Fascist Nostalgia
There is a way of looking backward that has its roots in some of the ugliest and worst-intentioned impulses borne of human psychology. Umberto Eco, in his essay, Ur Fascism outlines 14 salient indicators of fascism and at least two of these are built on a sort of fascist nostalgia that attempts to undermine a potential future. So, we’re looking back as a means of derailing a future. The question then becomes, how do we do that? One of the most effective ways of accomplishing this is through the use of moral panic.
Moral panic has been used throughout history as a way of creating a separation between one group of people and another. Its history dates back millennia and the first known victims of moral panic were Christians under Nero’s Rome who were blamed for a great fire. Nero was successfully able to dehumanize the Christian population as grounds for aggression and oppression. Once Christianity rose to power (it is unlikely that the individuals changed places, only the religion) the tactic was used against the Gnostics first, then the Jews, and most recently, the transgender population. In one lone instance, moral panic has been used against a non-human. That would be the moral panic created by AI.
When I say that the anti-AI crowd employed the rhetoric of fascism to derail recent advances in generative AI, I mean that literally. The rhetoric went far enough that it began invoking fears over pedophilia and the potential for AI to be used by pedophiles as a sort of cybersex. As if pedophiles could not use writing already to accomplish this. Ultimately, the entire case against AI appealed to a past that never existed, relationships that were already strained under capitalism, and a sense of algia for a time when things were better.
In other words, we’re looking at a social panic borne of a grieving process.
One standard to rule them all and in the darkness bind them
There is an impulse to control within the broader spectrum of society by establishing a single standard against which all people are judged. Any deviation from this standard results in social control mechanisms being activated. For example, the Church had us living under a paradigm of sexual self-disgust and mistrust for millennia. We now realize that we do not need religion to feel this way, and this has largely liberated us from the One-Standard of sex for procreation only. This is just one example because we did the same with religion, politics, standards of masculinity, and standards of femininity.
And so, any non-conforming individual would be compared against this standard, and from there, two possibilities emerge. Their non-conformity will either be negatively reinforced (as in, provided no or less benefit) or punished (society will actively work against their non-conformity). In an extremely limited number of instances, their non-conforming status will work to their benefit.
Before we make this purely about identity, let us move elsewhere to an even more abstract concept, the status quo. The reactionary impulse to preserve the status quo is also rooted in fascist nostalgia. In fact, the concept I have built is reducible to the reactionary impulse to preserve the status quo. The playbook that unfolds from this impulse is predictable. I find it less true to say that fascism itself is an ideology (though Nazism may be). I find it more likely that fascism is the result of a reactionary grieving process that occurs during periods of overwhelming uncertainty and fear.
A personal aside
Oh, I know this feeling well. Maybe not in a political arena. I compartmentalize well. But in my personal life, longing for a dead past has deadened my soul. No one is immune from fascist nostalgia. It’s the pull of grief into a Nieztchean abyss that not only stares back into you, but knows your next ten moves.
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