Why Fascists Never Think They’re Fascists — But Victims and Heroes

The Psychology of the New Global Wave of Fascism

Image Credit

“I’m not a fascist! They’re the real fascists!! The students, the leftists, the woke mob, the anti-fascists, the teachers, the LGBTQ! They’re putting me in danger! They’re taking away my rights! My rights matter most of all! I’m being persecuted, violently and viciously!! I have a right to be heard — and what I have to say is that I’m superior, and they’re inferior! And if you don’t allow me this view — then you’re the real fascist!!”

LOL — do you see how funny and warped all this is the moment you think about it? 

Needless to say, what makes a person a “fascist,” at least in terms of beliefs, is pretty straightforward. That some people are biologically inferior, inherently less valuable, hence need to be dehumanized, and cleansed away from society, their personhood, livelihoods, socio-cultural existences, and possibly even lives, removed. Nobody on the left is saying any of that to the kind of person I’m describing — and so quite obviously, the “real fascist” is the one who believes these crackpot theories of inherent supremacy, and then desires political “solutions” to the “problems” of people who are not human. The question we are answering today is: why would anyone believe in such obviously false notions, to begin with? Why would they need so desperately to?

Let’s start at the beginning — I’ll try to really explain the psychology of the new wave of fascism. You can judge for yourself whether it carries any water — I’ll only say this much: if you see these traits in yourself, you should stop and yourself: “Wait, am I what he’s describing?”

Fascists never think they are fascists. A fascist never thinks of himself or herself as a “fascist”, anything at all carrying a negative or malicious connotation. They think of themselves, first, as victims. Victims of great and grand conspiracies — the Great Replacement, the LGBTQ+ destroying them, women murdering babies as birth control, woke teachers indoctrinating their kids, immigrants out to destroy their culture, the liberals want to drink the blood of kids, the Jews are doing this, the Muslims are doing that, blah blah, and on and on the insanity goes. 

To the fascist, those behind these conspiracies are not regular people — they are especially cunning and vicious especially greedy and unscrupulous, especially seditious and slothful, especially bad. They are especially powerful, in other words. They have the power to completely destroy the way of the life, the whole existence, of the person being victimized.

Now. See what has really gone on here. Victimhood is a kind of paranoid delusion. Of a very specific kind — a histrionic persecution fantasy. That is one which carries a special note of alarm, a kind of cry for help. An LGBTQ kid, or a Jewish teenager, doesn’t have the power to destroy anyone, really. Victimhood is imagined. And yet it’s a fantasy that has created monsters — beings with supernatural powers. Supernatural persistence, cunning, cruelty, far beyond what is actually possible, let alone for a vulnerable person. The supernatural is not real — there’s nobody persecuting the fascist, pursuing them and hounding and hunting them, devoted to their destruction, like a relentless phantasm which never gives an inch, never tires, and never forgives.

The truth is that nobody cares about him — or her, of course, but for the purposes of this article let’s talk about “him”— very much at all. He’s a “loser,” just another nobody, with very much money or status or power — a point I’ll return to. But precisely because nobody cares about him very much, the truth must be denied against in more and more histrionic ways — ways designed specifically to be noticed, so somebody does care. And now the psychology of the fascist goes from unreal to warped.

Hence, the fascist is always projecting, in baffling and labyrinthine ways. “I’m not the fascist — they’re the real fascists! The ones who don’t listen to me!! Those are the fascists!! The ones who are taking away my right to abuse and hurt people!! The ones who won’t believe that I’m superior!! The ones who don’t make me the center of their world! The leftists and students and Muslims and Jews and Mexicans — they’re the true fascists — they want to oppress and subjugate me!!”