We throw these words around so much that they start losing meaning...
Everything is "fascist" now: a boss, a law, a politician. If everything is fascist, then nothing is.
So what is fascism?
I'm not going to give you an academic lecture. You can find tons of references about the historical definition of fascism(s) by yourself.
I will give you my definition. The Grey Zone definition.
Fascism in the Grey Zone
Fascism is not an ideology. It is a technique of perception and power.
It does not live in books but in mechanisms that capture the real.
Fascism simplifies. It reduces complexity to slogans. It turns fear into obedience. It is not a vision of the future, but a machine for mobilization.
1. Ontology of ambiguity
Fascism thrives in the grey.
- It is neither left nor right (Sternhell).
- It is a style rather than a doctrine (Eco).
- It is practice before theory (Paxton, Arendt).
It survives by absorbing contradictions: revolution and tradition, socialism and nationalism, chaos and order... as long as they mobilize the masses!
Fascism is not stable: it is fluid, adaptive and opportunistic.
2. Perception management
Fascism is a setting of the collective gaze.
- It fabricates an illusion of unity: one people, one will, one destiny.
- It constructs an enemy to explain every fracture: the Jew, the foreigner, the cosmopolitan elite.
- It reduces language into slogans and myths, making complexity unreadable.
It is a cognitive cage: the world feels simple, binary, urgent... and ALWAYS directed toward struggle and the enemy.
3. The economy of fear and myth
Fascism recycles anxiety into obedience.
- Fear of difference → demand for purity.
- Fear of decline → myth of rebirth.
- Fear of chaos → vertical order.
4. Network of powers
Fascism is not purely mass movement, nor purely elite project. It is a hybrid system.
- Elites see it as a shield against instability.
- Masses embrace it as revenge for frustration.
- Entrepreneurs of violence profit from it as a marketplace for their skills.
Fascism reconciles revolution and reaction into a single authoritarian project.
So from this perspective, fascism is a form of internal cognitive warfare.
It converts ambiguity into mobilization.
It reprograms perception into a single "truth".
It polarizes society into machines of loyalty and betrayal.
Fascism is not a doctrine but a governance protocol. It is the strategic use of ambiguity, fear, and myth to mobilize society by manufacturing enemies and reducing complexity into binary choices. Fascism is a protocol of mobilization.
Fascism is therefore not a political color but a STRUCTURE OF MIND.
Any movement that defines itself only by the enemy, sanctifies purity, and justifies violence in the name of a higher good, is reproducing the fascist matrix.
The trigger: Trump and Antifa
The reason I write this piece now is because Trump called "Antifa" a "terrorist organization". And I realized: most people don't even know what Antifa is.
