What's Left of Philosophy
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88 | On Late Fascism w/ Alberto Toscano
🕑 Added 2024-05-02 10:00:00 +0000 UTCIn this episode, we are joined by Alberto Toscano to talk about his analysis of contemporary far-right movement and ideology. We discuss his new book Late Fascism and consider the strategic and rhetorical downsides of analogizing the present moment to past instantiations of fascist politics in Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. We try to get a grip on what distinguishes contemporary fascism, why liberal discourse’s fixation on ‘totalitarianism’ fails to grasp the specificity of fascism, and ask what Black and third-world scholars can teach us on this score.
leftofphilosophy.com | @leftofphil
References:
Alberto Toscano, Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis (New York: Verso, 2023).
Music:
“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com
“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN
Comments
Michael Xin
This is unrelated to the episode, but I'd love to hear what you guys think of Prof Gabriel Rockhill. Here's a link to a recent interview he gave about the compatible left https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSWe6v0Wn5c
Neil C
I’m glad psychoanalysis was brought up in the conversation; I think it provides a much-needed supplement (not opposition) to materialist theory. The fantasy of an undivided identity can lead one to act against material interests, and perhaps the definition of fascism is taking this fantasy to the extreme -genocide. Dialectics here can be applied, since the realization of the genocidal project results in the death of the fascist movement.
Sosation
I enjoyed the podcast. However i couldn't stop thinking that Alberto has the cadence, timbre, and articulation of Tom Leher. https://youtu.be/oRLON3ddZIw?si=SWZTlJkgemdxn30h
Sam Schick
I lost the thread 2/3 of the way through. I understand limiting the use of term to prevent the obfuscation and misclassification of the symptoms of neoliberalism but i couldn’t tell what the argument was towards the end. Some of his qualifiers for fitting into a fascist frame seem to be mass conscription and/or a populace that is experienced in combat or aspects of it along with a vague ideological bent and some sort of economic imperative. It would be interesting to see that framework superimposed over Israel and Palestine to see how well that fits in his hypothesis.
