Fighting against this age

Rob Riemen (Nether­lands, 1962) is the founder of Nexus, which pro­motes cul­tural and philo­soph­i­cal de­bate and is this philoso­pher’s way of fight­ing fas­cism. Riemen says we live in a so­ci­ety that has every­thing in place for the au­thor­i­tar­ian mon­ster to rise again, as he re­counts in his book, To Fight Against This Age.

How can we de­tect fas­cism, if it is al­ways pre­sent with dif­fer­ent faces?

The dif­fer­ence with other po­lit­i­cal cur­rents is that fas­cism has no ide­ol­ogy. Un­like au­thor­i­tar­ian tyranny, it emerges among the peo­ple. Hitler was elected po­lit­i­cally and Trump, and Ma­rine Le Pen? Who knows. This hap­pens in so­ci­eties that have lost their con­science and no longer keep the spirit of democ­racy alive. We live in a time when we avoid re­spon­si­bil­ity. We are part of the masses. You can be at the top, a uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor, and still be part of the masses be­cause you are not in­ter­ested in as­sum­ing your re­spon­si­bil­i­ties or your free­dom. It is an in­tel­lec­tual void where peo­ple just want to be happy. For fas­cism to grow, you just need a cri­sis, cre­ate an enemy and find a leader who solves all the prob­lems.

What does this leader need to be?

The leader should be charis­matic and tell us that we do not need to do any­thing, just fol­low. Slowly there will be no space for the crit­ics, in­de­pen­dent judges will be re­moved, free­dom of the press ... Fas­cist cul­ture is al­ways kitsch. It is also about being able to tell a lot of lies. Trump is the best ex­am­ple and it is in­fect­ing the whole of west­ern so­ci­ety.

What can we do?

We have seen it at other times, with Mus­solini, Hitler, Franco. There is still time to stop it, but once it has started, it can­not be stopped. It is an ex­tremely dan­ger­ous phe­nom­e­non and we know this be­cause we lived through it. So I say: stop all the non­sense and call things by their name. We have to see it in a global and his­tor­i­cal con­text and admit that it is going to in­fect us and so we need to cre­ate strate­gies to elim­i­nate it now.

But we are very vul­ner­a­ble. Our lifestyle is con­sumerism, there’s no time to think, con­stant stress...

As I say in the book, it is all part of a kitsch so­ci­ety. It is an es­capist so­ci­ety, need­ing en­ter­tain­ment, where pol­i­tics is re­duced to elec­tions and ed­u­ca­tion, being trained to find a job. In the ’20s Paul Valéry said “There have never been so many toys and yet we con­tinue in a state of panic.” The bright peo­ple at that time al­ready had an idea what could hap­pen and so now we have to say out loud what is hap­pen­ing. Can we change things now? Yes. We have to. As we know the re­sult, we need to get to the causes. It is a cul­tural issue and we are all ac­com­plices. The elites first, be­cause not only do they have the so­lu­tion but they are part of the prob­lem. They are not in­ter­ested in any cul­tural change be­cause they are the essence of this cul­ture. Why is this cor­rupt po­lit­i­cal class still where it is?

Yes, why?

To alter this would re­quire a rad­i­cal change in the ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem, be­cause it is not de­signed to keep the spirit of democ­racy alive. It is filled with cul­tural ig­no­ra­muses who do not want to be ed­u­cated, or read clas­sics be­cause they are dif­fi­cult or they do not have the time. They do not want to con­cen­trate, de­velop artis­tic abil­i­ties, nor to enter the world of ideas. They want to be ac­tivists and want to change the world, but they do not want to do their home­work and are un­able to be self-crit­i­cal. The world of ed­u­ca­tion is very much af­fected, but so are the book­shop, the li­braries... they were once es­sen­tial en­vi­ron­ments for think­ing prior to tak­ing ac­tion. If we have Brexit it is be­cause young peo­ple did not vote and it was the same thing with Trump.

Some peo­ple had choco­late par­ties against fas­cism.

I am sick of ide­al­is­tic ac­tivism that has not been thought out, and this all con­sum­ing il­lit­er­acy. Stu­dents read un­der­lined sum­maries which saves them hav­ing to read the en­tire book. We have many op­por­tu­ni­ties to stop the non­sense. Let’s get to the book­shop and start think­ing.

I have the feel­ing they have won.

No, we can still fight. Win back the pos­si­bil­ity of being brave and not wor­ry­ing all the time about being part of the herd, con­form­ing with no self-crit­i­cism. Con­fronta­tion is some­times nec­es­sary. We need to ac­cept this re­spon­si­bil­ity be­cause we do not have a choice. We can­not go back. A lib­eral democ­racy is very de­mand­ing of its cit­i­zens.

Is there any hope?

Yes, some­times I feel hope­ful: the false hap­pi­ness of a kitsch so­ci­ety pleases no one and, as a re­sult of this vac­uum, there is a resur­gence in the search for spir­i­tu­al­ity. But that can take us in any di­rec­tion. Spir­i­tu­al­ity is a kind of ir­ra­tional­ity. It is true we are not only gov­erned by rea­son, and so I’m crit­i­cal of other thinkers who op­pose our ir­ra­tional side. The trou­ble is that spir­i­tu­al­ity can lead to drugs, idol­a­try, and all kinds of sects. But we need to take care when it comes to spir­i­tu­al­ity be­cause fas­cism can also be in­cluded.

In what sense?

It is based on faith. The idea of a mes­sianic fig­ure, with its liturgy and its com­mand­ments. It is a copy of re­li­gious tra­di­tions. Trump has a ten­dency to ar­rive at his meet­ings by he­li­copter, al­most heaven-sent.

All very sim­ple.

Ex­actly. Avoid the com­pli­cated. If we are sad, take a pill; there is the idea that money, sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy we will solve every­thing and Bill Gates be­came God.

So jel­ly­fish sur­vive just be­cause they are sim­ple.

The in­crease of ig­no­rance and stu­pid­ity is fright­en­ing. I don’t mean un­e­d­u­cated peo­ple. The in­tel­lec­tual class has for­got­ten its pri­mary re­spon­si­bil­ity for a thou­sand rea­sons and has ne­glected its role, as it did in the time lead­ing up to Nazism and fas­cism. Ni­et­zsche un­der­stood that this was the first step to­ward ni­hilism and he saw where it was lead­ing. If a young per­son asked me today what to do with his or her life, I would say for­get about uni­ver­sity, stay home and read.

Is the new fem­i­nism help­ing?

That would be great, but let’s com­pare it to the civil rights move­ment in the United States. On the one hand, we had Luther King, who was killed and on the other Mal­colm X, whose so­lu­tion pro­moted vi­o­lence. For­tu­nately, the peace­ful ap­proach won. Re­gard­ing the fem­i­nist move­ment re­lat­ing to Me Too, it puts the spot­light on sex­ism and the way women are re­duced to a body. But it has a dark side, as there is no dif­fer­ence be­tween those who adopt in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour and those who make a joke.

Well, but some­thing has shifted.

Yes, but what I still do not un­der­stand is how we in­creas­ingly ac­cept that the rich get richer and the rest are slaves, ro­bots. We need a press that can tell the truth, to de­mand qual­ity media and not rely only on the haters in en­ter­tain­ment and sen­sa­tion­al­ism.

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