Digital Fascism and Digital Capitalism

Abstract

What is digital fascism? What is digital capitalism? How are they related? This article theorises digital fascism as a contemporary form of right-wing authoritarianism rooted in capitalism and reorganised through digital infrastructures. Building on the Frankfurt School’s analysis of authoritarianism, it reconceptualises fascism as a terroristic, anti-democratic mode of organisation – leadership cults, nationalism, friend/enemy polarisation, and militant patriarchy – whose resurgence is catalysed by capitalist crises. The paper advances a dual framework: fascist practices (cognition, communication, co-production) and digital structures (platforms, algorithms, datafication) recursively produce one another – the tripleC dynamic – enabling user-generated hate, post-truth propaganda, algorithmic targeting, cyberattacks, and digitally mediated violence. Ten historical hypotheses map shifts from broadcast propaganda to influencer networks, from street militias to partially automated conflict, and from overt anti-democracy to “creeping” authoritarianism that claims democratic legitimacy. Integrating political-economy evidence, the article demonstrates how key fractions of digital, financial, and fossil/transport capital fund and legitimise emergent authoritarian projects, crystallising an authoritarian digital capitalism whose boundary with digital fascism is porous. The conclusion argues for a digital democracy that counters the fusion of big business and big power in the digital age.

Acknowledgement: This paper was first published in the journal Philosophy & Social Criticism. Using a CC-BY license, the original article has been reproduced in tripleC: https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537261434922