Today, the uncanny return of authoritarian populism can be situated between two key events: the Al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, and the financial crisis of 2007–8. And, herein lies the core of contemporary fascism. While compelling, Riley’s brief is, ultimately, unconvincing because he fails to take seriously the undermining of the institutions of liberal democracy, against a backdrop of the chronic (rather than acute) socioeconomic crisis, in the name of collective identities which one witnesses not simply in the United States with the advent of the Trump presidency but globally. Yet, on the basis of four axes – geopolitical dynamics, economic crisis, the relation between class and nation, and the character of political parties and civil societies – he carefully and quite persuasively lays out the case against considering a figure like Donald J. In a recent editorial of the New Left Review after the US mid-term elections, sociologist Dylan Riley notes the surfeit of invocations of fascism across the political spectrum. Tempting as it is to suggest that that we are re-living the 1930s, it is vitally important to maintain an attitude of skepticism.
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