Gilles Deleuze on Fascism, Ideology and the Resistance of Life

#fascism #deleuze #resistance “Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation? How can people possibly reach the point of shouting: More taxes! Less bread! ?” According to Deleuze and Guattari, this is the fundamental question of political philosophy. At the same time, it is the central problem of any theory of fascism. Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus can be understood as answers to this problem. Both volumes attempt to show that fascism is not just an economic and political phenomenon, but also a phenomenon of desire – a desire that attempts to suicide itself. The masses are not simply “tricked by an ideological lure”. At the same time and above all, fascism subjects their desire to a tremendous „perversion", and it is precisely this “molecular or micropolitical power“ that makes it so dangerous. This is the rather topical insight that Deleuze discusses here at length…