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281 - Final Project - r.h. Main Menu

Introduction to the Political Ideologies

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For this project, I’ll be chronicling three political and social ideologies and their throughlines from the Enlightenment period into 2017: Liberalism, fascism and neo-fascism. As well as analyzing the continuum of early definitions around race and racialized hierarchies and how they’re embedded in Enlightenment ideals. The very logic set up by Liberalism and the language of individualism would serve as the foundations for fascism and provide a framework for it as a style of governance. Liberalism was a doctrine that preached individual freedom. It valued small government as a way to protect the governed from “becoming slave” to the governing apparatus. Here, it is important to separate Liberalism from the term liberal, as in a liberal Democrat — one who finds themselves at the far Left of the spectrum. A liberal Democrat favors social reform and the advancement of human rights to include people of all genders, orientations and races, etc. In this paper, Liberalist will denote a person who identifies with Liberalism. Although fascism was thought to have been defeated after World War II, it would survive at the fringes of American politics and rear its ugly head once more in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fascism began as a dividing ideology that privileged power, nation(ality) and violence. It sought a restoration to “great times” and ethnic purity. The movement was resurrected online through the Alt-right, and Neo-nazis and 150 years of racialized logic and hierarchies would manifest in the protest and terrorist attack that occurred in mid-August. Charlottesville is the embodiment of the current state of fascism and the realization of the logic and principles proposed by Liberalism. I will also raise questions as to whether we can escape this arc, or systems of racially-dichotic logic and white supremacy.

Contents of this path: