Where Does Fascism Come From?

The fascist is in me.

These posts explore the themes developed in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism, which is itself a real-world test of the central concepts of the Biocognitive Model of Mind for psychiatry.

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In last week’s post, I said: “International relations (IR) looks at mass human behaviour. If we want to explain IR, as distinct from describe it, we have to drop down a level to look at the individual humans who make up the mass. Mass behaviour is simply the product of all the individuals except that, at the international level, decisions are made by a small group vested with a great deal of authority by the rest of the population.” A reader provided a lengthy comment making a number of points, of which I think the most salient is this:

Complex systems routinely display qualities and behaviours that can't be explained by reference to their components. But even more so because institutions such as nation-states, corporations, religions, etc operate in different 'ecosystems' to those of their human components and are driven by completely different survival imperatives. They're on non-human evolutionary paths and develop non-human 'moralities' as a result.

We actually agree on most points but not on this. First, I don’t see the mix of nation-states as a “complex system” in the sense developed in chaos theory, i.e. a system of interacting recursive functions. The international financial system is a complex system in that sense, as are the body’s immune system and Earth’s atmosphere, but of the 200 or so nations in the world, only half a dozen at most have the power to move things much. That is too small for true complexity. Second, when it comes to decisions, those half dozen actually devolve down to a very small group of people in each country who decide for everybody else. They don’t ask their citizens what to do, they tell them, and they certainly don’t ask small nations for their opinions. Small nations that disagree are likely to be invaded. We have an excellent example of this today. Around the world, the majority of the population of countries that support Israel are angry at the destruction of Gaza and want their governments to force the aggressors to stop. In each country, governments are not just failing to respond but, in many cases, are reacting aggressively to anybody who challenges their decision.

Third, the survival strategy of any group of humans, large or small, just is “survive by any means necessary.” Again, the decisions are made by the in-group, not the out-group. People invest their careers in an institution yet very few of them have what it takes to walk away and say “Well, that was completely wrong, we should have closed the whole thing long ago.” Why don’t they? Because humans don’t like admitting they’re wrong, it forces them down the status hierarchy. My thesis is that the most powerful drive in human affairs is the dominance drive, the need to avoid being forced down the hierarchy just because, as a matter of biology, low status feels bad.

Let’s say Ruritania decides they need to invade Lower Slobovia. The Ruritanian power-elite don’t rush around saying: “Everybody enlist, we’re going to invade the Slobs. There’s no need for this, they haven’t got anything we haven’t got and the chances of success are pretty crappy. Also, it’s actually a waste of time and money and you’re likely to get killed but sign here and we’ll give you a gun.” If they did that, and even though that is the actual outcome of the overwhelming majority of wars in human history (if not all), what would happen to their grand plans? How would the generals look in their he-man uniforms decorated with medals and braid, standing around with no troops to order around? What about the politicians who want a parade to send off the troops, and none of them came? It would be even more humiliating than Trump’s ludicrous effort a few weeks ago. So they don’t do that. They don’t tell the truth, as Hermann Göring made perfectly clear at the Nuremberg Trials:

Naturally the common people don't want war . . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or parliament or a communist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

As he said, it works the same in every country, but what he described is the polar opposite of chaos theory. What happens is that actions of the nation-state are determined, not as the outcome of a series of complex social and political pressures, but by a single narrative: “We’re the greatest, we’re entitled to whatever we want and we’ll smash anybody who stands in our way.” That is exactly what Bill Clinton said to the UN General Assembly (27^th Sept. 1993), entirely without blushing. And that rousing message gets the punters in. That’s what makes them all rush to the recruiting office to sign up before it’s all over by Christmas. The only way the power-elite can beat up a Kriegsfieber or war fever is by eliminating all competing narratives. By that means, they simplify the message to one clear theme repeated over and over again: “We’re right, they’re wrong, let’s smash them.” That process, repeated in every country throughout history, takes it away from the realm where we could say that nation-states are “on non-human evolutionary paths and develop non-human 'moralities' as a result.”

This process of dumbing down a complex message is usually attributed to Hitler but it antedates him by thousands of years, although he put it clearly. In Mein Kampf, Chap. III [1, p62 of the Murphy edition], he says that the general population aren’t bright enough to understand complexities so the political message has to be simplified to a single message, repeated over and over. Later, he introduces the concept of the “big lie.” Talking of the “broad masses” with their undeveloped intellects, he says:

…in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously [1, p148].

Now a lot of people think he was setting Nazi policy but he wasn’t. In that section, he was describing how “the Jewish press” operates as a propaganda machine to suit their own purposes:

It took the Press only a few days to transform some ridiculously trivial matter into an issue of national importance, while vital problems were completely ignored or filched and hidden away from public attention [1, p63].

Sounds as though Mr. Murdoch learned his trade from Mein Kampf, doesn’t it. The point here is that I do not believe International Relations (IR) can be seen as a rational process, emergent or not. I don’t believe the conditions of emergence are met [2], nor that it benefits us to think that IR is so complex that the common herd have to tag along and do as they’re told because only experts can possibly understand it. Sure, it suits the power-elite if the “broad masses” fall for that bit of spin but, as Göring made absolutely clear, the goals and interests of the common people aren’t on the agenda when the powerful get the smell of more power or more money in their noses. Their interests are dumped in favour of the message: “It’s us goodies versus them baddies, so we need to smash them first.” That, unquestionably, is the message pushed by the West over the last 500 years in its ceaselessly aggressive expansion. In his recent newsletter, economist and analyst Jim Rickards said:

…Israel has been the closest ally of the United States since at least the June 1967 Six-Day War and arguably longer. Possession by Iran of a nuclear weapon is an existential threat to Israel. A second holocaust could easily result (Jim Rickards’ Strategic Intelligence, 02.07.2025; paywall).

Rickards is incapable of seeing that possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is also seen as an existential threat by 90 million Iranians. Are they all suffering a paranoid delusion? Hardly, they can point to the evidence of what the Zionist-US alliance has done to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Syria over the past 23 years. If that doesn’t amount to evidence of a direct threat to their existence, I don’t know what would. In Rickards’ immutably pro-Trump view, the US and its anointed allies are incapable of doing wrong, so anybody who doesn’t “kiss their asses” (Trump’s term, and that is exactly what he meant) is evil and has to be pulverized. Their narrative, the classic imperialist justification, is utterly wrong.

The correct view, developed in Narcisso-Fascism, is that humans try to dominate each other just because it feels better than being dominated. That is a biological fact, which has nothing to do with all the bumf about religion, democracy, capitalism and apple pie that is used post hoc to justify normal human violence. Instead of seeing the world through the monochrome lens of Goodies vs Baddies, the only view tolerated by Western imperialism, we should stand back and look at international relations (and domestic, and personal, etc.) as a simple, straightforward case of one side trying to dominate the other because it feels so good, also because they think they can get away with it. However, because of the paradox of hierarchy, the other side fights back, and so battle is joined.

Where there is conflict, we have to take a distant look at who is being crushed and who is doing the crushing, because the crushed will inevitably fight back. Assume you’re an imperialist who is lucky enough to crush one entire generation of people. Before long, a new generation will come who don’t like being crushed, and they will resist. This is not a question of who is right or who is wrong, it is a question of the fundamental nature of the human animal. So we are told that we should not oversimplify affairs in the Middle East because the situation is very complex. No, it’s not, there’s nothing complex about it at all. We have one group of people who moved into the area and are trying to force the indigenous population out and, entirely to be expected, the indigenes are resisting. It is ridiculous to ask whether the attack on October 7^th was moral or justified or which god promised what to whom and when, the only question to answer is this: Was the breakout predictable? The answer is an emphatic Yes, it was as predictable as night following day - I would do the same. Moreover, it was so predictable that Israeli intelligence (yes, I know) warned the prime minister that something was brewing, who ignored it. Most important of all, any attempt to impose a solution that leaves one side feeling totally crushed and humiliated, cheated of their birthright and betrayed by supposed allies is going to have the same outcome, another slave rebellion. Because that’s what it was.

Where, then, does fascism fit in this gloomy view? Just this: fascism is not a form of government in the sense that democracy or socialism or liberal capitalism are forms of government. Fascism is a means of gaining and hanging on to power, a technology of power, you could say. It’s a set of policies, actions and performances that can be grafted on to any social movement in order for it to gain momentum in the drive to the top. Political parties, religions, the military, big companies, football clubs, schools, it makes no difference: if you’re in the business of building and expanding a base of supporters, you have to bring the suckers in. Once the in-crowd have decided what they want to do, they then have to whip up the masses to support them. They have to get them excited and ready to give up their weekends or their lives for The Cause, and the technology of fascism does just that. Anything that gets the blood boiling and the crowds baying is good enough for the job. Fascism is therefore like the decorations you hang on a tree that convert it into a Christmas tree: anybody can use them, they can go on any tree but the end result is the same.

The problem is, we don’t know when to stop. We have a drive to dominate but there is also an equal and opposite drive to resist domination, giving us the paradox of hierarchy. We can go up the hierarchy, and up, and up, but there’s nothing that says “Enough is enough, let somebody else have a go.” Well, there is, we all die but the movement will go on but, as history clearly shows, eventually another tribe wants the top spot. The higher we go up the ladder, the better it feels, the more we feel it was made for us, meaning the more entitled we feel and the more we resent any challenges. Privilege never shrinks, nobody gives up power voluntarily. Fascism is not like a roller-coaster that gets back to its starting point, it only ratchets up, never down again. The more the wealthy have, the more they want and feel entitled to. Same with power and influence. We had a good example this week where a former Australian foreign minister, a woman of surpassing mediocrity whose only talent was voting as she was told, was appointed chancellor of Australian National University in Canberra.

Chancellors don’t have much to do, they don’t run the university, the vice-chancellor does that. They go to a few meetings and receptions and generally just hang around looking decorative but this one, who lived in Perth, on the opposite side of the continent, decided she needed to look the part. While the university is sacking junior staff as it can’t pay them due to government cuts, she spent a fortune on a luxury office in Perth, with two very highly paid staff and trips here there and everywhere, plus (believe it or not) over $20,000 a year on parking. It didn’t occur to this brainless bimbo that it didn’t look good, that she could have done all the work from her kitchen table via Zoom, or that people might get resentful of her self-indulgence. Blinded by privilege, she couldn’t see that, just as the US-Israel can’t see that bombing the shit out of a sovereign nation is not going to get the results you want. Especially a nation as big and with such a long, proud history as Iran. Unless, of course, devastation is the result you want or, in the lady chancellor’s case, swanning around the joint in expensive clothes (she was known as the minister for fashion). The problem is we are hard-wired to be turned on by power. It’s exciting, it’s stimulating, it beats being a frump any day, but the lust to dominate has no Off switch.

It's possible I’m wrong but it seems to me that the field of international relations is not a complex system at all. As a total outsider, I see it as simply human greed and savagery writ large. My position is greatly strengthened by the blindingly obvious fact that scholars of IR ignore the human element, they talk of humans as automata that are driven by vast forces beyond their comprehension. They’re not. We’re not. Our “power-elite” are well and truly in charge, in full command of their faculties, and unshakeably determined to do wrong by The Other, especially if the others are poor and black and are sitting on resources the elite want. How does this come about? We know exactly how it comes about: indoctrination from birth so the population believe that God, Righteousness and Motherhood are on our side while the others are “human animals” fit only for slaughter. There is an excellent recent account of how this is done by Dr Nurit Peled-Elhanan, daughter of the late General Matti Peled and sister of Miko Peled.

So, to finish: I had a comment by somebody who signed as “Retired old leftist.” Now I would be the last to spin bad news but this is not good: sorry, old chap, but there’s no retirement for lefties, even for old codgers. You signed up for life, so bite the bullet and stand fast. Remember the enemy never sleeps. Greed never takes a break, capital is always awake and on the prowl. The lust for power is the eternal stimulus, the “ultimate aphrodisiac” as the unredeemed psychopath Henry Kissinger said. Yes, it gets tiring watching all the horrors inflicted on the world by the power-hungry, it’s wearing trying to sort fact from propaganda, but don’t look away. Perfidy lulls you into closing your eyes and then it strikes. The enemy is driven by the most powerful interest of all, self-interest.

And now for the really bad news: as I said, fascism only ever ratchets up, not down. It can only end in a Götterdämmerung of its own making. People who have been brought up on the lie that they are entitled to next door’s property or wealth aren’t going to give up and go home to weed the garden just because the leaders realise it’s not going to work. Oh no, another wannabe leader will come along and tell them: “The old leaders betrayed you, which shows there are spies and enemies everywhere. What we need is more power, more fascism and greater destruction, so follow me and we’ll build Valhalla on earth.” Fascists promise to build a warrior’s heaven on earth but instead they create hell for the people they have fooled. As Göring showed, they never apologise. That would mean admitting they were wrong, and they can’t do that. If they could, they would never have joined the fascist party. That is a matter of individual psychology, of which scholars of IR know nothing.

There is a solution to this. Fascism depends entirely on the accumulation of wealth and power. To prevent fascism, we need only prevent the build-up of massive wealth and mind-distorting power. We can solve that problem another day.

References:

1. Hitler, Adolf (1925). Mein Kampf. Tr. James Murphy, 1939. Facsimile edition (2011): Henley in Arden: Coda Books.

2. Humphreys P (2016). Emergence: A philosophical account. New York: Oxford University Press.

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My critical works are best approached in this order:

The case against mainstream psychiatry:

1. McLaren N (2024). Theories in Psychiatry: building a post-positivist psychiatry. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. Amazon (this also covers a range of modern philosophers, showing that their work cannot be extended to account for mental disorder).

Development and justification of the biocognitive model:

2. McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London, Routledge. At Amazon.

Clinical application of the biocognitive model:

3. McLaren N (2018). Anxiety: The Inside Story. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.

Testing the biocognitive model in an unrelated field:

4. McLaren N (2023): Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.

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