Let me explain why I chose photographs of glorious sunflowers as an antidote to today’s musings about Fascism 101.

The term fascism is a derivative of fasces, a bundle of reeds that stand stiff when bound together while flailing alone, containing an axe, symbolizing the state’s power over life and death.

It was a logo for fascism in the early days. Meloni’s FdI uses a tricolor burning flame, which can be found on Mussolini’s tomb. And closer to home, a lot of neo-Nazis and other modern white supremacists have adopted the symbol of a sun wheel or black sun, used by Nazi Germany, the Nazi Party, the SA and the SS as “Sonnenrad” in their time. I figured real sunflowers, with their life-affirming color, their petals like flames, their meaning in the struggle against oppressors (think Ukraine,) and their ability to brighten our mood in dark days, would be the perfect counterbalance.

Given my mental preoccupation with the Italian elections and their potential implications for Europe, never mind the vulnerable sections of society in the country itself, I went back to Robert O. Paxton‘s 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism. It explains the distinctly 20th century political innovation (with some hints at precursors like tyranny, dictatorship and despotism) and its shapeshifting nature. Fascism has no constant doctrine, no core principles, adopting many forms to reach and exercise power, an absolute power affecting individual freedoms. The good news: he conceptualizes the rise of fascism as requiring a run through 5 stages – and only twice have all 5 been reached: in Mussolini’s rise to power and in Hitler’s regime. All other attempts have failed, and not for lack of trying.

The first stage is Protofascim. Movements arise that promise change when the population is disillusioned or upset with the failures of government and has lost trust in current leadership. Para-governmental organizations are founded that lure with a promise of brotherhood and power to make things right. Ideas often center around purity, a mythological past, and belonging. Typical examples include: encouragement of of racism which establishes an “us vs. them” (belonging and status,) touts purity (superior vs. inferior genetics,) stokes anti-Semitism which serves to establish scapegoats (international financiers…) or xenophobia (those immigrants are going to replace you) and often pursues a radical ideology regarding reproduction (more -white- babies) to enlarge a power base.

Stage 2 is Rooting. The proto-fascist movements now seek to gain footholds in local politics (School boards, Governor Races,) promising help for the disadvantaged and those who feel demoted or excluded. Eventually fascists enter national politics, making use of democracy to get voted in. Taking advantage of gridlock within 2 or more party systems in liberal democracies, the newcomers step in and are often supported by the conservative right who is willing to form alliances with far right parties in shared opposition to the dreaded Left. (Remember the very first victims of the Holocaust were persecuted Marxists.)

Stage 3 is the Acquisition of Power. It has never happened though a military coup, but through alignments and alliances with the conservative bloc within liberal democracy. The center-right underestimates the power of the far-right wing, thinking of extremists as clowns, fools or idiots, convinced they can control them. (Ask President Hindenburg or King Emanuel about that…) Before the traditional powers know it, they will have been subverted.

Stage 4 refers to the Exercise of Power. Fascists gain power through alliances with different groups, the military, parties, the church, and business leaders. As such they compromise their own “ideology,” the prior promises to help the powerless, but that does not disturb them. One of the hallmarks of fascism is that its proponents laugh at principles, much less uphold them. If working with capitalist interest or conservative elites wields power, so be it. Denial, redirection and confusion are part of the playbook.

In the interest of intermittent levity, here is a short clip of a German satire with English translations. You’ll see in a minute why I chose it.

Stage 5 is defined as radicalism or entropy – Hitler radicalized, overstretched his empire with the invasion of Russia which lead to the eventual collapse of the Reich. Mussolini could not deliver on his promises and was run out of office after the allied invasion of the South of Italy.

In Italy, but also in the US, we are seeing some of these stages unfolding in real time. Individual freedoms – bodily autonomy, the ability to choose who to have sex with or marry, when to abort, how to define ones own gender – are under attack. Racial differences are put in the spotlight and claimed to hurt the traditional segments of the population that believed itself to be at the top of the hierarchy: Immigrants are coming to take your jobs, your women, Blacks are rivals via affirmative action, usurping your college placements, etc. The radical Right is allowed to agitate against Muslims, and the media, with a wink and a nod from the center right parties for whom this serves a purpose.

A German article in the weekly Die Zeit, Boomer Fascism, alas not translated, warns of trivialization of the current developments we are seeing in Italy, Hungary, Sweden and the US. Beginning with the fact that fascism is not named, he compares the situation to a smoldering fire, with the underground ideology erupting in flames once conditions are right. According to the author, Georg Diez, the cause for these recent rightward swings lies in the long-lasting effects of the 2008 financial crash and recession, which, among others, led to unchecked privatization and subsequent obscene increases in inequality.

"As a reminder: the crisis was caused by radical deregulation, by artificial bubbles in the real estate sector, for example, by fraudulent practices, speculation, profit-seeking, greed - and the solution was to provide existential help to those who were to blame for the whole thing, while those who were the victims of the charades had to foot the bill. It was all a form of expropriation after 2008, the most massive bottom-up redistribution in such a short time. With low interest rates you couldn't help but get richer and richer in the decade that followed - if you already had money beforehand. The others sagged, more and more and more, the lower classes anyway and increasingly the middle class. Fear and tension were the result, aggression and aversion increased."

(The link to the article contains a number of books and scholarly treatises he cites, dealing with the consequence of Austerity, the hallmark of political decision making that was profoundly undemocratic. Many of the books are in English, if you are interested in further reading.)

It’s not like we shouldn’t know better. Watch (again, I presume) this American educational propaganda clip from the 1940s).

Here is today’s music.