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fascism
The Fight Against Fascism Starts on Campus
Colleges are ahead of the curve when it comes to surveillance creep, and the ivory panopticon will only get worse as surveillance technologies get more advanced.
Nov 17, 2024
With the significant red shift this election, led by a man who is described by many as a fascist, resisting and reversing fascist creep is more important now than ever. Even at our supposedly most liberal institutions, we have seen increasingly unreasonable overreactions to dissent dictated not through democratic means, but through authoritarian decree.
Take, for example, the University of Pennsylvania. Early in the morning on October 18, a dozen armed university police stormed an off-campus student house to issue a warrant related to the throwing of red paint on a campus statue on September 12 as part of pro-Palestinian protests—red paint that was pressure-washed off within hours. Would UPenn faculty agree that an armed raid is an appropriate response to their own students who are angry and feeling helpless against the injustice of tens of thousands killed in Gaza? Where is shared and democratic governance when it comes to protest response on campus?
Penn Students Against the Occupation announced the paint incident on Instagram as being done by an “autonomous group.” They included a grainy video clip of a masked individual (let’s call them Sam) throwing the paint, echoing protest tactics used for decades from PETA showing disgust in fur coats to Just Stop Oil activists highlighting the hypocrisy of the attention paid to art versus the climate. Sam, presumably a student, clearly did not want to be caught—most likely because they saw how UPenn responded to protests last academic year—with arrests and academic sanctions and increased rules that prohibit protest activities like chalking and civil disobedience, including interrupting a guest speaker. Students know that if they want to be heard but don’t want to risk expulsion, they need to turn to subterfuge. And on a residential university campus, this is particularly tricky.
For free expression, students and faculty need to feel safe in expressing their ideas that push the boundaries of their institution, and they won’t feel safe to do that with complete surveillance of their activities.
While we are all subject to daily state and corporate surveillance of our activities, college campuses are unique examples of Foucault’s panopticon. Colleges serve as internet service provider, landlord, doctor, corner store, laundromat, gym, department of public safety, and, oh right, educator. And they have access to data for all those services, all handily linked to a student ID, collected in one place densely covered by surveillance cameras. What is unique about colleges compared to the broader U.S. is that the surveillance data is held by one institution rather than many. U.S. colleges are also known to employ analytics on their surveillance data: automated license plate reading, social media monitoring, face recognition, device tracking. Sam would have been easily identifiable despite wearing a mask if their phone automatically connected to campus wifi or if they were caught on camera without a mask approaching the scene.
Universities will say this surveillance is for the students—for their safety, health, and success. Yes, campus shootings are real and scary, but surveillance measures have a very limited ability to stop them. Yes, our youth are experiencing a mental health crisis, but monitoring student’s online behavior hasn’t proven to help either. Visible security has been shown to not increase student success, and if we need to track students to make them go to class are we really legitimizing the existence of higher education? The level of surveillance that universities engage in is more reminiscent of that undertaken by fascist and other authoritarian systems than means to support education.
But perhaps universities simply are fascist. After all, they are led by appointment rather than election. They are capitalist, in competition with one another to accumulate enrollment bases. They have their own rules and policies including strict guidelines on student conduct, which in many instances go far beyond those of broader society. They are awash with unbridled nationalism school pride with a deep hatred of other schools’... colors. And sadly, they have resorted to police intimidation and violence against student protesters of university policies, or allowed truly violent opponents to do this on their behalf.
When, last spring, universities set up mobile surveillance units (MSUs), either rented from private companies or on loan from the Department of Homeland Security, around peaceful and non-destructive protest encampments, it became hard to view campus surveillance as anything but a tool to maintain the institutional status quo. Particularly when those MSUs likely didn’t have any capabilities beyond what the campuses already had. They only served to remind students and faculty that the university is watching, and it is watching because it doesn’t approve.
This all makes universities sound like the fascist institutions that Vice President-elect JD Vance wants and that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is building rather than bastions of academic freedom and liberalism run by shared governance.
From private schools like Brown and UPenn to publics like UCLA and UC Davis, universities grossly overreach in their responses to students protesting injustice. For faculty and students to have a stake in campus response to protest, they need to start with a say in campus surveillance. There is no academic freedom or freedom of expression without privacy. FERPA, the federal law that governs student privacy, really only keeps student information from leaving the ivory tower. Universities need privacy policies that govern how information is shared and used within campus.
Colleges are ahead of the curve when it comes to surveillance creep, and the ivory panopticon will only get worse as surveillance technologies get more advanced. For free expression, students and faculty need to feel safe in expressing their ideas that push the boundaries of their institution, and they won’t feel safe to do that with complete surveillance of their activities. Which means the subjects of surveillance need to have a say in the surveillance. Students and faculty ought to demand answers as to why their institutions collect the data they do. They ought to demand evidence that their data policies holistically support student safety, health, and success. They ought to demand clarity as to whether their institution is being run as a Vance-approved or a DeSantis-built campus or as a place for academic freedom and legitimate higher education.
But then, will they be able to make these demands without being expelled or fired?
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The Fascist Duo From Hell: Trump and Netanyahu
Ever quick to kiss Trump’s ring, the Israeli prime minister has been scheming toward this very moment since last October.
Nov 16, 2024
In what war criminal and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “history’s greatest comeback,” sexual predator, game show host and former Wrestlemania idol Donald Trump was re-elected as US President.
Netanyahu, ever quick to kiss Trump’s ring, has been scheming toward this very moment since last October when Hamas fighters embarrassed his government by breaking out of Gaza's prison walls and attacking Israeli military bases.
Indeed, Netanyahu’s investment paid off. Trump’s re-election reshuffles the Middle East colonial deck in Netanyahu's favour, shifting US policy from the Democratic Party's hypocritical complicity with and denial of Zionist genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity to a shameless embrace and encouragement of these malevolent actions.
Though historically Trump has been far from an ally to the Palestinian people, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and recently using “Palestinian” as a pejorative on the campaign trail, he sent a message to Netanyahu to conclude the “Gaza war” by inauguration day.
Trump likely seeks to distance himself from the growing discontent over the Biden administration's perceived weakness in failing to rein in its Israeli junior partner, allowing him to focus on advancing a series of xenophobic, regressive domestic policies aimed at “Making America Great Again.”
Emboldened by Trump's green light and timeline, Netanyahu may escalate his genocidal actions leading up to the inauguration, while a lame-duck President and defeated Vice President lick their wounds and walk off into the sunset, hopefully via The Hague.
That said, Trump is anything but predictable and could very well shift course entirely due to Netanyahu’s persistent grovelling, providing continued imperial backing for belligerent Zionist expansionism.
In their demagoguery, corruption, racism and lack of social conscience, Trump and Netanyahu are mirror fascist images.
They deploy a right-wing, ethnocentric populist appeal with dog whistles and fear-mongering to consolidate their power. Operating above and outside the law, they are both avoiding corruption trials, inhabiting the same unrestrained, tyrannical Hobbesian world.
Essentially, Trump and Netanyahu aim to promote private capital by fragmenting the working class, pushing relentless privatisation of social resources and eroding workers' rights and union protections. They rely on a fabricated white, Western “nation” to advance their nationalist agendas, claiming to protect the purity and security of their in-groups and white, Western interests while promoting a racist capitalist system of global apartheid.
Raised in the shadows of powerful fathers, the two leaders developed a narcissistic need for power, fame and wealth, indulging in corrupt extravagance and throwing spiteful tantrums when challenged.
Their motivations centre on domination, personal gain and the thrill of victory, driven by an insatiable desire to inflate their own grandiose egos. With little regard for integrity or the welfare of others, they routinely scapegoat society’s disadvantaged people to deflect criticism and wield power, prioritising in-group social identity over truth and morality.
Media manipulation is another shared skill. Trump, the reality show star, mastered this during his campaigns, using an array of far-right media networks to spread misinformation, xenophobia and deflect criticism.
Similarly, drawing on skill first honed as a furniture salesman, Netanyahu, the quintessential Teflon politician, has polished the arts of spin, cajolery and propaganda, deftly seizing on the October 7 events to push his agenda unchecked.
With atrocity propaganda eagerly consumed by Israel’s compliant press and promoted by a liberal Zionist “opposition,” he shepherds the Israeli flock to endless war, perpetually delaying his pending corruption trial.
Trump and Netanyahu’s Ur-Fascism
Beyond similarities in their backgrounds, personalities and motivations, Trump and Netanyahu exemplify figureheads of what Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco described as “Ur-fascism.’
Ur-Fascism combines traditionalism, irrationalism and authoritarianism to manipulate and control through several defining traits.
It adopts a cult of tradition, whether a delusion of a once “great” America, or a vast Judean Kingdom, fusing diverse, often contradictory teachings into an unchangeable "truth," rejecting intellectual progress and embracing mysticism to legitimise its ideology. This rejection of modernism ties into an anti-Enlightenment stance, superficially accepting technology yet viewing reason, rationality and liberal values as corrupt.
Irrationalism lies at Ur-Fascism's core, glorifying action over thought and condemning intellectual culture as weak and untrustworthy.
In this environment, disagreement equals betrayal, and questioning established norms is cast as subversive. Thriving on a fear of difference, it fosters racism and xenophobia, uniting followers against outsiders as a trick to divert attention from internal corruption.
Ur-Fascism is nurtured by social frustration, appealing to a disillusioned middle class and those lacking social identity by promoting nationalism and a sense of unity through battles with imagined enemies.
Whether through Trump’s villainisation of immigrants or Netanyahu’s “Amalek,” followers are made to feel both humiliated by and superior to their enemies, creating a contradiction that leads to inevitable defeat.
This struggle manifests in a heroic narrative where death and martyrdom are celebrated. Toxic masculinity further defines Ur-Fascism, with disdain for women and nonstandard sexualities and a fetishisation of violence and weapons.
Misogynoir, deeply embedded in Zionist and American white supremacist ideology, fuses religious and fascistic dogmas to cast non-whites, including immigrants and Palestinians as “demographic threats” while erasing Indigenous female identities and lives.
In place of these identities, a Western femininity is constructed, where women are integrated into male-dominated, capitalist and militaristic structures “whether they like it or not.” In fascistic, genocidal escapades, controlling women, who uphold cultural, reproductive and territorial continuity, symbolises ultimate conquest.
Ur-Fascism’s qualitative populism denies individual rights, presenting the people as a unified entity whose will is interpreted by the leader, bypassing democracy through controlled media and staged public support.
Language is deliberately simplified to suppress critical thinking, reminiscent of Orwell’s Newspeak, often disguised in seemingly innocuous forms like talk shows. Through this web of manipulation, Ur-Fascism ultimately seeks to dismantle rational discourse, undermine democracy and create a society ruled by fear, conformity and unquestioning loyalty to a single leader.
Globalisation of white supremacy
The Trump-aligned Heritage foundation has produced complementary documents which outline the globalisation of American white supremacy and Zionism with “Project 2025” and “Project Esther,” respectively.
The texts, which read like dystopian fascist manifestos, detail plans which attempt to institutionalise apartheid and genocide, with vigilante groups under the guise of ‘self defence’ as enforcers.
Netanyahu’s appointment of Yechiel Leiter — a prominent settler and former member of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), an FBI designated terrorist organisation — as ambassador to the US signals his intent to escalate his campaign in Gaza, push toward the annexation of the West Bank and embolden already manifest fascist Zionist mob attacks with the assistance of Mossad beyond Israel (e.g. Amsterdam, Toronto).
In a possible scenario, if Netanyahu persists in his crusade, Trump could broker one of his signature “deals,” offering to recognise annexation of the West Bank, a move articulated by far-right Israeli Minister Smotrich, in exchange for a halt to Zionist aggression against Lebanon and Iran. Trump could then posture as a “peacemaker,” at the expense of the Palestinian and Lebanese people, of course.
That said, recent reports of an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump may prompt the vindictive President-elect to abandon any thoughts of diplomacy with Iran, aligning perfectly with Netanyahu’s fervent ambitions to pull US forces into a war with Iran in a fascist tag-team effort straight from hell.
This column first appeared at The New Arab.
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Biden Bolstered the US Empire Only to Hand it Off to a Fascist
Rather than considering what it would mean for Trump to take control of the most powerful empire in the world, the Biden administration has spent more time considering how to ensure the empire’s survival.
Nov 15, 2024
One of the lasting legacies of U.S. President Joe Biden will be that he reinvigorated the American empire despite the risk of an increasingly authoritarian Donald Trump returning to lead it.
Over the past four years, President Biden has continually ignored criticisms of U.S. empire and the dangers it poses to the world to direct the empire’s expansion. He has overseen the enlargement of NATO, the exploitation of Ukraine to weaken Russia, a military buildup in the Indo-Pacific to encircle China, and the backing of Israel’s military assaults across the Middle East.
The Biden administration spent the past four years rebooting the American empire, bolstering U.S. imperial power while making some its most brazen moves in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and the Middle East.
To this day, the Biden administration boasts about its imperial maneuvers, even with the knowledge that a far more dangerous Trump administration will soon be in a position to exploit U.S. imperial power for its own purposes.
“I think we’ve done remarkable things,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin marveled on November 7, two days after the election. “We were able to manage challenges and resources—and I think that put us in a pretty good place.”
Rebooting the Empire
When President Biden first entered office in January 2021, one of his top priorities was to restore the global American empire from the chaos of the first Trump administration. Seizing upon the imperial trope of the United States as an organizer of the international system, Biden spoke about the need for the United States to restore order to a chaotic world.
“We are the organizing principle for the rest of the world,” Biden said in 2022.
Despite some initial failures, including the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan, the Biden administration achieved many of its imperial goals, such as the revitalization of U.S. alliances, a major strategic advantage of the United States over its rivals.
Trump has repeatedly asserted that the United States is a nation in decline, seizing upon President Biden’s cognitive decline and some of his imperial failures to insist that the United States is no longer respected. Soon, however, he will find himself in a position to lead a resurgent empire.
After all, the Biden administration spent the past four years rebooting the American empire, bolstering U.S. imperial power while making some its most brazen moves in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and the Middle East.
The Transatlantic System
The Biden administration has significantly reinforced U.S. power in Europe. Although Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has posed a major challenge to the U.S.-led transatlantic system, the Biden administration has turned the situation to its advantage.
Since the start of the Russian invasion, the Biden administration has worked to enlarge and empower NATO, bringing more countries into the alliance while increasing its spending on military operations. There are now more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers stationed across Europe, the largest number since the mid-2000s.
The Biden administration has also taken advantage of the war to weaken Russia. By arming the Ukrainian resistance and imposing powerful sanctions on the Russian economy, the United States has led a concerted effort to entangle Russia in a quagmire. The administration’s basic approach has been to provide Ukraine with enough military assistance to hold its positions against Russia but not enough to push Russia out of the country. According to Austin, the primary reason why Ukrainian soldiers have been able to keep fighting is “because we have provided them the security assistance to be able to do it.”
Despite the approximately 1 million casualties on both sides, administration officials have insisted upon maintaining their approach, prioritizing their goal of making the war into a strategic failure for Russia over the ideal of safeguarding the security and sovereignty of Ukraine.
“What we’ve witnessed and I think what the world has witnessed is a declining superpower in Russia making one of its last-ditch unlawful efforts to go in and seize territory,” State Department official Richard Verma said in September. “This is really a declining power in so many ways and frankly not a very effective military power.”
The Transpacific System
While the Biden administration has strengthened the U.S. position in Europe, it has also reinforced the U.S. position in the Indo-Pacific. Even as China has pushed back against the U.S.-led transpacific system, especially in the South China Sea, the United States has strengthened many of its advantages over China.
One of the Biden administration’s major moves has been to build out the U.S. hub-and-spoke model, the U.S.-led imperial structure that keeps the United States positioned as the dominant hub of the Pacific. Not only has the administration fortified the spokes, or the U.S. allies and partners that encircle China, but it has facilitated multilateral cooperation among the spokes, mainly by working through the Quad and other regional groupings.
In a related move, the Biden administration has intensified U.S. military operations across the region. An estimated 375,000 U.S. soldiers and civilian personnel now operate across the Indo-Pacific, forming the highest concentration of U.S. military service members in a region that extends beyond the United States.
President Biden’s legacy will be the handover of a resurgent American empire to “the most dangerous person” in America.
“In the Indo-Pacific, I think we are seeing a resurgent United States,” Defense Department official Ely Ratner commented last year.
Complementing its military moves, the Biden administration has bolstered U.S. economic power. As it has worked to decouple China from multiple sectors of the U.S. economy, it has spearheaded the formation of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which reinforces the U.S. position as the center of economic power in the Pacific.
“Contrary to the predictions that the PRC would overtake the United States in GDP either in this decade or the next, since President Biden took office, the United States has more than doubled our lead,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan boasted in October.
The Middle East
Of all the signs of a resurgent American empire, however, perhaps none is more telling than U.S. action in the Middle East. Over the past year, the Biden administration has made it clear that the United States is more capable than ever to spread havoc and destruction across the region.
Since Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack against Israel, the Biden administration has openly backed Israel’s military assaults across the Middle East, all with little consequence for the United States. The Arab states in the region may have once countered Israel by going to war or organizing oil embargoes against the United States, but they have done little to deter the United States from backing Israel’s military operations. In fact, the Arab states are now more likely to come to Israel’s defense, just as they did when they helped Israel counter Iran’s missile attacks in April and October.
The Biden administration may sometimes criticize Israel for how it has conducted its military operations, especially given the fact that Israel has laid waste to Gaza, but through it all, administration officials have been quietly satisfied with how they have enabled Israel to conduct military operations without facing any major retaliation. The Biden administration’s imperial management of the region demonstrates that the United States is now so powerful that it can unleash its strategic asset on the Middle East without having to engage in a wider war.
“I think we’ve done a magnificent job there,” Austin mused earlier this month, taking pride in U.S. imperial achievements while displaying little concern for the people of Gaza or the Israeli hostages who are still being held by Hamas.
The Future Under Trump
As the Biden administration has recharged the American empire, it has never stopped to question its actions. Not even internal dissent within the State Department and other federal agencies over the administration’s complicity in the destruction of Gaza has led to any kind of reckoning over the manner in which it has employed imperial violence around the world.
Perhaps most telling has been the Biden administration’s response to charges that Trump is a fascist. Top administration officials have agreed with the assessments, some made by leading scholars of fascism and others issued by former high-level officials in the first Trump administration. But leaders in the Biden administration have never questioned their belief that they must do everything they can to strengthen the U.S. empire.
Rather than considering what it would mean for a fascist to take control of the most powerful empire in the world, the Biden administration has spent more time considering how to ensure the empire’s survival. In recent months, one of its top priorities has been to “Trump-proof” the empire, meaning that administration officials are searching for ways to ensure that U.S. imperial structures survive the chaos of a second Trump presidency.
Now that Trump’s reelection is here, however, the Biden administration is facing a far more disturbing reality. President Biden’s legacy will be the handover of a resurgent American empire to “the most dangerous person” in America, all with dire implications not just for the people who are targets of Trump’s wrath but for the many people around the world who are victims of U.S. imperial practices.
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