Authoritarianism in the West is an ogre with two heads. One head is obviously the aggressive neo-fascist as embodied by obscenities like Donald Trump. They glorify racism, territorial expansion, misogyny, imperialism. They revel in their war crimes and lack of accountability. They take aim at international law and institutions. They boast about their repressive tactics and say the quiet parts out loud. They are a grotesque cabal of religious extremists, ethno-supremacists, and trans-humanists. Trump 1.0 was proto-fascism; Trump 2.0 is neo-fascism.
The neo-fascist is the larger, more aggressive head. The other head is smaller, slightly more eloquent and refined. This is the corporate centrist and embodies the kind of authoritarianism we currently see in Canada, the UK, France, Germany.
These governments are authoritarian because of their surveillance policies, their censorship of free speech (in Canada as embodied by the crackdown on anti-genocide protests, the banning of musicians from the country, the detention at the border of UN human rights officials), their militarized policing (the RCMP raids against the Wet'suwet'en), their ballooning military spending (dependent on foreign corporations such as Palantir and Microsoft), their relentless pursuit of climate-incinerating infrastructure.
These “centrists” exploit the very palpable fear and revulsion at the neo-fascists to the degree they live in a symbiotic relationship with them. Their neoliberal policies precisely create the economic devastation that fuels the racist backlash of neo-fascism. Their resistance to the fascists is wholly rhetorical and performative, as they are in fact collaborators.
If one mutes the inclusive, more stoic rhetoric of these "liberals" and pays attention to their policies, the picture becomes strikingly clear and frightening. The Liberal government broke new ground with its Orwellian surveillance bill. Bill C-22, which has now cleared the House of Commons and stands before the Senate, is the envy of any surveillance state. It is a direct assault on privacy that would effectively allow government to monitor who we talk to, where we go, and what services we use even if we are not suspected of a crime. It also expands the sharing of our personal data with foreign law enforcement – and you can guess with who in particular.
If you are Canadian, I urge you to protest and oppose this bill:
But that's not all. Under the guise of sovereignty, Liberals (hand in hand with the Conservatives) have now managed to create zones and projects of "national interest." The so-called "Building Canada Strong Act" aims to approve climate-incinerating oil pipelines through unceded Indigenous territory without proper democratic consultation. They perversely nationalize these monstrous projects. They make taxpayers complicit in the destruction of the habitable conditions of the world, while private oil companies are the ones who largely benefit from the infrastructure.
These projects are deemed in the "national interest" of Canada. So what are people who oppose the “national interest” called? In my mind C-39 and C-22 lay the groundwork to persecute environmental activists, Indigenous land defenders, and the Left in general, as we can easily be branded as traitors or terrorists to the country, when in fact the country is being privatized and turned into an open auction house. The "national interest" is also used as a weapon against the right to strike and curb worker rights even amid a cost of living crisis.
The story is no different in the UK, as evidenced by their treatment of anti-genocide protestors. The repression of students in France and Germany speaks volumes of the cruelty and brutality of those governments.
The centrist and neo-fascist heads share one body: they are the business party. The more advanced a capitalist society, or the more chronic its capitalism, the more its democratic choices narrow into this two-party system that is really one. Neoliberalism, techno-fascism, surveillance capitalism, neo-fascism – what all these terms really mean is a corporate dictatorship.
Mark Carney may have successfully harnessed the repulsiveness of Donald Trump to push his agenda (most of it to the glee of foreign corporations). But in the end only one head remains. Like Ungolino in Dante's Inferno, the neo-fascist head devours its liberal rival.
As Daniel Guerin wrote, what is fascism except the failure to achieve socialism.