Right-wing nationalism is proto-fascist?

This point is thrown around a lot now and I want to explore it more deeply. To me this seems correct to claim that right-wing nationalism is proto-fascist or perhaps crypto-fascist in nature, at least much of the time. Zizek made the point (riffing off another thinker who I can't recall at the moment) that fascism is basically about the denial of one's own joy, what I would interpret as a perversion and pathology of self-valuing.

Let's explore this more.

"Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete, and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties."


Isn't the aim of globalism to mobilize the whole planet under a single centrally organized administration, a super-state? And would the diffusion of culture that erasing national borders under globalism induce not cause a narrowing of the political landscape, until there wasn't really any real difference for distinct political ideologies and parties to form? And isn't the idea behind this super-state that it is only through such a planetary scale administration that humanity might "respond effectively" to certain threats, like climate change? Globalism seems like the new fascism. The Nazis had the idea for a European Union originally, put the strings for it in place while they were collapsing, and now Germany happens to be the head of EU.


The nationalism you see appearing throughout the world, especially in Britain and the US, is of a different kind, having been born out of a reaction against the fascistic threats of globalism.

I'm not arguing for the kind of globalism you're talking about here. I don't want a single massive global fascist State; I want something more similar to the US system with a limited upper peak level and descending tiers of government overlapping below that. At minimal I just want the UN to have real power, which eould require only two things: dissolution of the absolute veto power of the single states comprising the security council, and some kind of UN military apparatus sufficient to intervene just as how the US military intervenes at will around the world.

My idea of globalism is designed to prevent the very kind of globalism you worry about, so really we are coming down on the same side here.

I also do not want the dissolution of nation-states and my idea of globalism doesn't require that, just as the US model of federalism doesn't require the dissolution of the 50 US states, in fact it relies on them.

So I disagree that the aim of globalism is the kind of (fascistic) mobilization you are describing. And yes I agree that much of the nationalism rising today is a reaction to perceived fascistic tendencies within nascent globalist trends. But rather than seriously address this and work for an answer, such mere and visceral-level reactionism only makes it even more unlikely that these nascent globalist fascist trends will be countermanded, as the nationalist's response is simply to remove himself and his country from the possibility of participating in and shaping globalism going forward. If the US and Europe fall into Trump's brand of isolationist nationalism and anti-globalism then global capitalism will simply shift East, to Russia, India and China primarily. The nationalists haven't thought further ahead than a single move of "get out of globalism"; their thinking is both purely reactive and hopelessly simplified.

I think we can use our leverage and power to make positive changes to how globalism develops going forward. This is what I'm really interested in. The vision of a tyrannical fascist global State is only one possible vision out of many. I see no reason to assume such a possibility is inevitable, except of course if we throw in the towel on our own capacity to work for the kind of global future we want; in that case then yes, globalism is likely to become hugely tyrannical-fascist and inhuman in nature, seeing as the western powers and thinkers stepped back and choose not to help shape what globalism will eventually become.