CRMEP Public Lecture 7 – Samir Gandesha (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) 'Transgressive Populism or Techno-Fascism?'

Over the past decade, the concept of fascism has returned with a vengeance in attempts to understand the planetary shift to the far-right. As several commentators have rightly indicated, the fascism of the 1920s and 1930s is considerably different from the fascism that appears to be shaping the politics of the contemporary global order. The latter has been understood along two distinct axes. The first holds that it is a species of authoritarian populism in which movements purporting to embody or personify the will of the “people” are driven to transgress every moral, epistemic and aesthetic limit in manifesting sovereign power. The second mainatins that contemporary fascism is a form of what has been referred to as “technofascism,” which has been given politico-philosophical shape by “Dark Enlightenment” thinkers such as Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin who articulate starkly anti-democratic positions. While the first form could be said to undermine liberal democracy from within by pushing it in an increasingly “illiberal” direction, the second form brazenly attacks the very idea of democracy from without, by explicitly stating its incompatibility with capitalist social relations.  In this lecture, I will pose the question as to which explanation best grasps the contemporary authoritarian turn and how can it be opposed.