Isolation as a key ingredient of neo-fascism?

November 23, 2024 9:45 AM

Has anyone written anything about how the current variant of fascism has much more isolation of the oppressed to work with?

There has been a huge rise in means of isolating the masses from each other through social (rugged individualism), technological (social media) and economic (weaker unions) innovation.

This seems unique to modern fascism and was not a tool in the fascist toolkit in the 20th century. Have any modern academics covered this?

posted by butterstick to Education (5 answers total)

My reading of Will the streets run red? is no, they won't, because of the isolation of the oppressed in the US. (Article by John Ganz mostly quotes Dan Trombly, PhD candidate at GW researching political violence, far-right movements, and paramilitarism.)
posted by Rash at 9:53 AM on November 23, 2024 [1 favorite]

this is not something i’ve been studying, but in case you are just starting your research and this might be helpful: a search on g’scholar using terms fascism “social isolation” “working class”, and filtered to publications since 2020, brings up a list of sources that look potentially relevant to me…
posted by tamarack at 12:33 PM on November 23, 2024 [2 favorites]

Pretty sure Arendt noted this as a precondition in 'Origins of Totalitarianism'.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:54 PM on November 23, 2024 [1 favorite]

There’s a great paper showing that pub closures in the UK led to increased votes for the far right “ Drinking Alone: Local Socio-Cultural Degradation and Radical Right Support—The Case of British Pub Closures”: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0010414021997158

The bibliography will be useful and if you can’t find a copy (pretty sure a preprint is floating around, email the author).
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:14 PM on November 23, 2024 [3 favorites]

Legal segregation was a huge tool leading up to the Holocaust, so I don't know about the premise.
posted by Salamandrous at 3:34 PM on November 25, 2024