The unbridled rise of the extreme right induces the use of a characteristic lexicon, between indicative and descriptive, in which the references to Nazism and fascism stand out. At best, for the sake of a hasty update of both labels, one speaks of neo-fascists and neo-Nazis, but the antecedents of both ideological plots they are so far from our ‘zeitgeist’ that the prefix neo can be considered excessive. Because there are roots in the ultra thought of our time that go back to the years immediately after the end of the First World War, it is even possible to recognize an exciting power in the memory of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, although the societies and policies of the 21st century present so many new elements that only a few classic authors serve to clarify the origin of what is happening today.
Of the dozen reasons from different authors that Stanley G. Payne collects in ‘Fascism’ to explain the reason for the promotions of the Duce and the Führer, the following formulation is valid for the present, more than any other: the coming to power of both was “the consequence of a determining phase of socioeconomic growth or a phase in the development process & rdquor ;. For Edgar Morin, who wrote it 20 years ago, the irruption of the extreme right in our days is the result of globalization –another phase– that creates islands of wealth, but also growing areas of poverty, both phenomena triggered by a westernization that encompasses the world “But it provokes as a reaction identity, ethnic, religious and national closures & rdquor ;.
Reading Hannah Arendt’s famous essay ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ illuminates the path to reach the springs that the extreme right handles to capture the attention of social layers that fear a gloomy future: “The famous extremism of totalitarian movements, far from having nothing to do with true radicalism, It consists, of course, in this ‘thinking about everything until reaching the worst’, in this deductive process that always reaches the worst possible conclusions & rdquor ;. Thus, radicalism is not in the rationale for radical solutions for complex problems, but in the announcement of the apocalypse around the corner. Edgar Morin says – he again – that the distancing of the big parties from the social pact that they themselves promoted in the postwar it has made things enormously easier for the preachers of the extreme right.
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Among the worst possible conclusions evoked by Hannah Arendt are those included by Oswald Spengler –early years of the 20th century– in ‘The Decline of the West’, that its author defined as the philosophy of his time. The alleged deterioration of the West, of Western culture, of the heritage received from the ancestors, composes an image of devastation, ruin and degradation that largely corresponds to the proclamations of the extreme right within the global village. Nationalism, aversion to democracy, the defense of a saving Caesarism are in Spengler’s book and, as the historian Peter Watson explains in tune with the analyzes of Payne and Arendt, they prefigure the path taken a century later by the European ultra parties: populism, anti-Europeanism, sacralization of the idea of nation, contestation of the new social realities, different forms of xenophobia, etc.
That reborn extreme right has found the fertile ground to leave the marginality in a relatively short period of time without, moreover, having required a thorough revision of the slogans of the past. The chained crises, the impoverishment of the middle classes, the accommodating behavior of social democracy, the poor management of migratory flows are enough factors, among many others, to cause the current landslide and justify the prefix neo. But a link survives with the bombastic demagoguery that led Europe to disaster, now amplified by social media, by techniques of intoxication and propaganda of unsuspected effectiveness that yes, they authorize the neo, but only for its technological novelty; not, by the way, because of the content and intention of the messages, which are those of yesteryear.