Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id554912760
The decline in associational life in Russia does not resemble that of liberal-corporatist Atlantic nations; rather, it is the result of the evolution of a previous Brezhnevite order in which organized social life was heavily bureaucratized while individualist and consumerist attitudes were criminalized as antisocial.
id554912778
Russia’s liberal-criminal (1991–2002), neoliberal-consumerist (2002–2012), and ultranationalist-fascist (2012–) regimes
id554913959
current government has reproduced, if not strengthened, the most repressive aspects of Soviet morality, for example the persecution of homosexuality — although what was originally attacked as “antisocial” is now directly addressed as a perversion of morality and social order.
id554913964
The decriminalization of male domestic violence signals acceptance of violence, committed not only by the state but also by individuals, as the expression of the “natural order” and social hierarchy.
id554915823
aestheticized and are ideologically linked to reproduced elements of the “glorious past.” The violence enacted by this sacred instrument incarnates the nation’s regained virility: bringing back the golden age of glory,
id554914788
possible crystallization of social atomization and highly moralized environments into a fascist ideology centered around the idea of violence.
id554914789
social atomization is not necessarily followed by a fascist ideology of violence. However, since the breakdown of associationalism left few avenues for individuals to regain a sense of connection and purpose, the idea of rejuvenated social order can endow individuals with such pseudo-senses of belonging and meaning
✏️ Take a social community, break it down to individuals acting independently, then reintroduce the social norms and connections they crave, but centered around new values you desire (e.g. violence), by justifying it as what is necessary to protect the morals and core of the community 🔗 View Highlight
id554919653
Fascism, however, emerges from and against liberalism as a violent reaction to what is conceived as liberalism’s self-destructive weakness: its tolerance of some forms of societal contestation, which enables socialists, trade unionists, feminists, and other “unworthy oppositions” (Ukrainian nationalists, independentists) to accumulate influence and threaten the supposedly “natural” social order.
id554919718
What characterizes a fascist regime is its positive embrace of violence, not only as an instrument, but as an expression of virility, manifesting national rejuvenation through glorification/aestheticization of violence for its own sake. The legitimation of violence as an end in itself requires making it an integral part of how we read the world: existential enemies threaten each other, the enemy’s agent within the social body must be denounced, and distaste for violence is considered a weakness, causing chaos, unrest, and further violence.