FASCISTIZATION IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD: from the crisis of liberal capitalist democracy to irrationalism: repercussions in Latin America

Abstract

The deep crisis that capitalism in its neoliberal form is going through creates deep rifts in liberal democracies. Marx describes in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, how, with the loss of hegemony in society, the dominant classes see themselves without alternatives and are not reluctant to ally themselves with antidemocratic, authoritarian projects, when it suits them. It was this context that allowed the rise of Louis Bonaparte. At this moment, we perceive an incapacity of the dominant class to maintain the hegemony of society and guarantee, even if formally, the idea of universality. We have seen in the last decade the resurgence of an organized extreme right wing that in many cases openly flirts with fascism; certainly in a conjuncture that differs from the classical fascism that occurred in the 1920-1930s in Europe, although it maintains great similarities. Alain
Badiou conceptualizes it as "democratic fascism", for the reason that the state institutions apparently function normally. In the Latin American case it is even more complex, as well defined by Zavaleta and Florestan Fernandes, also because in the continent, a fascist ideology was in force that was embedded in the military dictatorships in the region, but above all was not eliminated. We have seen a resurgence of fascist ideas in extreme right-wing organizations on the Latin American continent, in the midst of a profound economic, political-ideological-cultural crisis that "progressive" governments in the region have not been able to respond to for the majority of the population, who have been thrown into situations of economic hardship and an open field for fascist ideology.