There is more psychology than ideology in our society’s traces of fascism

I’m back from a very interesting conference organized by the magazine A city, which was held in Forlì from 27 to 30 October, dedicated to “Fascisms and democratic internationalism”. There were many speakers (about thirty) and the debate was not lacking. Just during the afternoon when we asked ourselves “if we can talk about fascism today”, while a few hours before the question was “what is fascism?”, I wondered if it is still appropriate to use the term fascism outside of what has historically been in Italy. Mine was the discovery of the umbrella, because it has long been known, thanks to Ernst Nolte’s book on the subject, that the theories on fascism are of two types: there are “singularizing” and “generalizing” ones, both in their own way right and useful. When the fascist phenomenon is “singularized” it is done out of historical-empirical correctness, which aims to accurately reconstruct the facts and acts of Italian fascism in particular (fascism was invented by us, even if it made school). On the other hand, when it is “generalized”, the usefulness is the political-diagnostic efficacy of the term, because one does not want to miss any of the sociological, psychological, ideological symptoms that announce a fascist danger even in regimes that are not formally fascist.