A Tic-Tac-Toe Guide to Fascism

This interactive is based on Mukherji's article, “Is the Ghost of Fascism Haunting Political Thought?”

While it can be argued that several neoliberal governments display some degree of the four conditions outlined in the centre, the other two crucial conditions, that is, a capitalist economy on the threshold of collapse, alongside the threat of a socialist revolutionary upsurge, are conspicuously absent for the regimes that are being called “fascist” today.

Though these neoliberal forms of authoritarianism have been classified as ur-fascism, or democratic fascism, and have been defined and qualified with additional characteristics, Nirmalangshu Mukherji argues that the absence of the above-mentioned conditions makes these forms of authoritarianism distinct from original fascism. Therefore, we should be wary of using the word “fascist” for these neoliberal governments as it takes away from the specificity that one would associate with original fascism.

To understand why the word fascism is misused in regular parlance, read the full article here.

If you would like to reimagine the concepts examined in Nirmalangshu Mukherjee’s article, please send in your responses to edit@epw.in.

For more details, visit our Notes for Contributors.

Read more about fascism here:

• Monetary Economics of Fascism and a Working-class Alternative | Romar Correa, 2018
• Questions on the Technologies of Fascism: Making the ‘Modi Effect’ | Santhosh S, 2016
• A Latter-day Fascism? | Radhika Desai, 2014
• Populist Fascism in Austria | Gunther Lanier, 2000

Concept and visualisation by: Titash Sen [titash@epw.in]

Design executed by: Parimal Chahande [parimal@epw.in]