Fascism, with all of its permutations and historically-specific variables, is sometimes described colloquially as capitalism in crisis, sometimes as capitalism with its gloves off. But what are these gloves? With its gloves off capitalism is at its most ruthless. And ruthless means the lack of ruth, the lack of compassion. According to this description, then, fascism is capitalism without compassion, capitalism’s drive to appropriate, conquer, exploit, enslave, released from all limits, pure barbarism. But if fascism is capitalism without compassion then we can also see capitalism, and describe capitalism, as fascism with compassion, as compassionate fascism.
This brings to mind the time when, at the beginning of this millennium, George W. Bush described himself as a “compassionate conservative.” In so doing he implicitly acknowledged that in its default state conservatism lacks compassion. And because those so-called conservatives are ardent capitalists, and because they generally lack compassion, Bush’s self-description demonstrated that, for all practical purposes, conservatives are compassionless capitalists — or, in other words, fascists. This may have been less clear to many 20 years ago. It should be obvious today.
While the fascist is devoid of compassion, however, the fascist is certainly not devoid of passion. The fascist is ignited by a particular type of passion, one born from fear and overcompensated for by guns, violence, braggadocio, the worship of power, and an accompanying hatred of fear and weakness; it is above all a passion for security.
This fear propels the potential fascist toward something promising order and stability. Goaded by terror, in classic primate behavior they then impose this on others. And because this panicked search for safety and security precludes critical reflection, they are susceptible to the generally violent, readymade order of patriarchal, power-worshipping religion, custom and tradition. So many of their techniques, scapegoating and conspiracy theories foremost among them, arise from their attempts to fuse these two, their fear-born desire for safety and a power system, capitalism, that undermines safety everywhere.
But if fascism is capitalism without compassion (focused on power, exploitation and profit, irrespective of the fact that it’s rendering the planet unlivable) one must ask: where does capitalism’s, admittedly meager, store of compassion come from? Obviously, it comes from many places. But it must always come from a place outside of, and contrary to, capitalism (the banal communism of concern for one’s neighbor, of communal sharing and empathy that is at the heart of so many of the world’s religions, weakened sufficiently to be useful, of course).
It is from this direction, from outside of capitalism (from beyond capitalism) that fascism is most vulnerable to attack, where its lies and weaknesses become most visible. The fascists’ passion for the nation and privatization, inextricable from their passion for security, can be shown to be fundamentally murderous and stupid by a com-passion that leads beyond the nation, and the nation-state, and private property, to what we share, in common, the actual security of a socialized, decommodified economy, that prioritizes the “general welfare” — that is, a world ecology — over the particular welfare of the wealthy; one that instead of manufacturing scarcity and insecurity and threatening poverty and homelessness and disease at every turn dedicates itself to eliminating these injustices. Perhaps this is why the Democratic Party seems incapable of meaningfully opposing fascism. As they have become, in essence, compassionate fascists, actual opposition to fascism runs counter to their operating program.
