The fascist performer

Methinks it’s wise to resist drawing similarities between fascists, say, Rodrigo Duterte with Donald Trump. Context matters: cultural, economic, and historical specifics make for useful markers of difference.

Sometimes, though, picking up fascist-to-fascist analogies is a useful urge.

Because while allowing ample space for difference feeds a capacity for nuance in cultural analysis — back to this below — detecting similarities feeds a capacity for big-picture description. Such as: both Trump and Duterte are contemptuous of their base. As fascists are wont.

The Donald thinks his rabid followers are idiots who will pay more for groceries and health care without connecting the cost-of-living upward spiral to his preferential options for the very wealthy. The Duts thinks his fans are stupid. Feeding them troll talking points justifying murder in the streets, or yowling for his “human rights” as he awaits trial at the International Criminal Court, the fans are no more to him than minions.

Similar, too, are their phenomenal skills at rabble rousing around their captivating personae. These captivating qualities are not ironically described here. The Donald and The Duts are truly compelling figures.

Think Hitler. Think Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Think the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi. Think, even, of Uganda’s Idi Amin. The longevity of a fascist regime hinges on a Satanic attractiveness. Think, therefore, of Mao Zedong. And then there’s Marcos Sr. of the Philippines, who actually worked mysticism (semi-secretly, that is, seductively) to produce fascination.

THEATER
They proliferate now, with various (uneven) states of fascist competence. Some have perfected the Strong Man figure. Here’s Turkey’s Reccep Tayyip Erdoğan, according to a journalist account:

“Government officials portray Erdoğan as a stern patriarch. His outbursts of anger, often accompanied by him throwing his iPad at one of his staff, are legendary. Grown men lower their voices in his presence. Their faces become solemn, almost stiff. They look down, obedient, nervous, mindful.”

In 1981, Alan Cowell wrote a piece which The New York Times titled “In Libya, Qaddafi Personality Cult is All-pervasive.” Cowell continues: “He’s a great actor. He loves to put on a show. He’s tall, good looking, and has a great deal of charm. He can look a bit fierce when he’s upset, and when he’s worked up he’s almost neo-Hitlerian.”

The fascist leader is a performer of substantial, typically remarkable flair. But unlike the theater actor, this performer does not aspire to speak truth to audiences.

On the contrary, the acting skills are parlayed to achieve a double outcome. Firstly, the target population must be mesmerized into unthinking enthusiasm for the Great Leader. Secondly, the performer-tyrant must conceal his/her scorn for the seduced followers.

It can only be scorn that drives the leaders’ will to reduce adherents into the abject state: a slavery of the mind.

CONTEMPT AND TYRANNY
MAGA and DDS’ slavish adulation fuels tyrannical action that progressively impoverishes these scorned throngs — physically and mentally — and ultimately disenfranchises them. They can elect only their idols; cannot vote to better their own lives. Their vote is effectively nullified.

The more abject they are, the more they empower tyrants.

And it does not seem to matter a whit that the performer/tyrant uses violence to terrorize their constituencies, or just charms them silly. Or promises financial gain. It does not even matter if the promises are unredeemed. The show, really, just goes on.

Right now, it only matters that the theater platforms are massively online, as much as a very local, grassroots reach succeeds. The character of contempt, or scorn — among the ugliest of human attitudes — is precisely the sine qua non of tyranny.

It assumes that there are humans who are born to be sold, bought, fooled, depleted, drained of capacity for independent thought, bled, consumed, tapped, used up. This derisory attitude towards the multitudes will not square with any protesting voice about all human beings as equal and possessed of rights, freedoms, and responsibilities.

And corruption, the bane of postcolonial and neocolonial states, is simply the immense, chillingly obvious face of contempt, writ large.

THE AUTHORS
Where corruption is normalized, such as in Trump’s USA and the Philippines under most of its presidents, the majority populations are necessarily thought of as idiot throngs — notwithstanding loud declarations from all leaders of love for the “common man” (an unfortunate coinage indeed). This is the stupid electorate who, in the warped minds of the Filipino neoliberal middle class, and American Democrats, foisted bad leaders on their respective republics.

Very few challenge the projection of stupidity on the masses. Very few look to the tyrants themselves as the authors of mass stupidity.

The questions begged are quite confronting. Is this contemptuous heart of national leadership the true reason for the failure of democratic institutions? Is this the foul core of governance that guarantees the failure of education, civic responsibility, the creation of common good?

And: Is this culture of political performance, that which enables tyrannical rule, inevitable wherever all forms of mass communication are the only real exercise of democratic guarantees of freedom?

Marian Pastor Roces is an independent curator and critic of institutions. Her body of work addresses the intersection of culture and politics.