Susan Sontag was right in her insistence on the need “to detect fascist longings in our midst.” Fascism now mobilizes people’s feelings in order to win them over either to the arena of hate and bigotry or to depoliticize them. Once we lose sight of how the dynamics of power hide in the language of the everyday. Fascism will arrive not with a thunderous bang but with the waving of the flag and the stench of death. The serpent’s egg will have hatched, and the lights will go out.
It’s always the future. Always. Always something that may happen sometime if we don’t take action. It hasn’t happened yet.
