“Une histoire de continuités,” an interview with Alberto Toscano by Myriam Cloutier and Philippe de Grosbois first appeared on the Quebec-based left-wing magazine À bâbord ! Revue sociale et politique, no. 17 (Spring 2026), as part of the dossier “Les lignes de front de l’antifascisme.” It is published on Communis in English and Spanish translation with permission from À bâbord ! and Alberto Toscano.

“Rather than shrinking back and trying to join forces with the liberals to defend what was initially seen as an unfortunate compromise—a watering down of radicalism—we might as well be Marxists, because being centrist serves no purpose, and in any case, the Right already equates the center with Marxism. I think this is an opportunity to adopt an uncompromising stance. But obviously, with the highest possible level of mass mobilization and the ability to rally people around it.”

— Alberto Toscano

À bâbord !

In Late Fascism, you challenge the prevailing tendency to understand fascism through historical comparison. Moreover, the use of the term “fascism” to describe current forms of pervasive authoritarianism is the subject of much debate. Should we be wary of overly rigid definitions of fascism?

Alberto Toscano

Criticizing—or striving to move beyond—linear and reductive analogies, definitions, and checklists, was for me a preliminary step toward thinking about the phenomenon of fascism in a more expansive, processual, and nuanced way.

It seemed important to me first to emphasize that numerous Black anti-colonial intellectuals and activists from the Global South have explicitly demonstrated the links between Europe’s fascist regimes and movements and the realities of colonial and imperial power, as well as the racial forms of domination inherent in them. My aim was to move beyond approaches marked by a form of historical and political amnesia, which tend to turn fascism into a museum piece by presenting it as a horrific curiosity in the trajectory of so-called Western civilization.

Next, it seemed necessary to distinguish between, on the one hand, the usefulness of fascism as a framework for reflection and a historical moment from which to consider our present, and, on the other hand, the usefulness of the term “fascism” in political discourse. The fact that we can better understand contemporary authoritarianisms by viewing them as part of a continuum—albeit one marked by variations—with various forms of historical fascism does not, however, imply that there is much to be gained by labeling them as fascist.

This became clear during the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign, when many liberal critics of the MAGA movement did not hesitate to use the term “fascism” to describe the threat posed by Trump’s reelection, while seeking to completely whitewash Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, or to fail to recognize in prison and border violence the conditions necessary for the very possibility of Trumpism.

Thus, I believe we must reflect on the ways in which fascism can also serve to obscure certain historical continuities. I did not want to treat fascism as a term denoting an aberrant, exceptional, or antithetical policy to “standard” liberal-capitalist politics, but rather to reflect on their historical entanglement.

ÀB !: Can you tell us about the current bewilderment in the face of the dynamics of fascistization, which stems from a widespread blindness to regimes of domination within so-called liberal democracies themselves?

AT: I think one way to approach this problem would be not blur the distinction between ordinary violence and the differentiated use of violence at the heart of the daily exercise of power in liberal capitalist democracies. Rather, I would like to reflect on the relationship between the two.

What we are observing, particularly during Trump’s second term, sheds light on certain characteristics of this relationship. One of these concerns the conscious, subjective, even emotional connection to the forms of structural and State violence observed in prisons, at borders, or in the mechanisms of exclusion and control targeting mental health, the homeless, and other similar situations. There is a characteristic style of fascist politics that consists of affirming what mainstream liberalism tends to regard as an unfortunate necessity—namely, a celebration of the impunity of power.

It is difficult to argue that Trumpism represents some sort of massive expansion of U.S. State violence, but the qualitative shift is far from negligible. There has been a break with a set of symbolic norms—which nonetheless have concrete effects—regarding what is permitted, acceptable, desirable, and even any form of legal justification for certain actions.

The Indian historian Ranajit Guha, reflecting on the British Empire and drawing on Antonio Gramsci, spoke of a form of “domination without hegemony.” This type of domination no longer relies on the dynamics of persuasion and consent. We can observe this in Trump’s second term, both in relations with the rest of the world and within the country itself, where enemies are destined to be subjugated and crushed.

ÀB !: In your view, what are the main battle lines where fascism and antifascism are playing out today?

AT: It seems obvious to me that anti-immigration policy constitutes the main component, the one that, moreover, influences and shapes other forms and manifestations of hostility. This is what brings together, creates a sort of affinity with many other far-right projects, movements, or regimes.

In the case of the United States, we are now witnessing a return to an extremely aggressive and racist hemispheric policy, in which the “war on drugs,” the “war on illegal immigration,” and the “war on terrorism” have now merged into a sort of monstrous hydra: Nicolás Maduro and Gustavo Petro are equated with cartel leaders; the border is both the site of the “invasion” of migrants and drugs, and all of this is presented as terrorism.

The main axis along which the confrontation unfolds is the response to ICE raids—these hyper-militarized federal forces carrying out the mass deportation program on which Trump was elected. When we look at the list of executive orders or listen to the official narrative—which relies on isolated incidents like the assassination of Charlie Kirk—the real objective is to dismantle the entire infrastructure of civic resistance and civil disobedience against this deportation machine.

ÀB !: By attacking gender identity, critical race theory, and trans rights—portrayed as causes of the imminent collapse of Western civilization—what is late-stage fascism afraid of? What is it trying to prevent?

AT: I think the idea of a threat to order is crucial in the formation of a kind of far-right subjectivity. What strikes me as curious or symptomatic about the hostility toward trans people—an issue that is an obsession for the contemporary Far Right—which has concrete and terrifying consequences for trans people, their families, and their communities—is that it is also a hyper-abstract politics, as is often the case with the way fascists construct the figure of the enemy.

It is also a response to the fact that the organized collective struggles of trans and queer people—as well as, of course, the struggles of racialized and migrant people—have, over the past half-century, transformed the world in which we live, in the realms of daily life, social institutions, and even the distribution of power and visibility. There have been very significant transformations, although we on the Left criticize these advances as extremely truncated, often co-opted versions of the emancipations we would have liked to see happen or for which we have fought. I think what we see on the Far Right is this effort to promise a sort of abolition of all these basic reforms.

This must be understood as an endogenous demand within these far-right formations aimed at producing enemy figures that will strengthen the cohesion of their coalitions and their projects. Fascists—or the Far Right—need to constantly reproduce this specter, to be haunted by it. Yet those who consider themselves communists or socialists may, in fact, be deeply pessimistic, or doubt that radical equality will come to pass in our time. If the Left were to have a minimum program, it would be to become the force that the fascists think it is—that is, to genuinely threaten the capitalist order and to genuinely transform institutions.

ÀB!: On that note, you say in Late Fascism that the Left must “become what its enemies think it already is.” What exactly do you mean by that?

AT: This was a kind of provocation I put forward to take on the responsibility of reflecting on our relationship to the institutionalization of social and progressive movements, and instead of taking a defensive stance, to ask ourselves to what extent it is possible to claim the projects that the right perceives in what it calls the Left. The irony is that the Right often calls the center the “Left.”

Therefore, since this is highly destabilizing, rather than shrinking back and trying to join forces with the liberals to defend what was initially seen as an unfortunate compromise—a watering down of radicalism—we might as well be Marxists, because being centrist serves no purpose, and in any case, the Right already equates the center with Marxism. I think this is an opportunity to adopt an uncompromising stance. But obviously, with the highest possible level of mass mobilization and the ability to rally people around it.

Thinkers like Tariq Ali used to speak, quite rightly, of the “extreme center.” Today, however, that center has collapsed in many ways, whether it be the Democratic Party in the United States or the Liberal Party in Canada and elsewhere. There are still significant social and political forces attempting to keep this zombified form of liberal centrism alive, but it clearly offers no real resistance to the rise of far-right politics.

The possibility of Trumpism is in fact very closely linked to what has happened to liberal centrism, to so-called progressive neoliberalism, which is simply no longer an option.

I think that in times marked by deep unease and dissatisfaction, but also by a certain cynicism toward the status quo—when people feel both hopeless about their own future and disconnected from existing social forces—there is something very powerful in this discourse of cynical realism, which has been a huge advantage for the Far Right on a global scale. Because the discourse of cynical realism tells you: “Yes, the world is screwed.” This also echoes the rhetorical genius of historical fascism, which consisted simply of asserting a politics of power, impunity, and force.

ÀB !: Antifascism is under heavy attack. In such a context of repression and criminalization, what does the repertoire of possible offensive actions look like?

AT: If we consider the election of Zohran Mamdani, or even, before him, Brandon Johnson in Chicago, we see that despite all the prevailing nihilism and cynicism, if you actually propose something that even remotely resembles a social-democratic agenda—and add to that a dose of charisma, effective communication strategies, and grassroots volunteer engagement—you get pretty good results, don’t you? On the other hand, I think there are limits to this strategy and that it is likely that, particularly when it comes to anti-repressive policies, migration, or solidarity with Palestine, someone like Mamdani will very quickly hit a wall.

I believe that the core of an anti-fascist policy lies in the mass and institutional organization of truly effective forms of solidarity—those that concretely prevent people from being arrested, deported, or imprisoned. And that’s something I found very astute in Mamdani’s victory speech: he explicitly stated that the goal was not merely to oppose Trump, but to dismantle the conditions that enabled his rise to power. In New York, these conditions include union repression and the immense power of landlords.

On the one hand, there is antifascism that manifests itself directly as such, for example when people stand up against ICE or other forms of repression. But there is also the question of an antifascism of causes, rather than a mere antifascism of effects. And, in this sense, I think—though this is undoubtedly a bit rhetorical—that a truly emancipatory or socialist politics should, by definition, be antifascist. It should consist, to borrow Walter Benjamin’s beautiful phrase, in rendering itself useless to fascism, or even in rendering its world itself useless—that is, in dismantling the institutions and organizations that serve as its foundation. This includes, for example, border police, but also the prison system. I believe that a truly consistent abolitionist policy is necessarily an integral part of an anti-fascist policy.

And so, I would like to see antifascism considered from a broader perspective, moving beyond the confines of antifascist discourse—which is primarily focused on response and resistance—and seeking to deconstruct the world, or those aspects of the world that allow fascism to take root.

Featured image: Photoby Emiliano (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Courtesy of À bâbord !

Translated from the French original by Rolando Prats.

Alberto Toscano