"It is my right to be fascist!"

Fascism is an illiberal ideology; that is, under fascism people are neither free to speak, nor to act against the status quo. For this reason, fascism stands in sharp contrast with liberalism, which posits freedom as the most important political value.^[1]

Given its commitment to freedom, has liberalism saved us from fascism? No, it has not. Extreme right-wing parties and personalities are all the more popular, and openly fascist and nazi narratives circulate undisturbed among politicians and media platforms (e.g., the myths of nations and races behind the “ethnical substitution” theory). Here I will address the following question: what is the relation between liberalism and fascism? According to Japanese Marxist philosopher Tosaka Jun, they are intimately connected, because they are ultimately interested in the same thing: interpreting the world rather than changing it. I will begin by introducing Tosaka’s critique, I will then explain Tosaka’s diagnosis of this intimate relationship, and I will conclude with an example of how liberal media can function as a platform for fascist ideology without renouncing its liberal values.

Cultural Liberalism

Not many philosophers in the West know Tosaka Jun (1900-1945), since his work has only very recently been translated from Japanes to English by Prof. Robert Stolz. In Tosaka’s masterpiece The Japanist Ideology (1935) the philosopher demonstrated that fascism proliferates precisely where “cultural liberalism” develops; that is, the culture proper of capitalist societies whereby liberal values advocated by political thinkers (e.g. freedom; Taylor 1979, Pettit 1997, Sen 1992) reduces into a personal ideology “dangerously divorced from economical and political freedom” (Stolz in Tosaka 2024 [1935]: 21].

The basis of Tosaka’s critique of this form of liberalism is akin to that coming from Western Marxism (Marcuse 1937, Horkheimer 1937, Adorno 1969): Tosaka stresses that what liberalism and fascism share is the method of hermeneutic philosophy, or the “philosophy of interpretation.” When a theologian interprets a Biblical text, she is employing hermeneutics. Now, if hermeneutics is employed not only with texts but also with facts, this implies that facts are reduced to mere interpretations and, consequently, that reality itself becomes a mere interpretation, of which we can say several things, but about which we cannot really do much.

On the other hand, Marx famously said that philosophy is aimed at changing the world, not just interpreting it; for this reason, Marxism employs “historical materialism”, which looks at facts as embedded in their socio-economic context. Imagine asking yourself whether women are truly free in your country. You observe, you research, you see that women can pursue a career, or if they wish they can have a family, sometimes they can even do both. You see that they wear high heels and heavy makeup, but they can also decide not to shave, or wear men’s clothes. You conclude that women in your country are free to do what they wish. Some may interpret it as real freedom, others may not; ultimately, these facts are interpreted depending on everyone’s take on freedom, and there seems to be no right or wrong answer. Alternatively, you analyze women in their socio-economic context, see that they are paid less than men, that they are socially pressured into being caregivers but their care labour is not remunerated, that they internalize that beauty is a value so they have to spend money in cosmetics, that those who do not internalize this belong to richer social classes and attend high rated schools. You then ask yourself why this is the case and study the historical development of such socio-economic factors. You conclude that women are slaves to several myths (career, family, beauty), and this conclusion fosters action. In the former case you have employed hermeneutics, in the latter historical materialism.

For Tosaka, fascism and cultural liberalism share the following “family resemblance” (Tosaka 2024 [1935]: 20): they both reject the historical dimension of facts and, therefore, they both become philosophies of mere interpretation, existing not in actuality but in a world of de-contextualized meanings. Employing hermeneutics rather than materialism when looking at “freedom” detaches freedom from material reality, as we saw in the example above. Hermeneutics, thus, turns rich and practical concepts into abstract, void ones. And, as we are about to see, fascism comes to fill this void.

Sonomama

Now, observes Tosaka, given that fascism and cultural liberalism share the same hermeneutic methodology, this form of liberalism can become fascism, while remaining liberalism. In Japanese he uses the concept of sonomama: literally, “as it is”. In other words, liberalism can become a form of fascism, without renouncing its philosophical principles. It can be illiberal without losing its liberal asset. Freedom, as mentioned before, becomes a non-factual, abstract concept in the name of which one can claim one’s rights, and fascism can exploit this absence of practical meaning to proliferate undisturbed. Crucially, this implies that cultural liberalism is utterly helpless in the face of the rise of fascism: all it can do is configure itself as a sort of “safe middle ground” between two extremes, while continuing to offer a platform for fascism to proliferate. As a matter of fact, notes Tosaka, it is due to this family resemblance that the extreme that benefits from the liberalist status quo is fascism and not socialism: because socialism rests on completely different methodological grounds, those of historical materialism.

Are liberal societies doomed, then? According to Tosaka, cultural liberalism necessarily rests on hermeneutics; hence, the only way out is socialism. A milder view could go in the direction of resisting the sonomama and actively re-anchoring liberal concepts in material conditions, thus softening the connection between liberalism and hermeneutic methodology. Emancipatory struggles and protests precisely go in the direction of forcing confrontation with material conditions (Celikates 2016) and, thus, offer an antidote to liberalism’s helplessness in the face of fascism. In any case, effective counter-hegemonic action starts from Tosaka’s diagnostic tool: through historical materialism we need to spot the sonomama, that is, the way in which liberalism has become fascism while remaining “as it is”.

Jubilee Media and the sonomama

I will close off with an example of sonomama that comes from the American media entertainment sphere. I believe this example clearly depicts how freedom – here, specifically, “freedom of speech” – as an abstract concept can become a platform for fascism. As a European, I see that these examples proliferate also in non-American media platforms, so I believe everyone can find its own example of media sonomama.

If you watch Youtube videos about current debates on hot topics, maybe you have seen some from “Jubilee Media” on your Youtube homepage, or on your social media news feeds. Jubilee offers, among others, a format of discussion that is called “Middle Ground”, that divides people in two distinct categories and asks them to discuss prompts in a mediated way, i.e., those in favour begin to share their thoughts and afterwards those who disagree with the prompt come forward to join the conversation. As written on their website, this format “explores whether two different groups of people, opposed in their beliefs, can come together empathetically and find middle ground.”^[2] All this translates as follows: men belonging to the “manosphere” telling other men that they should be dominating “alfa-male”, right-wing extremists who affirm that any person who deviates from “the norm” must be eradicated, and many other appalling examples. Journalists and influencers have begun asking for Jubilee media to be stopped, precisely because their business model offers a platform for fascism to proliferate.^[3] To this, Jubilee responds that they are only offering platforms where people can enact their freedom of expression, where people can develop empathy and find the middle ground instead of becoming more and more polarized.^[4] Here’s the sonomama.

A model such as that of Jubilee is an expression of hermeneutics, whereby fascist people can come across as mere conservatives who wish to express what they think about minorities. According to this picture it is indeed possible to find middle ground because, at the end, they are all mere interpretations. Fascist ideas are just that – “ideas”. And here’s liberalism fostering the culture of freedom to speak one’s absolutely anti-scientific and anti-historical ideas: it stays liberalism and becomes fascism.

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Western Marxist have extensively stressed the dangers of idealism and hermeneutical methodology. Tosaka, an “Eastern Marxist”, can help us understand how the intimate connection between liberalism and fascism unfolds today, as well as spot when and how cultural liberalism masks fascism as a right one can claim in the name of individual freedom. Any form of collective action to resist and disrupt this liberal-fascist cultural hegemony should start from recognizing the sonomama.

^[1] although withing liberals there is historical disagreement on what exactly political freedom amounts to, e.g., negative freedom, Berlin 1969; positive freedom, Raz 1986; republican freedom, Pettit 1996

^[2] https://www.jubileemedia.com/our-work

^[3] Here’s an example: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3AGMkGsyoLGXQSDAdMTayg

^[4] See Jubilee Media’s CEO responding to American journalist Taylor Lorenz asking him about the illiberal dangers of his platform: https://deepcast.fm/episode/are-jubilee-videos-healing-or-polarizing

Cited works

Adorno, T. W., 1969. “Zur Spezifikation der kritischen Theorie”, in Theodor W. Adorno Archiv (ed.), Adorno. Eine Bildmonographie, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Berlin, I., 1969. ‘Two Concepts of Liberty,’ in Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 118–72.

Celikates, R., 2016. Democratizing civil disobedience. Philosophy and Social Criticism 42 (10):982-994.

Horkheimer, M., 1937. “Traditionelle und kritische Theorie”, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 6(2): 245–294; translated as “Traditional and Critical Theory”, Matthew J. O’Connell (trans.), in Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays, New York: Continuum, 1972, pp. 188–243.

Marcuse, H., 1937. “Philosophie und kritische Theorie”, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 6(3): 625–647; translated as “Philosophy and Critical Theory”, in H. Marcuse (ed.), Negations, Jeremy J. Shapiro (trans), London: MayFlyBooks, 1968, pp. 99–117.

Pettit, P., 1996. ‘Freedom as Antipower,’ Ethics, 106: 576–604.

Pettit, P. 1997. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Raz, J., 1986. The Morality of Freedom, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Sen, A., 1992. Inequality Reexamined, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Taylor, C., 1979. ‘What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty,’ in The Idea of Freedom, A. Ryan (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press: 175–93.

Tosaka, J. Nihon ideorogīron [The Japanese Ideology]. Robert Stolz’s translation, Columbia University Press, 2024.

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About the Author

Matilde Liberti earned her PhD in moral philosophy at the University of Genoa, Italy. She is an English teacher in local schools and an independent researcher in philosophy. Her research interests focus on the possibility of social progress, and her current project consists in merging Critical Theory with Virtue Ethics