The genocide in Gaza has ignited a host of issues, bringing to the surface topics that were long considered taboo or deliberately suppressed. Hegemonic forces have attempted to limit discussion and debate over Gaza, confining it to the realm of current affairs. Yet this has not deterred concerned writers from reflecting on the political landmarks that signal shifts in the international system, nor from revisiting key conceptual foundations—particularly in the theory of the state. This article likewise seeks to reflect, in broad outlines, on the relationship between liberalism and fascism.

The theory of the state is one of the cornerstones of political science. Since the European Enlightenment of the 19th century, various schools of thought have emerged, each proposing a vision of the nature and role of the modern state—later labeled “the liberal state.” As Europe navigated major political changes and crises, new conceptual frameworks proliferated, especially those attempting to characterize the turning points in the histories of European nations and, to some extent, the United States. These milestones include European colonization, the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the global workers’ and youth movement of 1968, the post-1968 global women’s movements, the wars in the Middle East, and the subsequent phenomenon of globalization. Scholars developed differing constructs to explain why events unfolded as they did across these moments.

In almost all these conceptualizations, the modern state—celebrated as “the liberal state”—was presented as the quintessential democratic institution, where democracy and freedom of expression prevailed and where the fundamental rights of human beings were upheld beyond question. In post–World War II Western Europe, these rights extended to social and economic protections under the welfare state, particularly for citizens facing unemployment or hardship. These constructs flourished even as colonization and the plunder of Southern nations continued unabated.

By the post-1968 era in Western Europe and North America, public perceptions of the liberal state had deepened, and expectations of it grew exceedingly high. Ordinary citizens largely believed they lived in genuine democracies where the rights of all individuals were respected, legal protections were guaranteed, and personal freedoms were absolute.

However, doubts began to surface as reports emerged detailing the extraordinary crimes that their own so-called liberal states had inflicted on colonial populations. Beyond the brutal economic exploitation through slave labor and the extraction of raw materials for European industry, Western media began revealing the naked violence and atrocities committed by colonial administrators.

King Leopold of Belgium oversaw the massacre of roughly ten million people in the Congo in the pursuit of rubber production. The Dutch committed atrocities in Indonesia; the British killed roughly one million people in India to suppress resistance; the French massacred hundreds of thousands in Algeria during the struggle for independence; and many others followed similar patterns. As recently as World War I, the British gambled with the lives and land of Palestinians, handing over Palestinian territory to Zionist political actors involved in terrorist activities—an act with consequences that continue to reverberate far beyond the Middle East.

Around the same time, from a different perspective, a political event of global consequence unfolded in Russia. The Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 and declared a socialist state aiming not only to dismantle capitalism within Russia but also to challenge it worldwide. To this end, the Bolsheviks, along with other socialist parties, established the Third Communist International, which sought to spark revolutions not only in capitalist countries but also across the colonies. This development divided the world into two major political blocs. Although the international communist movement had existed earlier, it now had a center in Moscow and a state actively sponsoring revolutions. This sharpened tensions between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces, particularly in Western Europe.

It was in this volatile environment that a faction of the ruling bourgeoisie in countries ripe for revolution—such as Germany and Italy—accused the liberal state of indecisiveness in the face of the communist threat. They called for violent suppression of the communist movement, paving the way for the emergence of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany.

In this discussion, it is crucial to examine the nature of the political crises that produced fascism and Nazism. In both cases, we see how a segment of the bourgeoisie intervened to prevent the working class from prevailing. It is through this analysis that the symbiotic relationship between liberalism and fascism becomes clear. As the German and Italian experiences demonstrate, during periods of acute crisis, a faction of the bourgeoisie—whether reigning or ruling—will likely intervene to suppress the working class, using force if deemed necessary. Winston Churchill, for example, could have adopted fascist methods had the 1926 strike in Britain escalated into a general strike. It is worth noting that the late Nicos Poulantzas provides a compelling analysis of crisis theory and fascism in his influential work Fascism and Dictatorship

Contemporary politics presents new challenges, particularly in the United States. In this context, the repressive and exclusionary policies pursued by Donald Trump in his second term constitute a phenomenon that demands careful analysis. Undoubtedly, the current crisis in the US is not of the scale required to bring about fascism or to transform the liberal state into a fascist one. The conditions simply do not allow such a mutation at this moment. What remains unclear, however, is why Trump has chosen to move in a fascistic direction during his second term.

Nevertheless, Project 2025—whose provisions Trump sought to exploit—indirectly asserts that the modern liberal state should come to an end. Among the core pillars it challenges are democracy itself, freedom of expression, state accountability, and the universality of human rights. Particularly striking is its assault on freedom of expression beyond journalistic protections, extending to academic freedom. Trump openly interfered with academic autonomy by threatening to freeze federal funding for universities that did not conform to his new, authoritarian-leaning policies.

As noted above, the political crisis in the United States does not, at this stage, warrant the introduction of full-fledged fascism. However, this does not preclude the possibility that, if the crisis deepens and deteriorates further, the state might eventually consider fascism as an option. Even so, public opinion in the US is becoming broader and more internationalist, making such a turn increasingly unlikely.

This possibility must also be examined from a different angle, while still acknowledging the potential for the crisis to worsen. State violence in the United States is neither new nor unusual. Structurally, the country was built on multiple layers of violence embedded in its political evolution, giving it the distinctive characteristic of being one of the most violent societies in the modern world. This violence played a central role in US industrialization, which would have been impossible without the systems of slave labor and the slave trade, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, and extreme violence against women. This entrenched culture of violence remains present today and continues to shape government policies—including the pervasive, brutal police violence witnessed across the country.

The political psyche of US leaders also has distinctive features, setting it apart from that of Western Europe. Despite what standard historical narratives suggest, the American state has always been—and remains—commanded by white elites, and its leaders have never been the virtuous figures portrayed in popular mythology. Despite the lofty ideal that “all men are created equal,” Indigenous peoples and African Americans have never been treated as equals to whites. The vast ideological state apparatus—media, churches, schools, and other institutions—has spent more than two centuries manufacturing consent for this unequal order.

Because of the saintly image constructed for US leaders, relatively few Americans know that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Few know that for Abraham Lincoln, the central issue of the Civil War was not the abolition of slavery but the preservation of the Union. Few are aware that large parts of US territory were acquired by force, manipulation, or fraud from neighboring nations. Similarly, few know that past presidents were directly involved in acts of extreme cruelty, such as President Andrew Jackson, who in the mid-1850s forced hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people on the horrific march known as the Trail of Tears.

It is only in recent decades that the public has begun to learn the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the lies manufactured by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to justify the Vietnam War. It is only now that claims—long suppressed—that the CIA and Israeli Mossad assassinated both President Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy are receiving public attention. And due to the recent Gaza war—Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and the determined resistance of Palestinians and their internationalist supporters worldwide, including in the US and Israel itself—the extent to which the US political elite serves the interests of the Israeli state is no longer a secret. Sharp disagreements within NATO on how to handle the Gaza crisis further underscore this shift. The war in Gaza has shaken the very structures of the Western alliance and altered power relations within the US and across Western Europe, as more people begin to recognize that their governments function as pawns of Israel.

The claim that “the US political elite is in the service of Israel” is not a mere political slogan. A significant number of members of Congress, state and municipal officials, media moguls, prominent journalists, and major universities receive direct or indirect financial support from AIPAC, the US-based Israel lobby. Such a trend fundamentally contradicts the democratic principle that a political establishment should be accountable to its own people. When officials are effectively bought by a foreign power, the integrity of democracy itself is undermined.

This accountability crisis has historical precedents. After World War II, the US recruited many Nazi scientists to build its nuclear program—another example of the state compromising its proclaimed democratic values in pursuit of geopolitical power.

The war in Gaza has revealed that, in moments of acute political crisis, the boundary between liberalism and fascism is exceedingly thin. Every liberal state contains within it the seeds of fascism and retains the potential to turn fascist under critical conditions. For this reason, liberalism and fascism must be understood as fundamentally symbiotic.

Contributed by Ayelech Merkato il digino