Authoritarian politics, which work with emotionally charged, fear-mongering doomsday scenarios, and profit from despair, powerlessness, and isolation, seem increasingly to lead to outright fascism. The fascist threat to democratic society calls into question the egalitarian gains that social movements have fought for. Therefore, as Jule Govrin argues, we cannot avoid talking about equality and searching for traces of universalism from below.
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Authoritarian-fossil alliances are on the rise. Politicians like Donald Trump and Giorgia Meloni openly celebrate their irrationality and promote outdated fossil fuel extraction and energy models. Their interplay is deeply destructive. The authoritarian alliances between fascist actors, tech billionaires, and radicalized conservatives seek to strip away the right to bodily self-determination and the promise of human rights. In doing so, they portray migrants, poor people, and trans and queer people as the source of all harm and expose them to violent attacks through this cultivation of resentment. The rhetoric of scapegoating, using fact-free scandalization effects, diverts attention from the restructuring of society in the name of authoritarian austerity, which aims to further dismantle already ailing welfare state structures.
Fascism’s belief in progress
The outdated alliances of the fossil fuel industry are forming a progress-loving alliance with tech billionaires like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, who dream of abolishing democracy. Before he died fleeing Nazism, Walter Benjamin warned of the dangers of a belief in progress and technology. According to Benjamin, fascists use technology for their own purposes to spread the cult of the leader through the media. Moreover, this belief in progress through the superpower of technology encourages subservience to those who have the power to control technological means and claim to be the saviors of humanity.
Benjamin’s thesis is more relevant than ever. The fact that tech billionaires like Musk are not afraid to act openly as oligarchs with claims to power is a very clear warning sign. In the ‘broligarchy’ of authoritarian politicians and tech billionaires, the culture of the leader and the culture of the genius merge, imperial fantasies in the name of progress that moves backwards because it wants to erase the emancipatory achievements of past struggles. What they seek is not the freedom of the many, but the freedom of the few.
Strategic optimism
To counter this, we need, what the sociologist Erik Olin Wright once called “strategic optimism.” This does not come from naivety, but from the political necessity of opposing the disruptive, destructive forces of the right and exploring radical democratic paths of social-ecological transformation. Pessimism has never been the way forward for left politics. is is quite different from authoritarian politics, which works with affectively-charged, fear-inducing apocalyptic scenarios and profits from despair, powerlessness and isolation.
As much as the sense of futility may tempt us to retreat into the private sphere with resignation, this way out remains blocked because people’s lives will inevitably change, albeit for some more than others. People with a history of migration, queer people, Jewish people, people with disabilities, people affected by poverty and, last but not least, women will be confronted with concrete dangers and material cuts. But everyone else will also feel the changes. The crises – especially the climate crisis – do not stop at the front door. Fascism does not leave the lives of individuals untouched either. In order to make ourselves crisis-proof, in order to ally ourselves in an anti-fascist way, it is necessary to talk about equality, to strive for it as a lived equality, which already exists in many places.
Radical equality instead of negative freedom
Why equality – and not justice? A capital-compliant concept of justice is often used as an argument against equality in order to legitimize inequality. Market liberals use a vocabulary of meritocracy to justify unequal wealth and tax advantages. But wealth is increased primarily by inheritance, not by work.
In the age of authoritarian neoliberalism, there are reasons why equality has disappeared from the political vocabulary. Equality is uncomfortable. It reminds us that people need basic social structures in order to act in a self-determined way. Equality is inseparable from freedom: To treat each other as equals, people must be free. And to be free, they need shared basic conditions such as safe housing, good education and health care. These are elementary for democratic coexistence if we do not want to leave the state and society to oligarchs who want to steer political events in their favor.
Neoliberal austerity, which destroys core social structures in favor of wealth inequality, is promoted in the name of freedom, meaning market freedom. This one-sided advocacy of negative freedom, detached from the social, can be found on the side of market fundamentalists and open authoritarians. This is why neoliberal discourses put freedom first, in order to forget the question of equality. But freedom is socially conditioned and inseparable from equality. This makes it all the more urgent to talk about equality again – not in the liberal sense of equality of opportunity, but in the sense of a radical equality that seeks the good life for all.
Egalitarian care
Caring Cities are an example of egalitarian practice and democracy as a sustainable way of life. In addition to cities such as Zaragoza or Rosario, the government of Ada Colau (2015 to 2023) in Barcelona also pursued this municipal policy approach. Building on the knowledge of feminist movements, care became the focus of socio-ecological transformation. This included a series of measures aimed at the common good, above all the expansion of public care structures. The core concern was to fundamentally change economic and social policy as well as urban planning, to expand public infrastructure in order to improve living conditions for all, for example through family centers and more care and health services. A care card has been introduced for people – mostly women – who carry much of the burden of care in their families, giving them preferential access to state care. In addition, the city’s architecture has been transformed, with green spaces that offer protection from the summer heat and meeting places.
This transformation of urban life was not just a top-down effort. Ada Colau’s Barcelona en Comú party, which grew out of the Occupy movement, consulted closely with social associations and initiatives. It supported neighborhood and community projects that, in turn, could contribute to the transformation of the city. In such a radical democratic cycle, participation is actively strengthened. Democracy thus proves to be an egalitarian practice of shaping society and a sustainable way of life.
Practices of lived equality are certainly not immune to failure. Ada Colau’s government did not succeed in promoting structural economic change based on solidarity, nor did it succeed in reaching all sectors of the population. Living equality is a precarious practice. It consists of trial and error, of practice. Concrete proposals for a more equal world are on the table – from caring cities, the socialization of livelihoods, the transformation of shopping malls into care centers, to the four-day week, which would better distribute care work and give people time to participate in shaping society. And the more people get involved, the more vibrant democracy becomes, and the more democratic and social the economy becomes.
The precarious practice of radical equality
It is worth looking for projects and practices that implement such a change in small ways. Instead of being driven by the emotionally charged fear narratives of authoritarian forces, it is groundbreaking to make knowledge of lived equality more visible and to set up left counter-narratives for a shared future.
It is not a matter of romanticizing solidarity, denying existing inequalities or the dangers of fascization. To counter the threats, we need to confront the big questions of the future and point the way to another possible world, rather than getting fatalistically caught up in mere defensive struggles. Instead of asking about abstract ideals of a just society or distant utopias, we should learn from what we know about egalitarian organization – and try things out together, practicing equality in the concrete local sphere of the neighborhood, the district, and the city. It is also important to develop communal safety nets – as antifascist care practice. If state institutions are not safe from authoritarian attacks, the protection we can give ourselves lies in the radical democratic structures of civil society. Democracy begins in diverse coexistence, as a way of life. That is why its strength stems from social relations. Equality begins in these relations.
Radical equality is not granted by laws; we create it together through solidarity – with those who are close to us and with those who are far away. Equality is based on diversity and multiplicity. It is not about being the same, nor is it about the best way to live. Rather, it is about prioritizing egalitarian care for all in recognition of our interconnectedness and diversity. It is this universal interdependence that binds us together, despite our differences. This is, if you will, the smallest egalitarian denominator – our embodied relationality. Equality turns out to be a radically relational practice. A practice of caring in solidarity.
Towards universalism from below
In midst of this, a universalism from below is emerging. It emerges where people unite in their differences and see themselves as equals. In Benjamin’s theses on history, such a universalism from below becomes visible between the lines. In the idea of an anarchistically minded Jewish messianism, Benjamin speaks of the messianic flash in history. It lights up when, in the midst of catastrophic events, we become aware of the resistance movements of the past-as “confidence, courage, humor, cunning, steadfastness” that continue to work “in the distance of time.” (Translation from German: Editors)
Signs of universalism from below can be glimpsed when people become aware of the overlapping histories of violence – in resistance to attempts to manage and exploit people in the name of progress, which led to fascism in the 20th century and could lead to fascism again. After 1945, the UN Charter of Human Rights was brought to the world. Although human rights are a promise that has yet to be fulfilled, it is all the more urgent to defend them.
Yesterday, as today, we need anti-fascism out of decency. It manifests itself in many ways and in many places, in massive demonstrations such as those organized by the feminist movement in Buenos Aires, or in small CSDs in Brandenburg that confront violent Nazis. This is a flash of universalism from below. Protests like CSDs, often dismissed as identity politics, fight for a democratic society of the many. They are anti-fascist resistance. This is where their egalitarian, universal content is revealed.
A universalism from below begins with concrete struggles for equality, connects movements transversally, and builds on their diversity. It does not prescribe a way of life, does not have a fixed set of universalist principles, does not strive for equality. It manifests itself in moments of solidarity. Instead of continuing to pursue competition and its social value systems, as the capitalist way of relating dictates, they try out other “ways of relating,” to borrow a term from Bini Adamczak, which do not see self-determination, freedom, equality, diversity and connectedness as opposites, but as mutually dependent.
In their polyphony, egalitarian protests and practices express a shared desire for another possible world. The knowledge of solidarity-based economic relations and practices exists, and is already being realized in many places around the world. In spite of all the threats and the gravity of the current situation, when we organize ourselves to become crisis resilient together, it changes us affectively. The hope that we give each other, the comfort that we offer each other, the simple joy of being together: in this, a universalism from below shines forth, moving through history with the human capacity for ruse, hope and solidarity, and carrying it into the future.