This essay critically examines the failure of contemporary partitocracy, the “post-right” and the “post-left,” the degradation of democratic norms in what can be termed “post-democracy,” and the rise of “post-citizenship.”

Initially conceived as a private reflection, the essay evolved into a quasi-diary of developing insights, with each iteration deepening the analysis, sharpened further by political and economic milestones: Italy’s integration into the EU in 1999, the disillusionments following the 2008 Great Recession, and the unfulfilled promises of the Obama era. [1] This work interrogates how these moments underscored the fragility of established political institutions and the persistence of structural inequities that have fueled disillusionment with democratic systems on both sides of the Atlantic with the rise of “post-cizens.”

Through a perspective informed by both proximity to and detachment from European and American systems, I examine how an ostensibly democratic system has fostered a state of disillusionment, or, as an EU commissioner once said dismissively, “disappointment.” While I would not have characterized my stance as such at the time, this disillusionment matured into a lucid vision of disenchantment [2] unclouded by ideological propaganda, foreseeing a shift toward reacting forces vying for revenge long before the surge of the far right gained mainstream traction.

What is termed here as the “return of fascism” in the US and EU does not signal a true resurgence but rather manifests as an inevitable consequence of a partitocracy that has, by increments, commodified democracy and life itself. [3]  As traditional parties collapse under the weight of corporate interests and autocratic and messianic individuals, what emerges is a reconfiguration of existential fascism—a protean force, unrestricted by traditional partisan lines and unmoored from previous ideological confinements. This analysis requires a critical and detached disillusionment, one that dissects nationalistic symbolism and the romanticism of past eras. To meet the challenges of a transformed political landscape, we must cultivate an understanding that resists the comforting delusions of “golden ages” and instead critically evaluates our contemporary conditions devoid of nostalgia or ideological allegiance.

This essay, therefore, contends that it is only by embracing a critical, detached stance toward our political inheritance that we can hope to foster any meaningful resistance against the forces that thrive on our collective disillusionment and disengagement both from the left and the right before vengeance will turn into violence.

Introduction to Why I Was Right… The Shamanism of Real Artists and Intellectuals

Hi Lanfranco I won’t say you were right, but you were right. It must be awful to be right about that. Professor Paul Brown, iMessage, Sidney, 11/10/16, 07:10

In August 2015, while observing the early rise of Donald Trump as a political force in the U.S., I sensed an unmistakable shift that would alter the American political landscape. My prediction that he would win the presidency—made after witnessing one of his first speeches on a Boston friend’s oversized TV—was initially dismissed as irrational by academic peers, many of whom mistook my analysis for an embrace of the political far-right. Such reactions highlighted a persistent academic discomfort with perspectives that scrutinize the thin veneer separating liberal ideals from authoritarian impulses, and that challenge the boundaries of left and right political identities in an increasingly polarized context.

As a scholar and artist deeply embedded in examining the interplay between socio-political transformation and cultural dynamics, I was struck by how Trump’s rhetoric, though unprecedented in style in the U.S., was symptomatic of a deeper, underlying disillusionment with both liberal and conservative political establishments. The 2016 election crystallized a decades-long drift from democratic ideals toward a form of corporate autocracy that maintains power through a rebranded, yet equally pernicious, form of populist rhetoric. This shift can be understood as part of a broader phenomenon: the mutation of democracy into what could more accurately be called post-democracy, where the structures of democratic governance remain, but are devoid of their original substantive values, favoring instead economic and corporate interests over genuine public representation. [4] As an EU commissioner candidly stated to me during a conversation in Istanbul in 2014, it was less about political alignment and more about “seeing through the charade.” [5] What has emerged is not merely the collapse of a particular party or administration but the deeper erosion of participatory citizenship, as the “post-citizen” is relegated to the status of a controlled, dispensable entity within a corporate-dominated neoserfdom. [6]

By 2019, three years into Trump’s presidency, I felt both a grim satisfaction and a sense of vindication, though these feelings were tempered by a profound concern for the structural failings in both U.S. and European politics. In the U.S., the escalation of identity politics into the mainstream and the systematic manipulation of public opinion has polarized citizenry into factional groups driven by allegiance rather than shared societal goals. In Europe, the 2008 financial crisis revealed the European Union’s willingness to prioritize a corporate-economic understanding of the union over social cohesion, leading to widespread public disenfranchisement. What has emerged, in both contexts, the U.S. and the E.U., is a political reality wherein citizens are gradually reduced to neoserfs—subject to the machinations of a corporate-political elite that sustains itself through a façade of participatory governance and fascistic implementation of equality, while stifling dissent and narrowing the scope of public engagement to preselected agendas. With each subsequent election cycle, the disintegration of the façade of partitocracy and the rise of what I term neoserfdom have eroded traditional democratic structures, while the corporate interests entrenched within political bodies have actively restructured citizenship into a transactional, even disposable, status. [7]

TO BE CONTINUED…

A Brief Philosophical Emotive Intelligere of Anger and Fascism

TO BE CONTINUED…

ENDNOTES

[1]

IMAGES

Image Cover: Lanfranco Aceti, Mediated Post-Truth, 2016. Photographic print on fine art paper.