What allows Fascism?

Image: "I can't believe you actually buy this shit" by Banksy

Bear with me. As often, this too is a meandering and long piece that goes through different things before coming to, I think, a point.

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Joel and I have been friends for over a decade. I am friends with him in the way that I'm friends with the trees in my parents' garden or the ones in the park nearby-- I am glad he exists in this world and I get to occasionally catch up with him as he lives. All these years, our exchanges had been over email, postcards, and the forum where we met. Once when he was travelling to Nepal via India, he stopped by Kolkata and we met in real life. But only yesterday, after a decade, we finally become Facebook friends and I was excited to find a more immediate/reactive side of my friend, as he populated his wall with things that resonated with him and caught his attention. The breadth of things were also more than what we covered over our sporadic email exchanges. Among them I found this searing article: Fascism is not an idea to be debated, it's a set of actions to fight.

As I read it, many feelings came up and disconnected things that I had been trying to put into words of the past couple of months started falling into place. Stories that had been coming to the surface of my mind because they wanted to be shared now made more sense. I finally have the lens through which they are all connected and the lens is this: what allows fascism?

Firstly, I will lean into a part of Aleksander Hemon's writing for it. In a part of the article that I linked above he writes:

The public discussion prompted by the (dis)invitation confirmed to me that only those safe from fascism and its practices are likely to think that there might be a benefit in exchanging ideas with fascists. What for such a privileged group is a matter of a potentially productive difference in opinion is, for many of us, a matter of basic survival. The essential quality of fascism (and its attendant racism) is that it kills people and destroys their lives—and it does so because it openly aims so.

I have highlighted a particular part of the quote because that's where I made the connection to what fascism is, how I think it flourishes and what roles different people play in it.

To explain, I want to go back to a tiny moment of authority/power in my life. It was 2018 and by sheer fluke and a lot of randomness, I was nominated to become a part of the Election Commission for the Students' Union Election at the English & Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad where I was doing my M.A. at that time. Nobody present at the students' assembly objected to me being a part of it, two people from my department nominated and vouched for me, and I, entirely clueless about the process and responsibilities that were to come my way found myself a part of the Election Commission. Just like that.

There were 8 or 9 more who were nominated from other departments and once the assembly disbanded, we were brought together by the professor (who I later found had no business being involved in it), asked us to unanimously pick a chairperson for the committee. The 8 or 9 of us did not really know each other; a couple knew a couple but the familiarity stopped there. A unanimous voting for a leader in a group of strangers seemed a little ridiculous to me. I asked the professor what responsibilities were under the ambit of the chairperson and he said that the person in question would be responsible for the money and the keys. Knowing full well that I am quite capable of handling that much responsibility, I volunteered provided everyone else in the committee was okay with it. They were. So in another strange flow of motion, I was Chief Election Commissioner.

In the three weeks that followed, I had to learn many things rapidly with little in the way of help while fighting with members of the university administration who wanted to over-involve themselves in the Student Union elections in an attempt to control the student body even further than they had been. During those 3 weeks, I had many moments when I felt I was almost out of my body, looking at everything just a little from above. There were intense moments of realizations and helplessness, lessons that I knew before were re-imprinted as I worked for a cause that was small but important, a cause that I had not been really involved in until I was thrown into it. But from those times, what stayed with me which connects to the question of fascism are these instances.

The first instance is when we put out the call for nominations for electoral candidates. As was the required protocol, to make sure the news reached everyone possible, printed notices were put out on all noticeboards across our university buildings, in hostel noticeboards, and walls. We created a Facebook page, as is also the norm, and through it put out a call for nominations as well. We as a group read the constitution meant for the students of our university the night that we came to exist and decided to leave it at the Xerox shop so that everyone would know the rights and responsibilities they had, what we were working toward, and would feel the fire that I now felt after learning all the things that had been withheld. I had been so removed from the entire process, only connected by moments of passing curiousity and I was convinced that the blind that had been removed from my eyes by circumstance, would also be removed from others if they too could access what the administration had kept from us. Over the course of everyday meetings, I realized it was not that simple. Internally within the Election Commission there was a clear division: Firstly, I kept being given a position of power/authority I did not have. The only thing that the chairperson had authority for was to convene the meetings; decisions were to be made as a group, execution of actions were the equal responsibility of all. I was not above anyone but I was constantly pushed to be. Decision-making was delegated to me, questions were asked in my directions, the bulk of the work was left for me to handle. I kept seeing this and trying to nip it in the bud by reallocating work, reading the constitution as a group, encouraging questions between us all and opening all decisions to vote-making. A passivity ran within the group which no amount of stepping back on my part could cure. I only had one equal and helpful hand, Payal, who understood the work that was on the table, my tiny role in it, and the sabotage that everyone was contributing to by stepping away. I too like everyone else on the committee had classes and other commitments, but I found myself stuck often for long hours doing the work while the remaining members drifted in and out, making time for this as they wanted to. Sometimes I would run into them chilling while bunking classes and they would reluctantly come in when I would confront them. Sometimes, they would run away. I was frustrated often but driven to see the elections through. Without them happening within the next 3 weeks, we would be ineligible to have a Students' Union for that year. It seemed like a waste given that the previous administrations had prevented elections from happening the past year and so I stayed course, one of the very few such instances in my life, and worked with the end in mind. Instead of nominations coming in, nominations that had about a week to eight days' of time to come in, I was met with students asking me if the elections could be postponed since there was a holiday right around election day. I explained that the election was to be held right after the holiday and delay was no longer an option because of the reason mentioned above. Sometimes they would understand and leave, sometimes they would be annoyed and argue; I noticed a divide in their perception: I was not a part of them. I was very much a part of the student body whom the student union would represent, I was only serving a temporary function to make sure that that body came to be. Yet, I was either met with frustration, arrogance, or on the other hand, veneration and respect, none of which was needed or due. Members of different student groups came to ask me various questions, to everyone me and my fellow group members insisted that candidates be encouraged and sent. Bright and promising fellow-students slipped into the bulwark and debated, talked about good candidates but we received only three or four nominations in the first few days. I was prepared for some sort of a deluge on the last day (I mean we were all in university and it would have been stupid not to expect that) but even on the last day, some of the posts, including the post for the candidate remained uncontested. Elections were not needed for those posts since only one candidate had turned up and by default had become the person to occupy the position.

Now, I was met with a second group of people who turned up to question why there would be no NOTA on the ballot papers. I explained that NOTA served no purpose since there was no time for another re-election. Without this election and a student union, there would be nothing for a year. Moreover, since some seats were uncontested, there was to be no election for those and essentially a NOTA was not applicable. I was again met with anger and annoyance as they came and disappeared. I wondered where they stood in the student body and I wondered about who I had been, and would likely go back to being, before being flung into this work. The nature of the work and my dynamics with the people I was working alongside and for often brought to mind larger systems where such dynamics were also in play. I wondered about larger-world politics where celebrities and others were often pushed to the forefront, unprepared for a role. They too would be getting their share of uncalled for attention and veneration, undeservedly so. Without whatever strange mechanism in me was keeping it in check, it was no wonder that they rose to such ridiculous levels of fame and popularity, doing little to no work. I felt angry at everyone around me that I had to be the one keeping a check on how others treated me, always trying to level the field of power. I did not have power but I kept being conceded it. It was maddening how little people thought of themselves and how much they wanted someone to take the lead.

During the Meet the Candidate session, I remember making a mistake. Quite aware that as a body the Election Commission did have power to ensure decorum was maintained, we wrote down some rules on the whiteboard which we expected the students to follow. One of them was no belittling of candidates. Questions were to be asked in a fair and direct manner. When someone asked one of the candidates if they had the backbone to stand up to the administration, I stepped in to terminate the question. I felt some shakiness doing that but I was afraid our only presidential candidate would crumble under the pressure and I made the mistake of intervening. In retrospect, I saw it as a mistake but at that point, it seemed like the right call-- a desperate attempt to preserve a student union that was barely managing to come into existence. What should have happened at that point in time is that those who thought my move was wrong should have spoken up. Instead, some clapped and those who objected, left the room. I had some executive authority but nothing remotely close to anything threatening for them to have left and not engaged. However, those two instances really drilled into me how power is perceived and how it works. And how much power, unbeknownst to them, everyone has the capacity of making an actually powerless person feel. All you have to do is remember to meet a person as an equal, over and over again. If they occupy an executive position of authority, you can trust them for that particular aspect of the job but never unquestioningly and never at your own expense. Yet, that's what happened in that tiny playing out of power dynamics and I have seen it before and since play out in the same way in different arenas. People step back and concede power to those who would be nothing without them. The world is of dynamic relationships and yet, often, it is solidified into power structures and hierarchies by those who step back. And honestly, from my own experiences, I have seen many many people stepping back. Sure there were difference in contexts, but beyond a point people always do step back. So, that brings me to the other thing that floated up regarding mechanisms or flaws that allow for fascism to exist and flourish. Is something wrong with how democracy is implemented?

During one of the university classes, I was introduced to Giorgio Agamben's "The State of Exception" in a lecture. I got so excited reading it that I couldn't finish the book. The idea that the structure of democracy inherently held places where fascism or similar anti-democratic states could flourish blew my mind. And I thought about it: how true it was. Hitler didn't overthrow a government to come to power, a coup-detat is something that there is space for within a democracy, the number and reality gap between representatives and people on ground were all real factors in creating many horrors in present day politics and history. Were we, are we doing democracy wrongly? Are we allowing fascism to flourish by accepting our lives within a system that has places for these things? Are we being lazy by not imagining or demanding better? When are we going to start calling fascists for what they are and when are we going to do better than coffee-table conversations, and how?

I am nowhere close to the answers yet.