A political world reveals itself in what it tolerates, but above all in what it legitimizes. Seeing identity politics take root, the trivialization of targeted violence, symbolic gestures blurring fundamental reference points: all this paints a picture of an era in which the unacceptable is gradually ceasing to cause scandal. Fascist tendencies do not always impose themselves by force. They progress through habituation.
But this habituation is not spontaneous. It stems from a system in crisis, from a social and economic logic that can only be maintained through hardening, withdrawal, and exclusion—trajectories that history shows can lead to the elimination of lives considered superfluous.
Capitalism facing its own limits
The dynamics of global capitalism—of the Megamachine—expose its fundamental contradiction: “grow or die,” a logic of infinite expansion confronted with a finite world. This tension is no longer cyclical but has become historical.
Climate, biodiversity, resources, oceans: planetary limits now reveal the dead ends of a model whose imbalances are turning into lasting ecological and social disasters.
Deprived of a positive outlook—no widespread prosperity, peace, or security—the system nevertheless never rethinks its foundations. It maintains itself through other means: repression, division, and the exploitation of fears.
Authoritarianism, fascist logic, and the state
In this context, political power does not truly change in nature; it makes its historical function more visible. The state, structurally committed to reproducing the dominant order and its capitalist logic, can no longer truly mask this logic. What was once a matter of ideological mediation is now more directly visible, more naked, more immediately readable by all.
Historically, the state form has developed in close connection with the logic of accumulation, but also through colonization, exploitation, and structural violence. The expansion of modern states remains inseparable from the process of appropriation, dispossession, and forced hierarchization of lives. Some major state constructions bear this mark explicitly: slavery, genocide, expropriation, and systematic destruction are not marginal features of history, but the very conditions of the constitution of the modern order.
The contemporary normalization of authoritarian tendencies is therefore not an anomaly. When the promises of integration are exhausted, regulation gives way to control. But when control becomes permanent, it ceases to be a simple instrument of government: it tends to become a structuring principle of social organization itself. At this stage, it is no longer just a matter of containing or administering, but of permanently embedding society in systems of surveillance, coercion, and discipline.
Recent analyses show that what some call “21st-century fascism” is not simply a return to the same, but rather an exacerbated fusion of transnational capital and repressive power: extended control, the primacy of order, and hypertrophied security. In this reading, these developments cease to appear marginal and become one of the structural effects of the crises of global capitalism.
Fascist formations and social logic
These transformations are not solely the result of institutional mechanisms. They also find expression in social configurations and political formations with relative autonomy.
The history of fascism reminds us that it does not arise solely as a decision of the state or a conscious strategy of the economic elites. It also unfolds as a social movement, rooted in material anxieties, real or perceived downgrading, and collective disorientation. Prolonged crises, economic instability, and the erosion of symbolic frameworks favor the emergence of simplistic narratives capable of transforming uncertainty into identity-based antagonisms.
In this context, the logic of social separation and fragmentation plays a decisive role. A society riddled with isolation, competition, and widespread mistrust is particularly fertile ground for support for political projects based on exclusion, scapegoating, and the false promise of a restored order. These mechanisms do not therefore operate solely from the top down; they are also fueled by the imbalances produced by social organization itself.
Understanding these processes therefore requires moving beyond overly simplistic oppositions between “state” fascism and “street” fascism. The forms we observe are the result of complex interactions between economic crises, political realignments, cultural transformations, and social disintegration.
These trends are already evident in France, Europe, and elsewhere: the legitimization of identity-based discourse pitting “us” against “them,” the normalization of targeted violence—whether physical or institutional—and the proliferation of political and media gestures that blur normative lines. These phenomena are not isolated; they are gradually shifting the threshold of what is tolerable, often without visible rupture, but through insidious shifts.
Why these processes are taking hold
As systemic crises intensify, dominant institutions are struggling to produce mobilizing responses. In the absence of a transformative horizon, they favor strategies for maintaining power—more commonly referred to as maintaining order—opening up an ever-wider space for repressive logics based on fear, insecurity, and social fragmentation. This fragmentation finds its most accomplished form in what can be called generalized separation.
Separation is not just a matter of visible or circumstantial divisions. It refers to a structural condition of social relations in advanced market societies: separation between individuals, between everyday life and politics, between human beings and the material conditions of their existence. It also refers to the separation between lived experiences and the representations that mediate them.
Far from being a dysfunction, this dissociation is one of the central mechanisms for stabilizing the dominant order. A fragmented society, riddled with mistrust and organized loneliness, becomes easier to govern: conflict is dispersed, resistance is atomized, and consciousness is isolated.
What we call crisis then appears in a different light: not as a sudden rupture, but as an intensification of logics already embedded in the heart of social functioning. The contemporary extension of control, surveillance, and security measures only reinforces a deeper dynamic: the gradual distancing of individuals from any effective collective power.
As social ecology reminds us, this separation is not simply political or institutional; it is becoming anthropological. It shapes subjectivities, redefines perceptions, and establishes isolation as the implicit norm of social existence. Moreover, this dynamic is not limited to the national level. It cuts across contemporary societies and is unfolding on a global scale.
Everywhere, political forces are exploiting ecological, economic, and social uncertainty to legitimize authoritarian responses that will only make matters worse. The illusion of security becomes a powerful lever of power in societies anxious about the future.
Resisting the abandonment of the common good
Yet nothing imposes historical inevitability. Human societies are not closed mechanisms, condemned to indefinitely reproduce the logic that governs them. Hope does not lie in abstract expectation, but in the collective ability to recognize the dynamics at work and to reopen the field of possibilities.
The contemporary rise of fascist-like authoritarianism is not just a symptom; it acts as a revelation and, implicitly, as a call to resistance and reorganization. Resistance cannot be reduced to a defensive posture in the face of increasingly visible forms of domination. It is about imagining and building other modes of social existence, based on interdependence and mutual aid rather than competition, on solidarity rather than exclusion.
Such a perspective is not an abstract utopia. It involves an eminently concrete project: developing communal spaces, networks of cooperation, and democratic practices capable of putting the common good back at the center of social life. For history remains a field of struggle, and the advancing shadow should not be read as a conclusion, but as a signal.
Faced with the normalization of the unacceptable, the urgent task is to preserve our common humanity as a political compass. As long as the logic of accumulation and domination remains intact, fascistic dynamics will continue to erode our societies and narrow their horizons.
Rebounds:
- “FASCIST” – Social Ecology ABC
- ICE: the shadow police — A fascistic symptom of a darkening world
[…] When the shadow becomes the norm […]