Joan Braune, Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements: From Void to Hope. London: Routledge, 2024; 143pp. ISBN: 978-0367696986.
Reviewed by D.Z. Shaw, Douglas College
Within the small but growing field of antifascist studies, and the even smaller subfield of philosophies of antifascism, Joan Braune’s Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements is a welcome and insightful intervention. From the outset, she argues that fascism must be understood both as a social movement that must be countered by revolutionary social movements and as a path to meet certain emotional or psychological needs that must be countered by practices of prevention and avenues for exit that are not captured by what she calls the counter-extremism and deradicalization industries. As Braune writes, “the basic premise of this book is that strategies for fighting fascism often break down by excluding one or the other of these two dimensions…and that part of the contribution that scholars can make…is to clarify each of these dimensions and bring into clarity [their] interaction and interdependence” (2). Indeed, most militant antifascist literature focuses exclusively on fascism and the far right as social movements, while harboring strong reservations toward what is commonly called “deradicalization,” due to the dangers involved with that kind of work and due to warranted skepticism toward what are commonly called “formers” in antifascist spaces. This skepticism is warranted, in my view, because some, sometimes prominent, formers seem to be more inclined to renounce the impulse to commit violent acts based on their bigoted and chauvinistic beliefs more than the beliefs themselves (it is also worth noting that they could maintain these beliefs in a more moderate form and still be seen, within the world of “deradicalization,” to have been successfully reintegrated into mainstream society, since a variety of bigoted and chauvinist beliefs are fostered within the mainstream society itself). To her credit, Braune repeatedly foregrounds similar reservations. But, drawing on critical theory and Erich Fromm in particular, she outlines how such practices could be oriented—outside of the counter-extremism and deradicalization industries—within spaces of “culture, community, dialogue, and philosophical questioning…that challenge capitalist alienation” (11). Despite my own reservations, I find this to be an illuminating and important part of her book.
Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements is divided into four chapters. A sustained discussion of fascism as a social movement takes place in chapters two and three, concerning, respectively, “accelerationism” and the far-right figure Steve Bannon, while the first and last chapters handle fascism at the level of individual psychology. Braune stakes out a militant antifascist and anticapitalist position, meaning that she holds that fascism as a social movement must be countered by militant and revolutionary counter-movements, which use a diversity of tactics; at the same time, she contends that the struggle against fascism must ultimately aim to extirpate the conditions that give rise to fascist movements, e.g. capitalism, rather than merely aim to return to normalcy, i.e. liberal institutional norms.
Braune’s framework for interpreting fascism is especially salient today. Throughout the book, she notes that “fascism is a social movement seeking power, always already connected to sources of power” (4). In other words, contrary to a prevailing notion of fascism that characterizes it as an extreme form of capitalist state power, whereby fascist movements on the ground are “merely a symbolic representation of the state’s already fascist character” (96), fascist movements have a degree of autonomy, and often operate using strategies that organize both inside and outside of power. Some fascist strategies involve entryism, entering mainstream political parties or institutions in order to shift them to the right, while others are entirely system-oppositional. Braune also discusses the underlying worldview of fascism, which sees violence and injustice as the ways of the world, and thus one should seek to perpetrate violence rather than suffer violence (56). In addition, these movements believe in social regeneration through what Erich Fromm calls “catastrophic messianism”: the belief that society will be regenerated after “transcendent forces intervene into history at the moment of humanity’s greatest weakness and collapse” (54). In other words, fascist movements aim to move history along by hastening collapse in times of perceived social decline in order to bring about social regeneration—although their self-perceptions should always be deflated by noting that while far-right theorists appeal to the inexorable laws of historical epochs, their political goals within societies such as the US and Canada seek to re-entrench social structures that are far from historically inexorable: the hierarchies that structure the North American settler-colonial hegemonic project (capital accumulation, ableism, heteropatriarchy, and Indigenous dispossession, etc.). That said, Braune makes a persuasive case that, in modern parlance, fascism is “inherently accelerationist” (52).
Although the term “accelerationism” is in vogue in the counter-extremism industry—a network of non-governmental organizations, state institutions, and law enforcement—Braune argues that it is mischaracterized as “anti-ideological” and de-politicized to the degree that the category allows for law enforcement to target left-wing groups under this label. She disentangles three meanings of accelerationism (one, which I will leave aside, refers to philosophical approaches—which are not exclusively right wing—that trace their lineage back to the reactionary philosopher Nick Land). The first refers to the network of a small number of armed system-oppositional groups that openly embrace violent tactics, sometimes called “skullmasks” due to the image printed on the balaclavas they wear in photographs to disguise their identities. Far from being “anti-ideological,” as they are considered within counter-extremism, they embrace the “historic Nazi version” of fascism (47). However, accelerationism is not exclusive to skullmasks nor necessarily framed within the “fascist canon.” Instead, Braune convincingly shows that accelerationism is more importantly a broader strategic approach “based on the belief that the best or only way to transform society in the direction of one’s aims is to first cause chaos, violence, and social collapse” (41). In Chapter Three, she shows that the far-right figure Steve Bannon embraces a version of accelerationism grounded in a far-right appropriation of Hindu mythology rooted in Traditionalism, e.g. in the writings of Julius Evola and others. Indeed, as mentioned above, Braune maintains that “fascism is inherently accelerationist” (52).
At this point, it is worth noting that what Braune identifies as the specific characteristics of fascism may not fit other far right movements, which may be system-oppositional but may not necessarily deploy accelerationist strategies (see her brief comments on far-right patriot militias on 46), and I wonder if neo-Nazi movements from 1945 to the late 1970s could be, strictly speaking, considered accelerationist. Nonetheless, her work is salient for understanding contemporary events. Although I do not think that much of the mainstream discourse on whether Trump or so-called “Trumpism” are fascist has been helpful, Trump has normalized some degree of system-oppositional far-right tendencies within mainstream conservatism. But, following Braune, we must see fascism as a social movement seeking power already connected to power, meaning that the contemporary threat is not only how the far-right tendencies that Trump cultivates implement their goals in while he is in power, but that there are also fascist movements outside of power that are a threat of their own. It is unclear how they will react to the incoming Trump administration, and whether they will pursue strategies of system-loyal vigilantism for, or system-oppositional insurgency against, their ostensible ideological allies in power.
Braune’s critique of counter-extremism and deradicalization is just as important as her discussion of fascism. Here I will outline only a select few of the problems she identifies within counter-extremism and deradicalization discourse, and how these fields reinforce the norms that govern neoliberal “centrism.” First, the counter-extremism model treats racism and hate as features of fringe or extreme elements of society, which means that little attention is paid to how racist social structures or policies within mainstream society condition far-right and fascist movements. Second, these fields use a notion of horseshoe theory that treats the “far left” and far right as equivalent extremes with more similarities between them than with the mainstream. Not only does this repeat the first error, but it misidentifies “fascist creep,” how far-right groups sometimes appropriate rhetoric or concepts from the left, and it downplays how leftist social movements are often the targets of far-right groups. Furthermore, this model often prevents counter-extremism initiatives from standing in solidarity with leftist movements that explicitly seek to counter fascist attempts to target minorities and marginalized groups (which are sometimes the members of these antifascist movements themselves). This “ultimately makes solidarity with the living targets or victims of fascism difficult-to-impossible for those who rely on an ‘extremism’ model” (98).
Deradicalization initiatives also make these mistakes. But Braune raises several additional concerns. First, deradicalization tends to place the rehabilitation of former perpetrators of hate at the center of this kind of work, placing the needs and concerns of victims and targeted groups on the periphery. Second, deradicalization models often place the onus (and expectations with serious risks) on targeted communities by emphasizing “compassion narratives” that allegedly show how unexpected compassion from members of targeted groups toward supremacists precipitate their disengagement from “extremist” movements (113). In contrast, Braune offers two important rebuttals. On the one hand, “the protection of vulnerable communities must come first and never be put in second place to a mission of conversion of haters” (109). On the other, she challenges the supposed efficacy of compassion narratives, since individuals leave fascist movements because antifascist organizing disempowers these movements and makes life more difficult for their members, “not because they have changed their beliefs, which tends to happen later if at all” (108).
While much of Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements involves critique, at numerous points Braune offers a sense of hope in the struggle. For instance, to fascism’s catastrophic messianism, she opposes Fromm’s concept of “prophetic messianism.” On her account, revolutionary movements offer, or ought to offer, a sense of “radical hope” for a “coming time that would fulfill human hopes for justice, freedom, and peace” brought about through collective human action (52–53). In Chapter One, she outlines how counter-recruiting against fascism could be oriented around a sense of hope offered in the work of Erich Fromm, Simone Weil, and others. In short, Braune argues that individuals encounter a void or lack of meaning that is endemic to the human condition and exacerbated under capitalism. Moreover, while complex societies offer many intersubjective narratives of meaning, these are undermined by the ways that capitalism—let’s remember, “all that is solid melts into air”—foments a sense of alienation and atomization. Following Fromm and Weil, she argues that fascism offers an “idol” that provides a temporary sense of identity and purpose that shortcuts the authentic search for meaning and that attempts to stave off doubt or anguish through the dehumanization of others and violence, and these actions provide the fascist with a sense of their superiority. Braune offers this analysis in order to point toward ways that the path to fascism can be cut off. It is insufficient to suggest replacing one identity with another, or a pathological identity with a “normal” one; the fascist or the individual tempted by the allure of the fascist idol “needs a new relationship to truth altogether”: patience in the search for meaning, truth, and solidarity (27).
I have already outlined my concerns and foregrounded my skepticism toward mobilizing leftist movements to disengage supremacists from their movements, and I have noted how these are acknowledged in Braune’s analysis. That said, I think she is correct to point out that we need strategies for preventing recruitment to the far right. Given that these efforts would not be sustainable at the level of individual efforts, nor through the problematic discourses of counter-extremism and deradicalization, we ought to embrace her call for a renewed sense of militant and revolutionary organizing; we must “begin to construct alternatives to capitalism and the status quo, including the cultivation of culture, spaces, and dual-power alternatives, to begin to build now the future we seek so that the angry and alienated do not find the far-right to be the only source of meaning or belonging on offer” (32). It may be difficult, but we must not abandon all hope.