Lisbon & Sintra Festival organizes a reflection day dedicated to “Neoliberalism, the seed of populism and new fascisms?”, to link ourselves to a deeper level, to reflect on the impact of the fascist drifts in our way of living, becoming aware and accountable of our situation as a community. Neoliberalism promises us the idea of an utopic pure market economy, neglecting the political dimension. Capitalism got us into a highly fragmented and alienated world where the humanism is taken backstage. How did we get here, to such a strong lack of consciousness, to such an obsession with ourselves, with our comfort?
Long version:
In a university basement, facing each other is a group of young students and an armed police force prepared for an identity check. In between stand a few migrants whose faces are marked by exhaustion, interrogation and fear. In this room, after months of peaceful occupation of a building following their camps’ destruction, a triage takes place. In this room, the only ones subject to the ID check and body search will be those labelled clandestine, marked by immigration. They will be later sent away on buses and then… a gymnasium, a camp, a detention center, or maybe an airport, who knows? They will have as much control over their lives as cows in a slaughterhouse.
In this room, after having witnessed this triage, most youngsters will find no other topic of discussion than that of the violence they had endured a few hours earlier, facing the police while trying to avoid with their bodies the most probable expulsion.
These same youngsters whom for the past days hadn’t slept in order to save this lively place of “enemies of the Republic”, did not realize that under the table where they were leaning over and bemoaning, a man had found refuge to hide as long as possible from the inevitable and perpetual dehumanisation. How did we get to such a strong absence of conscience of the other, to this self obsession for oneself and one self’s comfort?
This scene, a minor example amongst others that give the tempo of our modern society, reflects the generalisation of politics reminiscent of fascist practices. Practices that are of course not of a concentration tendency in the old acceptation of the word, but that could become it. This example is not a phenomena but a structural symptom of a disturbing society, where such practices are not only systematic and legal but naturalised and normalised by society as a whole.
The closing of the borders; putting in detention centres people trying to flee from war and poverty, often caused by those same countries now punishing their exile; laws criminalising civil solidarity; islamophobia; the slow disappearance of public services in the most precarious areas; the rise of preventive prison sentences; the massacres of populations in the name of terrorism…
All those politics evoke a time where the superiority of one part of the population over another, made enemy, was accepted and justified measures of exclusion and massacres. Times when any revolt against these politics was criminalised. However, we cannot analyse our contemporaneity uniquely with the conceptual tools of fascism, without perceiving the nuances with our present. Now more than ever, we must demonstrate conceptual and intellectual exigency in order to better determine the links between our ways of life and those fascist practices.
We are facing a now new model that finds its roots beyond the national politics, fed on a globalised economic system. However, the neoliberal theory thought of itself as a repulsive to fascist and authoritarian regimes, emancipating societies from mass politics, putting the emphasis on the individual and its freedom. But between the Keynesian theory and its application, the utopia of this economic system has drowned in the reality of the blood of its victims.
Neoliberalism promises the utopia of a pure and perfect market, to the detriment of politics. Capitalism has led us to the growth of individualism and competition to the detriment of collective relationships, creating a fragmented and divided world. For many this system has created a “surge” of reality, an excess of comfort and possibilities to the detriment of the expansion of the being and ethical values.
Facing this fire alarm, Lisbon & Sintra Film Festival organizes a day of reflection titled: “Neoliberalism — the seed of populism and of new fascisms?”, with the participation of philosophers, artists, legal experts… To address the emergency of reflection, and analysis, of dangers, present and future, of our societies and the individual and collective responsibility.
Click here for the programme.