New York Times urging millions to resist President-elect Donald Trump’s brand of fascism should have instead warned of a more menacing kind.

From the Fort Lauderdale mass shooter to four black teenagers who tortured a white teen with mental health challenges or unruly flash mobs that assaulted shoppers while looting shopping malls, more Americans are rejecting the idea of state and party fascism for a violence-prone individualized fascism.

Bound to a higher will, violence-prone individualized fascists believe only in the law of the primal self. The will of the majority always subordinated to the will of extreme individualism.

For Individualized Fascists the Self Is Absolute, the State and Others Relative

It might be true the white teen that was kicked, beaten and knifed, then made to drink toilet water and forced to say “F-Donald Trump” and “F-white people,” was a racist hate crime.

It may also be accurate to call the mall looters rioters, or claim the Fort Lauderdale shooter was caused by a lapse in security or a mental disorder. But it is also impractical to deny what Mother Teresa warned: Beware of the little Hitler that resides in all of us.

In other words, instead of a violent collectivized state dehumanizing the “Other,” individualized fascism does it separately. Unable to see the Other’s freeborn humanity, the idolized self commits similar crimes – albeit isolated and with less casualty figures.

Violence-Prone Individualized Fascism Is Humanity in Decay

When all spheres of life – economic, social, cultural and religious – become subordinate to the individual’s violence-prone superego, conflictive interests moreover make conflict inevitable.

And though lauded as the “new freedom,” extreme individualism can become extreme insensitive towards others, including their right to exist. Individualized fascists are moreover willing to sacrifice others for what they – and only they – consider the highest good: Their own individual ideological wants, of course.

Plotting to stigmatize diversity, equating differences with deviance and eradicating anything that diverges from the ideal self is normalized. All crimes indeed become fascist crimes.

Strategic Adversary Is the Fascism in Our Heads, Its Domination and Exploitation

Similar to traditional fascism, the ideal self also becomes a sign of strength. But this kind of same mental disorder, or “strength through extreme individualism” instead of “extreme state unity,” can indeed produce the little lonely dictators of tomorrow that will commit isolated acts of torture and murder.

By elevating individualized fascism, and esteeming the superego’s absolutism and universal truths over the Other, the justification for personal systematic violence becomes more common.

It attempts to rewrite the humanness of others, too, specifically as the self aims to expand through individualized exceptionalism and colonization of the Other.

For the Individualized Fascist, the Struggle Is Worth the Sacrifice

As state and party fascism becomes even more incapable of solving a shrinking economy, increasing unemployment, rising inequality and social instability, others will reject a “one state” or “one party” solution in favor of multiplying into many extremely self-centered and megalomania states of being.