crypto-fascism
According to Merriam-Webster, a crypto-fascist is
one who has secret fascist sympathies but is not an avowed fascist
but the term is often misattributed to people whom far-leftists hate but for whom they can find no evidence that they are fascist. The people they call crypto-fascist are usually people who are not far-right and who criticize the far-left because one of their main claims is that those who oppose the far-left are necessarily far-right. When moderates point out that extreme leftists are extreme, it makes those extremists look bad. Hence, those extreme leftists must try to paint those moderates as right-wing extremists in attempt to discredit them.
Here is an example of someone saying that conservatism is crypto-fascism. By definition, fascism and conservatism are mutually exclusive. One is about conserving social order and tradition and the other is about catastrophic breaking from traditional social order.
Here is an example of someone claiming that libertarianism is crypto-fascism. Fascism is a form of totalitarianism like socialism and Nazism. Libertarianism is the exact opposite of socialism/fascism/Nazism.
At least one source claims that…
the Oxford English Dictionary cites several early uses, including The Guardian using the term more than once in the 1920s.
This source, however, provides no evidence for this and I am not about to pay to access the OED.
One known early use of the term was by leading Frankfurt School critical theorist Theodor W. Adorno in a letter written in 1937 to Walter Benjamin. It can be seen here on page 212 where, as just one drop in a river of superfluous verbosity, Adorno writes that Caillois, like Jung and Klages has an…
anti-historical and indeed crypto-fascistic, faith in nature which is hostile to all social analysis, which eventually leads him towards a kind of national community [volkengemeinschaft] based on biology and imagination.
He seems to be applying the doctrine of class-consciousness, a term applied to Marx’s view that the people tend to hold a national identity because they are unconscious of themselves as a class (class “in itself”) but that due to the pressures of capitalism, they eventually become “woke” or conscious of themselves as a class (class “for itself”).
At any rate, you think that more context will clarify that quote (or if you are a masochist), be my guest and read more here. However, it seems clear enough that in this context, Adorno used the term crypto-fascistic to mean that which unintentionally leads to fascism, as opposed to how the term tends to be used today where, in the view of a so-called “anti-fascists”, a crypto-fascist would know they are fascist and conceal this fact so as to more effectively promote the pre-conditions for fascism.
The term crypto-fascist was used in 1972 in an issue of Germany’s Der Spiegel by writer Heinrich Böll in describing the German tabloid paper Bild which is not normally considered to be far-right. It is considered to be conservative. Conservatism and fascism are opposites in the sense that fascism entails a break from traditional social and governmental ordering. The entire article is available in it’s original form in German here and in English here in footnote 5 of Antifa in Mainstream Media/Politics 1 - Heinrich Böll, Nobel Prize Winner
Böll claims Bild and the police were “accomplices” because Bild uncritically published some figures provided by the police related to damages done by the Baader-Meinhof gang. About this, he writes…
That's no longer crypto-fascist ... no longer fascistoid, this is naked fascism, incitement, lies, dirt.
…and…
I can't understand that any politician would still give an interview to such a newspaper.
The Baader-Meinhof gang was also known as the Red Army Faction or RAF, which was an antifa group by definition. Böll makes the same arguments that we hear from antifa and their sympathizers today; that they are against fascism so if you are against them you are fascist, that they kinda don’t really exist anyway, that if you report about the bad things they do, you are really calling for violence against them and so on. For more on this see my piece Antifa in Mainstream Media/Politics 1 - Heinrich Böll, Nobel Prize Winner.
Whether the term is used as we saw above or how it tends to be used today, there is the tendency to apply the term within a binary world view wherein that which is not far-left is seen as fascist. It’s a bit silly and comically paranoid, and certainly a distorted view of things. If one sees the world in only black and white, one might claim that a blue flag was black or that an orange was white.
Some sources report that Gore Vidal referred to William F. Buckley Jr. as a crypto-fascist in a live televised debate in 1968. This is incorrect. Some sources correctly report that Vidal called Buckley Jr. a “crypto-Nazi” and later said that he meant to call him a “crypto-fascist”. This is also incorrect. For the details, see my piece History is Sometimes Wrong - Gore Vidal Did NOT Say W. F. Buckley Jr. is 'Crypto-Fascist' as NPR & Wikipedia Say.
As I write this, Wikipedia and Kiwix state that Adorno used the term in a book Der getreue Korrepetitor (“The Faithful Répétiteur”). These sources say the book is from “five years earlier” than Vidal and Buckley Jr.’s debate. However the date given for the book in their citation is 1976.
In Leftists Have Always Abused Terms Like 'Nazis' & 'Fascists', I discuss how Roy Moody suggests that “mainstream Hollywood cinema”, in particular and Frank Miller, are crypto-fascist in an article for the Guardian in 2011.
Also see crypto-Nazism, dog-whistle, fascism.
last update 2023-09-9
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