Post-Fascism and the Crisis of Critical Thinking

Abstract

In today’s new version of the neoliberal system, the tendencies of post-fascism are becoming more intense. Post-fascism takes as its fundamental principle the competition among independent individuals according to social Darwinism, and its core characteristic lies in depriving others of their citizenship based on the illusion of a homogeneous society. This paper focuses on the absence of critical thinking as one of the elements that has made such tendencies possible, centering on the intersection between the thoughts of H. Arendt and J. Butler. Both thinkers share the concern that the absence of critical thinking makes possible not only hostility toward others but even genocide. For Arendt, plurality—the very condition of thinking—is also the condition of both political and human life. Butler reformulates this as the condition of cohabitation, in which we live together with others on the earth, and argues that this condition makes social bonds possible. Critical thinking means thinking heterogeneity on the basis of the principle of interdependency. The moment such thinking ceases, the citizens of a homogeneous society are likely either to tolerate or to participate in acts of hostility toward others.