Jordi Mir: "You don't have to go to the gas chambers to be a fascist."

Democracy, care, truth, and dialogue are the keys to confronting the fascism that is growing everywhere. This is the recipe that Jordi Mir, PhD in Humanities and professor at UPF, presents in Our fascism (Cápsula Editorial).

Fascism is…

— It's difficult to define.

You do it in the book.

— The exaltation of who we are.

In other words, supremacism.

— That's the key element. Thinking that we, whoever we are, are better. And that we can decide over others.

You say we have trouble identifying him.

— Because if we think it has to be a Hitler screaming uncontrollably, we'll have problems. It doesn't have to go as far as gas chambers. And not everyone who doesn't think like us is a fascist. But fascism does posit a superiority of some over others, and we can find this in various contexts.

"When I told my mother that [she] had voted for a party against abortion rights, when she had had an abortion, she said to me, 'I didn't vote for them for that reason.'"

— It is a fragment of Return to Reims, by Didier Eribon. A good way to think about why people with communist convictions, who were far removed from fascism, end up considering that it represents them.

Why does this happen?

— There is a crisis factor at play, and when we feel vulnerable, when we are afraid, our need for security is activated. And fascism has very traditionally worked to offer security.

So it grows in times of crisis and fear?

— And, conversely, it's a reaction to progress. Fascism has always been there, but it's when someone wants to alter the established order that they say: "This is unacceptable, we have to put a stop to it." Whether it's through a law on abortion, to regulate housing, or to put limits on real estate speculation. Depending on how you look at it, fascism is a triumph of the...

He's always looking for enemies.

— And you identify them as responsible for what happens to you, but then it doesn't solve the problems. We see this clearly now with migrants.

You talk about this through football and Hansi Flick.

— I'm a big fan of many things Flick says. In the middle of a campaign against referees, when one of them broke down in tears at a press conference, he came out and said, "These people are part of our sport." I thought it was important how he humanized them and how he asked us not to identify them as the enemy. We can find this kind of attitude—pointing fingers, treating people as guilty—in many areas.

And a key factor: fascism feeds on lies.

— I think it's important that in our society we are clear about which areas there is truth about whether things happened or not, and which areas there is a space for interpretation, for opinion.

Quotes from Bertolt Brecht, who wrote Five difficulties in writing the truth at a time when National Socialism was beginning to gain significant ground in Germany. What do you think is the most relevant part of what he says?

— We shouldn't go out to defend the truth about matters of opinion; we should go out to defend the truth about facts. And when we know something is false, we have to say so. And fundamentally, we must ensure that the truth gets out. It's important to know who has the capacity to communicate.

That's why he talks about courage.

— Because in certain contexts it's easier not to say certain things. But without courage, lies spread, as does the power of those who use them. Because those who tell lies know they are lies, and they use them to control us.

The solution?

— Building democracy.

Build it.

— We have a certain image of democracy. I see it, for example, with a question I always ask when there are students from the United States at the university.

Which?

— Was there democracy in the United States in the 1950s and 60s? People always look at you strangely and say yes. And then you ask, "Is a country democratic where a portion of the population can't vote?" They say no. And you remind them that in that United States, a paradigm of freedom against the Soviet world, Black people didn't vote. So… was it a democratic country?

What are they telling you?

— It's driving them a little crazy. But I think we need to reflect on the image we've built of democracy. It's a process, with shortcomings, and we're still building it.

How do we build democracy?

— I always find Aristotle, from the 5th century BC, helpful. When he spoke about democracy, he said that the key elements were freedom and equality. And if there was no equality, there was no freedom.

Can we talk about equality today?

— When you have this level of insecurity in society, which is affecting more and more people, it makes you think we're closer to what Aristotle defined as aristocracy, the rule of the rich, than to democracy, which he defined as the rule of the poor. The rich have more freedom than the poor.

So?

— Ours is a society with more democratic elements than before. Patriarchy is supremacism. Racism is supremacism. And the various struggles have served to improve the rights of women and Black people. Supremacism has lost ground, but it's returning to try to regain it. Without creating democracy, we won't be able to prevent fascism from taking hold. And this means, among other things, that people's needs are met and that they don't end up thinking that the problem of homelessness is solely the fault of immigrants.