Unthinking Digital Fascism: China’s Youth Crisis and Political Reaction

Abstract

This article examines the rise of digital fascism in China amid the youth crisis, economic instability, and tensions between the state and capital within global infrastructural capitalism. Digital fascism is understood as a decentralised, digital form of fascist ideology that appropriates nationalist and pseudo-leftist sentiments and discourses to undermine social movements. We argue that this ideology’s rise is deeply rooted in the collapse of socialist revolutionary ideals and the collective political identity in post-Maoist China. In the absence of a political horizon, some young people are drawn to a distorted form of nationalism, which is a prerequisite for digital fascism. We assert that digital fascism is not a relic of the past but an ideological effect, manifesting as affects, aesthetics, and sentiments embodied in social media and nationalist discourse. By merging resentment, symbolic purity, and moral judgment, digital fascism creates a reactive political subjectivity that engages in symbolic violence rather than strategic political action.