The philosopher Alain Badiou provides a definition of fascism that may help us understand the way in which myth becomes a central feature of fascism In fascist politics, what Badiou names the “obscure subject” turns from both the present order and any potential emergence of egalitarianism or justice within it and locates political truth in a prior historical time. The obscure subject identifies with an old transcendent body located in a prior mode of political action, an already saturated and long since defeated body.
The obscure subject therefore seeks a resurrection of a mythical body long-since dead to the present. Badiou’s theory of the obscure subject offers a different take on the thesis that fascism is inextricably tied to the deployment of irrational and constant violence. If, as Wilhelm Reich notes in The Mass Psychology of Fascism, twentieth century fascism deployed violence as a libidinal acting out of repressed desire, alt-right fascism seeps with pre-violence as a consequence of its inability to resurrect the old Glorious Body. An obscure politics is thus a politics that seeps with violence as an outcome of the impossibility it finds in resurrecting the already defeated Glorious Body.
It is a politics that transposes the conflict over the failure to resurrect the old body into a vitalist conflict within the cage of the present body. Obscure politics thus make the libidinal forces within the present body tortured and fraught with impossibility, leaving nothing left but the fantasy of lashing out in violent rage. Violence emanates in all directions as an after effect of a subjectivity trapped within the finitude of the body and the failure to forge a link to the prior mythical body it seeks to resurrect. This is the core reason why the obscure subject is obscure: they side with the old mythical body over any truth that may occur in the present situation. The street battles between the alt-right and Antifa since Trump’s inauguration, which reached a crescendo in Charlottesville where a young alt-rightist murdered a protestor with his car, are clear signs of this immanent violence.
The symbolism of the failed attempt to resurrect the old body finds apropos symbolism in the statue of Robert E. Lee—himself an old body, dead and gone for good. The protests at Lee’s statue were led by chants: “you will not erase us!”—Translated as: you will not erase that which has already been erased. Obscure subjects harken back to a body that has already come and gone; from a time that has already been extinguished. The obscurity of the alt-right is located in what type of subject they imagine, in this case a subject that is deeply embedded in a longing for the myth of the glorious confederate subject.
A part of this refashioning of political subjectivity is a turn to the constitutive nature of the self. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s concept of the Shadow is an important point of influence on the alt-right’s myth-building project [See also: Jordan Peterson's obsession with Jung]. Jung’s concept of the Shadow is a source of myth that provides a platform for the alt-right to imagine a counterpoint to the liberal subject. The project of realizing one’s Shadow opposite to liberalism holds the potential for opening the door to myth. Before his podcast Unconscious Cinema was taken down by Soundcloud for racist commentary, Alt-right """intellectual""" provocateur Richard Spencer analyzes Hollywood cinema based on Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious. Jung’s theory of the unconscious provides a key to unlocking the hidden repression of white pride buried deep in the popular culture. The podcast contains very little substantive reflection and falls into a nonsensical racism that derides “Jewish” film directors such as Steven Spielberg for conning white America into an embrace of Jewish identity. But what is most central to the podcast is Spencer’s invocation of Jung’s collective unconscious.
Richard Spencer’s political slogan and the wider mantra of the alt-right is “become who you are”—a phrase which sounds rather New Age for an otherwise blood and soil white supremacist movement. This mantra is grounded in an identity politics for white people, but it’s pitched as a “choose your own adventure” for disaffected white young men to become the outcast, to pierce through the liberal PC restrictions and become who you are. Becoming who you are is another name for becoming what Jung calls the Shadow. Unlike the New Age reading of Jung’s Shadow that sees the task as integrating the dark part of one’s self; the alt-right embrace of the Shadow is more political and directly subversive. To become the Shadow is to become the villain, to go against the suppression of white identity.
What the obscure subject seeks out then is ultimately incorporation with the dead body within the self (Jung's Shadow) and a wider politics that can resurrect the suppressed old body at the collective level. One approach is subjective while the other is collective. The dialectic of obscure politics thus attempts a synthesis between these two bodies: the old dead confederate father of the horde with the suppressed white masculinity of the neoliberal present. Next to the alt-right, the other paramount obscure subject in today’s political field is ISIS. ISIS, like the alt-right, seek to elevate the transcendent body of the perfect community, the Rashidun, and they attempt to force this body into literal existence. But the failure of this body to live in the present produces the most irrational violence.
The obscure subject therefore produces a politics of inevitable and repeating failure. This failure resides in the incapacity of the existence of the Glorious Body to fill a contemporary truth. This failure results then leads to a dynamic of constant ethno-nationalist violence, where white identity politics engages in turf wars and street fights with anti-fascist movements and racial justice groups. Despite the alt-right’s political aspirations and consciousness raising goals, their main strategy of identity promotion is a blatant strategic imitation of socialist emancipatory forms of identity politics started by black power movements and black feminist movements in the 1960’s and 70’s. Identity politics is not the only imitation at play here, for the alt-right also sees itself as the new punk rock. What they can’t see, however, is that the Shadow rebel they try to integrate has already been integrated on terms set forth by capital. In the world of capital, the old body remains dead while the new cannot be born. The villain only plays the villain, he never becomes one.
Nathaniel Walker
tl;dr: Jewish sophistry trying to justify why 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧they🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 shouldn't get their much-deserved shoah. The day of the rope couldn't come any sooner.
William Hughes
This is really great. Did you write this?
Logan Nelson
This should be pinned.
Dylan Brown
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Ryder Hall
t. retarded brainlet
Elijah Kelly
So what is the strategy to deal with the groups who attempt to will the body back into existence? Hold out until their attempts end up in failure and they become disillusioned or attempt to deal with the "suppression of white identity" in case of our western rightists?
Mason Morales
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Luke Clark
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Carter Cruz
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Carson King
Yawnnnn. Pathetic. Get a job nigger.
Brody Walker
Typical
Daniel Bell
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Brayden Russell
That wasn't what he was arguing you brainlet. He's pointing out that fascism is a cargo cult trying to replicate a past reality, without tackling or understanding the material conditions that were the prerequisites for that reality. It's the feels > reals that leads to the consistent failure of fascist movements.
