- Kingdom Come – ‘Vibe Fascism’
“We [Fascists] don’t think ideology is a problem that is resolved in
such a way that truth is seated on a throne […] The truth of an ideology
lies in its capacity to set in motion our capacity for ideals and
action.” A. Bertele, Aspetti ideologici del fascismo - Turin 1930
In late September 2025 a hundred and fifty thousand people heeded the
call of far-right activist Tommy Robinson to gather in London for a
so-called ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally. It was the largest ever
demonstration instigated by the far right in recent British history. And
one of many signals from around the world that the extreme right has
moved from the social margins into the centre of our politics. When
Timothy Leary, acid guru of the 60’s counterculture, was asked what we
should do, once we had “turned-on, tuned-in and dropped-out”, he
famously replied “find the others”. The ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march was
the equivalent of a 60’s happening (more ‘hate in’ than ‘love in)
another ’find the others’ moment in which a host of disparate local
subcultures coalesced to form a genuine counterculture, inverting Andrew
Breitbart’s oft quoted aphorism, as these days it is ‘culture is
downstream from politics’.
There is a pressing need to better understand and account for the
relentless rise of today’s far-right political movements, who appear to
have become the new global counterculture. The original term
‘counterculture’ described a new kind of mediatised relationship between
politics and culture that emerged in the second half of the 20th century
when small disparate ‘subcultures’ of artists, philosophers,
revolutionaries and poets (existentialists, beats etc) coalesced into a
movement that overturned the stultifying conformity of the 1950s,
instigating “a philosophy of liberation that swept across post-war
western societies. More than just a cultural trend it became a social
movement so powerful it shaped institutions, technology, politics,
business and the attitudes and aspirations of whole generations.”
The persistent belief of the left (that still has echoes) is that this
coalition of disparate practices is intrinsically progressive. The
counter-claim of today’s reactionary right is that it is THEY who are
the new counterculture displacing the tired old progressive hegemon.
Their starting point is the proposition that the generation of
electorally successful politicians raised in the era of the post war
progressive movements (the Clintons and Blairs etc) enabled a covert
revolution, in which their progressive ideas –the so-called “woke mind
virus”- were smuggled into our institutions, the universities, the
media, the arts, social services, education, government and law, not
through honest debate but through a stealthy process of institutional
osmosis. This invisible orthodoxy is what new-right’s house philosophers
such as Curtis Yarvin have dubbed the ‘cathedral’, or cultural Marxism
or the deep state.
By adopting a rebel pose these new energised incumbents maintain power
by playing the role of everlasting underdogs, taking on the progressive
industrial complex, with its identity politics, its educators its
elites. It is their success in instilling in their followers a sense of
participating mass popular insurgency (whilst inadvertently dismantling
their own democracy) is one of the factors that makes this movement so
hard for the left to defeat.
The left leaning liberals are misguided in their belief that salvation
can be found in either *fact checking* or even the delivery of material
improvements alone (Deliveroo politics). To invert James Carville’s
famous catchphrase its definitely not “the economy stupid”. Time and
again people have shown themselves unafraid of voting against their own
best economic interests. We are witnessing something as intangible as a
fascist ‘vibe shift’.
But although we see what is unfolding there remains deep uncertainty
about how to respond. Should we treat it as a resurgence of what we saw
in the 1930s and organise in the way they did then to defeat the
fascists? Or are we facing something completely new for which earlier
tactics are of little use?.
Some on the liberal left remain ambivalent about acknowledging the
threat. Four years ago, in a public forum I asked the English liberal
journalist Andrew Maar whether it was time to start routinely calling
out the new far right movements as fascist. He pushed back hard arguing
that using the F word outside of a specific historical context was scare
mongering and likely to backfire. “Fascism, from this perspective, was
born of particular social conditions that are unlikely to recur in the
same form.”
Maar had a point, but our response need not be binary. As Nigel Trilling
argued recently today’s far right has both echoes the tendencies that
gave rise to 20th century fascism AND is also something new. For
Trilling fascism remains an indispensable term for a uniquely
destructive force in politics, and one for which we don’t have a better
word.” A word to for a reactionary mass movement that promised a
national re-birth through the violent cleansing of enemies at home and
abroad. That sought to dismantle democracy. But unlike other forms of
authoritarianism did that as part of a mass popular project. It sought
to engage ordinary people in the dismantling of their own democracy.”
In an interview in 2009 Christopher Hitchens was eloquent and insightful
on the struggle to resist the lure of fascism. He argued George Orwell
resigned his commission in Bengali colonial police because he realised
was in danger of becoming a sadist and a racist. “It’s a great help”
Hitchens argues “if you’re going to become an anti-fascist, which is
what Orwell later became, if you have some insight into the horrible
psycho dramatic nature of fascism, the social warp that is part of it,
the thrill of domination and the thrill of being dominated. […] in all
of Orwell’s writing […] He knows immediately that there is something
utterly wicked and pornographic about fascism that must be resisted.
It’s a life and death question.”
The problematic nature of both Orwell and Hitchens as individuals
reminds us that we can only use the word if we continuously acknowledge
the fascism in ourselves. It means a daily reminder of Felix Guattari’s
warning that the biggest challenge in fighting Fascism is that it seems
to come from the outside’ whilst finding its energy right at the heart
of everyone’s desire’.
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