#1: Investigating the New Radical Ideology
After Marxism, After Fascism, What?
The 20th century was driven by revolutionary ideologies. Sure, there were social and military reasons for the ugly birth of communism in Russia, as there were for the repulsive rise of fascism in Italy. These regimes had their causes in politics, war, economic crisis, and nation-specific historical development. But they were brought into being, in addition, by more-or-less coherent conglomerations of ideas, ones with little previous precedent. Though opposed to each other in practice, the new ideologies of the time had much in common, not least their totalitarianism. Their loyal followers—the ideologues—disdained the received world, seeing it as unheroic and bland, degrading and repressive, or alienating and unjust, and sought its radical remaking. They sought reconstructed societies to be populated by new and better men, pending the elimination of the reactionaries who stood in the way.
We are so accustomed to viewing the world in received ideological categories that we have not recognized the rise of new, world-altering doctrines in our own time. My contention in forthcoming posts is that we are seeing the rise of new revolutionary doctrines, but they are still incipient, still coming into being. Some are barely compatible. Their bearers struggle to put the ideas together into coherent conglomerations, because they lack a single Marx. Radical intellectuals vie with each other for credit in steering disparate tendencies toward toward a new revolutionary doctrine. It’s not there yet but its outlines are becoming visible.
In an article now ten years old, I call it the ideology of purity, or—though it’s a mouthful—purificationism. Though it is largely an ideology of the Left, it incorporates features reminiscent of fascism: mass street mobilization, rejection of bourgeois values, identitarianism or idolization of community, volkish trust in the indigene, disregard for freedom as a fundamental value, distrust in republican institutions, cultic dedication to the destructive deed with little heed to viability of outcomes, and reliance on “structural” explanations so vague that they become etherealized conspiracy theories.
A feature not found in earlier ideologies is the alliance between advocates for purity of environment and activists for the purity of communities, each sensing existential pollution. The first foresees environmental apocalypse; the second observes further repression through new forms of techno-colonization; both under the thrall of a colonial-militarist-capitalist-globalist empire. It is a monstrosity so vast that it manipulates knowledge itself, such that ordinary opinion, common sense, tradition, and rationality are just means of domination.
The perpetrator of the cosmic evil, the one who prevents the better world from coming into being, is on the one hand America, or its right-wing or its corporations, and on the other hand the most fiendish evildoer of of all, the Zionist. We have entered a world in which one-time Nazi ravings about world Jewry are indistinguishable from today’s neoprogressive abomination of Israel.
Distinguished authors and careful scholars have written for over a century about possibilities for left-fascist convergence. They found it in the initial situations in which both Marxism and fascism arose; again during the interwar years when their totalitarian commonalities became obvious, and once again during the period of student revolts in the 1960s-1980s. Contrary to the refrain that “left-wing fascism” is a dictionary impossibility and a mere insult, I will show that there is a long history of carefully argued observations about left-fascism. The observers range from moderate to left-wing to conservative—few are reactionary supporters of old regimes. Ideology Detective will investigate these works, in search of implications for today. My preliminary view is that left-fascism itself has evolved since the 1930s, and is now taking on new forms.
I am writing Ideology Detective because I myself an embarking on these investigations. I want to figure out the new ideology of global purity, document its features, and if my initial concepts fall short, to learn and improve as I go along. The job is so large and complex that I do not yet know how to outline it. So articles will appear in somewhat random order. Think of the Ideology Detective’s reports as pieces of a manuscript, in which the sections have became scrambled. With luck, the pieces will eventually fit into a complete, organized work, minus the false starts and mistakes that won’t make it into the final proof. I hope you will help me along the way.
Note: I wrote my first serious attempt on this topic in “Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For,” Orbis [Philadelphia] Winter 2010. I don’t believe it was wrong but it missed some points and needs updating and elaboration. The article pdf follows immediately below.
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First Version: June 13, 2024