The Ordinary Conception of Radicalism as Extremism

What is commonly meant by radicalism in our current and everyday idea, in everyday discourse, is the state of holding extreme political or religious views and the instance of acting on those beliefs, hence radicalism here may be called extremism or a form of it. The origin of this average and everyday conception of radicalism is mainstream conservative news media, prominent conservative and liberal social media personalities, and State propaganda (promulgated on social media). This popular framing of radicalism serves several goals: it 1. delegitimizes radical critique; 2. justifies State repression; 3. normalizes the status quo as establishment politics; and 4. obscures rightwing extremism.

If radicalism is, from 1., equated with extremism and violence, then calls for fundamental social change are easily dismissed as dangerous. Anti-radical policies, from 2., such as surveillance of activists, become more palatable when radicalism is presented as a violent threat. If, from 3., radicalism is dangerous, then liberal reform and centrism appear as the only “reasonable” positions. From 4., while leftist—or better, anarchist—radicalism is demonized, actual rightwing extremism becomes excused or rebranded: “patriotism,” “defending tradition,” “saving the West.”

The ordinary conception of radicalism means extremism. Extremism in the ordinary sense is the holding of “extreme,” fanatical, and dogmatic beliefs which are separate from popular and mainstream beliefs, which are acted on with violence, coercion, and terrorism. As being separate, far away from mainstream beliefs, extremist beliefs can be fringe and outlying, being outliers. But this constitution of being outliers isn’t the true meaning of extremism. It doesn’t follow that violence and terrorism are the necessary or logical conclusion of fringe beliefs. We see conservative violence most prominently in the news and on social media depicting armed “patriots” brawling with antifascists and counterprotesters. These armed so-called patriots protest all sorts of things—from abortions and drag shows to the decommissioning of Confederate monuments and talk of diversity/equality/inclusion at school boards—and the beliefs behind this conservative violence are far from fringe, and no one calls conservatives extremists.

The Ordinary Conception of Extremism

The ordinary conception of radicalism as meaning extremism has left the notion of radicalism itself vague and empty. The ordinary conception of extremism is similarly vague and empty because extremism ordinarily simply refers to “radicalism.” Extremism ordinarily is the holding of beliefs that are uncritically thought to be “radical,” which means “extreme,” and the implementation of them entails the use of violence, coercion, and terrorism. Radicalism ordinarily means extremism. Extremism ordinarily means the constitution of radical and extreme beliefs realized through violence and terrorism. Politicians tell us that radicals are extremists and extremists are radicals. In this way, the words radicalism and extremism ordinarily are synonyms but are used pejoratively: “dangerous,” “violent,” “fanatical.”

Thus we enter a circle in which we know one term by another, vaguely and uncritically. Radicalism refers to extremism and vice versa. This circularity means that both terms are used as synonyms in public discourse, primarily as rhetorical tools to delegitimize political opponents, namely anarchists, rather than to describe concrete political phenomena.

The Ordinary Conception of Terrorism

What is sought to be conserved in conservatism is nothing more than social and economic hierarchies. Everything that conservatism posits and takes up for itself is conditioned by this conserving principle. It comes into play, too, in conservative discourse on terrorism.

Conservative discourse as such is merely a tool to invoke and maintain these hierarchies. In conservative discourse on terrorism, the goal is not to rigorously or accurately characterize terrorism, or to even analyze political violence and what it attempts to achieve. Rather, language itself, for conservatism, becomes a means to justify and uphold hierarchies.

This is explicitly and paradigmatically seen in Burke when he talks about equality: that everyone has their place, and that true equality would be a state of pure chaos, a perversion of the divine inequality set in order by god. That a society, set in order by god, must necessarily be unequal in order for law and order to be set forth and for it to govern. The true evil and element of disgust in Burke consist in his justifications for inequality as a sort of state of nature, that this is the natural state as instituted by god, and we ought not to change it in any way. The poor are there to be loathed, exploited, and profited from: a reserve of extraction.

Burke both hated the poor and was apathetic of them. What challenged this conservative view, and what he saw as absolute perversion, and what ultimately terrified him, was the radicalism of the French Revolution. What challenges authority is radicalism. And, of course, this view of the poor was one that provided him and the ruling class with wealth. What has been set in order is kept in order.

That conservatism, and also fascism, can appeal to a god for justification of bourgeois excess and wickedness says much about both the state of that political system and of its god. Both are unequivocally morally evil.

What can only challenge this evil is radicalism and its acts, which necessarily are terroristic, and which will always be labeled and “morally condemned” as terrorism. But what is terrorism? Whom is it trying to terrorize? What exactly counts as acts of terrorism?

Presently, what is called terrorism includes any sort of violent act which targets the establishment, that is, the ruling class, both the rich and those in government, and their property. This can range from simple graffiti, vandalism, and arson, to actual acts of murder and assassination of members of the ruling class. Of course, over the last decade we have seen a rise in rightwing and far-right acts of terrorism. Some news outlets have accurately called them acts of rightwing and far-right terrorism and have even thoroughly documented the people who carried out these actions, showing a majority of them having affinities for neo-Nazism or else being members of neo-Nazi organizations. But these people are treated fundamentally different by the government, particularly under Trump. A teenage fascist who commits a school shooting will be treated infinitely better than someone who merely criticizes the Trump regime or one who sets a Tesla on fire. That is, we have arrived at a sort of vulgar conception of terrorism in today’s political climate. There has been a shifting of the Overton Window largely right under the Trump regime.

What is called terrorism today gets to be defined by conservatives on social media and in the news, which is heavily influenced by out-and-out neo-Nazis and cryptofascists on those same platforms (predominantly starting on 4chan and then propagating to Twitter/X and Facebook). Prominent online fascists will create rhetoric used for manipulation and promulgate it through large social media accounts, and this always and inevitably trickles down to mainstream conservative discourse and is spread around by prominent conservative platforms. That is, conservatism is a highly useful tool for the promulgation of fascism.

Conservatives today have a hegemony on the concept and criteria of terrorism. But this is prefixed by influential fascists and cryptofascists on social media which are able to disseminate their agendas and propaganda among conservative platforms. This shows that conservatism is not fundamentally different than fascism, as it is so easily manipulated by its toned down rhetoric. For conservatism and fascism are siblings, sisters, of a common origin in authoritarianism. Having a hegemony on the concept of terrorism, what is vulgarly called terrorism today (in an authoritative tone by conservatives and the government) is any sort of targeted act against the conservative government, whether that is vandalism or murder.

Especially under Trump, there is a hyper-hysterical and ultranationalist behavior to arouse a sense of danger and urgency within the conservative base, to put forward the sentiment that its political enemy, “the radical left,” is hastening the destruction of the country and, even the act of setting fire to corporate property, such as an electric vehicle, is terrorism carried out on a great scale—so much so as to be labeled an enemy of the State. But this is entirely controlled. What is playing out here is the activity of preserving the establishment, the status quo, the conservative government’s maintenance of its hierarchies.

Two things of note here: 1. as with Burke, radicalism is a dire threat to authority and is wholly terrifying to the establishment; 2. the establishment’s response to radicalism is authoritarianism.

The schema of today’s vulgar idea of terrorism: 1. created and spread by (and general conservative rhetoric too) influential fascists and cryptofascists online; 2. their rhetoric trickles down and takes root in conservative discourse online; 3. they end up being repeated by prominent news and media accounts; 4. this reaches its way to government, where the president himself engages publicly with out-and-out Nazis, and policy itself becomes influenced by this rhetoric.

More Proper Characterization of Radicalism, Extremism, and Terrorism

The meaning of the word “radical” is to grasp at the root: from the Latin radix, meaning the source or origin of something; evolving into radicalis, meaning “the pertaining to the root, fundamental.” Therefore, what is radical is that which fundamentally, at bottom, gets at the root of something in its origin, its source. Historical political movements which were called radical were those which sought to fundamentally grasp and change society in its fundamental root, its foundational source. Its contemporary usage is associated with political movements seeking fundamental structural change or seeking root causes of political and socioeconomic problems. In this sense, it’s ironic that and how conservatives use “radical” as a pejorative for those who seek to question fundamentally modern capitalist society and to change it. Both in their demonizing of centrist liberal positions, which do not fundamentally understand or change anything, and actual radical socialist positions.

The meaning of the word extremism is traced back to the Latin extremus, which is the superlative of exter, “outer” or “outside.” Extremus meant “outermost,” “farthest,” or “at the extreme end.” It has evolved to mean positions that go beyond mainstream ideological positions. The first recorded usage of the word “extremism” comes from the 19th century, around 1848, associated with the Year of Revolutions and Springtime of the People, a period of unrest in Europe when numerous political movements advocated for radical social and political reforms. These usages of “extremism” occurred in reference to political positions considered outside the mainstream or moderate consensus and was used to describe radical political positions during debates surrounding abolition, workers’ rights, and democratic reforms. Today, extremism has come to mean ideologies which are far outside the mainstream and which are characterized by fanaticism and violence.

The meaning of the word terrorism comes from the Latin terror and the verb terrere, “to frighten,” “to terrify,” “to cause to tremble.” The word terrorism was originally used to describe the Jacobin Club during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. It has come to mean, by a glance at the dictionary: the use of violence and intimidation, especially against citizens, in the pursuit of political aims.

But what is the general relation between radicalism, extremism, and terrorism? First, terrorism is not identical to radicalism, but can arise from radical principles. But importantly, not all radicalism leads to terrorism. Radicalism seeks to fundamentally change society at the root but not all radicalism seeks to carry out violence in this aim, such as in anarchist food banks, prison support, squatting, peaceful protest, and civil disobedience.

Second, terrorism can arise when radicalism is met with repression and State violence. One condition for terrorism is the closure of legal and peaceful means of social transformation. For example, this can happen with the criminalization of dissent, expanded and intrusive surveillance—importantly, that of surveilling and policing racialized peoples—and so-called “counterterrorist” brutalization at the federal level, and brutalizing by local militarized police. Historical federal programs such as COINTELPRO immediately come to mind. Terrorism then becomes a reaction to this repression.

But this relation between our clarified radicalism and extremism needs to be made more explicit and worked out, showing more clearly what it means that radicalism, in its radical element, is some sort of instance of extremism. To be sure, it's nothing of the sort of understanding of the vulgar conceptions of radicalism and extremism. What this entails, and what is posited here: it is not the case of some instance of extremism but is fundamentally a relation of being and the understanding of being. This does not say that radicalism per se implies extremism as a vehicle, in the sense of extremism being a political object of theory or political psychology. Not extremism as a being (object) but as an understanding of being. Indeed, what we mean to say is that this understanding of being is the most extreme and the most shocking and, for this reason, is the most unthinkable. What is radical, that which thinks at the root, is necessarily the most extreme. For now, we can only await the meaning of this.

Characterization of the Radical Right, or Fascism

We ordinarily talk of “the radical right” when talking about fascism and fascistic elements within mainstream conservatism and those strains further right with fascistic tendencies and affinities, such as what was called the “alt-lite:” a watered-down version of the alt-right, which was fascism in respectable dress. But what we mean with “radical” in this sense is situated in the ordinary, vulgar idea of radical, which means a zealous fanaticism which is quick to, and lives in, violence. Thus we mean by radical the ordinary and vulgar idea of extremism.

But, to be sure, there is nothing properly radical about the whole of the rightwing, from conservatism to neofascism. This is because, as siblings, conservatism and fascism do not fundamentally go, or seek to go, to the root source of things in their analysis or goals. Rather, they merely seek to maintain, to conserve, the established order. Conservatism seeks to maintain social and economic hierarchies through, and created by, capitalism. Fascism seeks the maintenance of these hierarchies too, sometimes in favor of capitalism and sometimes not, but seeks a more “radical” and explicit implementation of the establishment.

Conservatism and fascism are not properly radical. At the root, the origin, the source of social, economic, and political problems are three things: 1. the invention and revolving of everything around money; 2. the invention of feudalism and its transition to capitalism; 3. the invention of the monarchy and its transition into oligarchy as the origin of the State. Simplified:

1. Money.
2. Capitalism.
3. States.

Money, currency, is principally the basic origin of, if not every, then a great deal of, all hierarchies. It became formalized and instituted in feudalism and then in its transition to capitalism. That which maintains this institution is the State, first in monarchy, then in oligarchy, up to today’s techno-corporate collaboration with government.

The basic problems faced today are situated in a history of money, capitalism, and the operation of the State in its formalizations of the issuance of money. Fascism particularly recognizes certain problems but it can’t diagnose them at their source, such as the modern nihilism inherent in capitalism, felt in the sameness of every geography as being nothing but a giant shopping mall. Their shock at this nihilism becomes misplaced in attempting to defeat it with romanticization of the white race and its being victimized by non-white and marginalized peoples. The root of this nihilism is the capitalistic leveling of everything and everyone into products and commodities, which reveals the profound nothingness and groundlessness of modern existence.

But fascism refuses to see things in their roots, thereby becoming incapable of fundamental analysis and becoming distracted by red herrings of its ideology, such as placing blame for everything on the Jews or Black people. But on the other hand, it seeks to maintain hierarchies under the status quo, the very apparatus which causes its injuries.

It is interesting and worth noting that both conservatism and fascism have an inconsistent relation to the status quo itself, in regard to the operation of capitalism by the State and the political influence of corporations. For example, Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk (✟), and Jack Posobiec can be proponents of corporate and technological capitalism while simultaneously blaming these systems and obfuscating “the true elites” or “the true establishment,” all while selling books that detail a socialist takeover of government. But this is inconsistent only if we assume that they don't know what they’re doing and that this itself is not planned. That is, it’s a smokescreen, and to assume that they are merely unprincipled is to underestimate them. Inconsistency, untruth, and disinformation are their precepts.

Remembering Nietzsche, that warmonger and essential protofascist, in his legacy of the value of truth: it doesn’t matter what is held to be true, even in its untruth, but that it’s held to be true. Truth is that which, whatever, for him, enhances life. Enhancement of life and the bepowering of power for itself. With Nietzsche as origin, the conservative and fascist understanding of truth is that which can be invented, manipulated, and agendized. It’s not the value of truth but the valuing of what is taken to be truth.

Conservatism and fascism are properly not radical. They are characterized entirely by being anti-radical. Whenever radicalism properly threatens them in its seeking of fundamental structural change, in every instance, they will use violence, murder, and terrorism to squash it. This can be seen on the governmental level by the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia by the police in 1985, or COINTELPRO by the FBI from 1956 to 1971 and the murder of Black Panther members by the police, and can be seen in the 2020 assassination of antifascist Michael Reinoehl by US Marshals.

Electoral Politics

We’ve inherited an existence within a democratic republic. This means a representative democracy. This is a type of democracy in which its citizens elect leaders that represent them on their behalf in government affairs and policies. In its ideal, it is supposed to be a system of government that reflects the people through the will of the people. Its leaders are beholden to the people in their representing of the will of the people. If the governmental leaders fail in their duty to represent the will of the people, or if they betray the people and enact tyrannical rule, the people are supposedly granted the ability to revolt against them and democratically elect new leaders to represent them.

The predominant parties that have come to be which do the representing are the Republican and Democratic parties. This has resulted in a hegemony of power in the US by a two party system. But this is merely an illusion of choice, for both parties fundamentally maintain the exact same State with exactly the same goals and means of attaining them. The illusion arises locally in individual programs and policies of the people running for office, namely, those running for president. A Republican or Democratic ticket can span and vary on such things as abortion, gun rights, minimum wage, property tax and rights, civil rights, and various implementations of the economy and markets—however, both parties fundamentally maintain the State and its operation under capitalism through imperialism and colonialism.

The State itself has, in a way, insulated itself against fundamental change and threats against its power by building this hegemony of pseudo-dualism. Some evidence of this is the peculiar existence of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders.

Democratic socialism is a gradualist or reformist interpretation of socialism which seeks to implement gradual reforms to attain socialism rather than by means of revolution. It takes a social democratic view of society and the economy, meaning, it advocates for open and democratic processes which include citizens in decision making. As is typical of gradualist reformism, as seen in liberalism, it is a slow, unprincipled, insipid, hackneyed, and naive approach which seeks to work within the already established political system. Like liberalism and social democracy, as not being radical, it does not seek to fundamentally change society. And, in principle, one cannot fundamentally change the political system by operating within its framework and bounds, as these are established for its own self-empowerment.

Like liberalism and social democracy, it has admirable principles, such as its views of freedom, equality, and open participation, but it is fundamentally unprincipled in these things.

To be considered at all as a presidential candidate, Sanders had to run on the Democratic ticket. While in office throughout his career, as being a team player for electoral politics, he has shown his unprincipled stance and reluctance for revolutionary thought. For instance, the position of the necessity of the State and the police, no matter talk of reforms or defunding of the police. One cannot fundamentally change the political system from the inside.

And this is the point: we can’t fundamentally and in any meaningful way change structures of society so long as they are still kept under capitalism, and that also means by playing electoral politics. Electoral politics, as an ongoing within the established system, can’t in any way threaten the establishment in which it’s operating. The State will not give us the means to destroy it.
Any paradigm whatsoever which seeks the end of the State and its operation and maintenance of capitalism is necessarily deemed as terroristic, whether egalitarian or authoritarian. We, anarchists, radical libertarian socialists, do not mind the label or accusation of “terrorists.” Doubly so in the present era in which the most harmless liberalism is falsely called terroristic by the most hysterical conservatism. What matters are the goals which are sought.

The paradigm of authoritarianism

Fascism in all its forms is a manifestation of authoritarianism. This can be capitalist or anticapitalist, statist or antistatist. In whatever form, it’s a more "radical" implementation of the conservative status quo. It’s more radical in that it seeks to make explicit what conservatism has kept implicit: a prescriptive racist implementation of the old caste system, a racial, social, and economic hierarchy in which wealth is consolidated by a select few, who are white only, and make up a ruling class. In short, a racial and hierarchical class system: a monarchy.

It’s a romanticization of social life under Jim Crow where, specifically Black people but other racial minorities more generally, were segregated and excluded socially by the white government and citizenry. To be sure, this Jim Crow era social life isn’t an end which fascism seeks to gain. It seeks to go beyond even this to systematic eradication of non-white peoples.

The statist and capitalist form of fascism seeks to bring back the old monarchy, which stratifies society in the hierarchical pyramid of wealth control. At the top is the supreme ruler, then the organization of government, then the police, then the lower classes. But the fascist implementation of this old order explicitly incorporates racial and antisemitic components in its rule and force of power, seen as a principally organizing force (a national racial identity; white supremacist civic religion).

It’s doubtful that antistatist conceptions of fascism could truly be stateless in practice due to its essence being tied to authoritarianism. The ethnostate is itself an authoritarian State which requires employment of power to maintain. The essence of fascism points back to its authoritarian character. It needs and wants to exert control and dominance, and lends itself entirely to dictatorship, a concentration of power centralized into a central hand. Its ruthlessness would surely usurp and “corrupt” the stateless mode of power and organization. Even fascist “lone wolf” terrorism, that is, leaderless terrorism, is subservient to and manipulated by its thought leaders and ideological personalities. It draws from a central rule as organizing principle. These leaderless lone wolves can be easily manipulated and organized by fascist discourse, and so too by the grip of a budding merciless monarch.

Fascism is authoritarian. The goals of this paradigm consist in social and economic control as organization. It wants to reorganize society by absolute control. This control is wielded through racial and antisemitic principles. To achieve absolute control, it must achieve its goals. It can ultimately only do this through violence and terrorism. But this is here thought at the governmental and higher political level, as in one like Hitler, who must already be at the candidate and governmental level of organizing.

But the current state of fascist political organizing in the US consists at the street level and is regimented online. The only way fascists are able to achieve their goals on the street level is to commit violence or terrorism. This is because fascism demands it in its ideological prescriptions. To achieve blood and soil, for example, in its modern interpretation, which is a more general nationalist understanding of race and nation (the white race and the white nation)—to achieve a white nation for white people—necessarily involves violence and terrorism.

The motivations for fascist violence and terrorism in achieving fascism’s goals is rooted in racial hatred and division. That’s purely it. Fascism today has become a way for working class proponents to strike back against what they perceive as social ills caused by non-whites. We see this heavily in discourse about migration and immigration and, ultimately, multiculturalism. These are merely misdirections from class and racial antagonisms fostered by capitalism, and is reinforced by rhetoric of mainstream conservative news media and fascist personalities online. This rhetoric has increased under the Trump regime and, when it’s allowed to increase, we see a rise of fascist violence and terrorism, such as what happened under Trump’s first election. Tree of Life. Christchurch. Unite the Right. ICE.

The danger of fascism today consists in its radicalization through its rhetoric of violence and racial hatred. It merely and purely seeks violence and death. It’s a rabid dog used to terrorize its enemies. The paradigm of fascism today is purely the furtherance of racial hatred and violence, employed in the streets, places of worship, and workplace. Its goals exist in building a racially pure ethnostate, the eradication of non-white and queer peoples, and subjugating the bodies of women. This is the crux of the paradigm. The paradigm in essence is the maintenance of racial, social, and economic hierarchies.

The paradigm of egalitarianism

Anarchism is a form of libertarian socialism. Its essence points back to egalitarianism and direct democracy. Essentially opposed to authoritarianism, it seeks to destroy all hierarchies, as these are oppressive systems of domination. The State is an apparatus which oppresses and dominates the lower classes under capitalism and through the police, and expands its empire through imperialism and colonialism through the military. The State has a monopoly on wealth, resources, and violence. As thrown into capitalism as being born into it, it has seized every resource from us, stolen and expropriated them from us. We are to work for poor wages in burdensome labor in exacerbated conditions to secure our sustenance, in which we are exploited for our labor for the profit of bosses, businesses, and corporations.

Our lives revolve around monetary centrism: the pursuance of money through labor, in order to attain our dwelling and living. Money is the condition of the possibility of living or dying. Without money, one can’t have a place to live, can’t procure food to eat or water to drink, can’t receive healthcare, can’t use electricity to power a house, can’t retrieve fuel to drive a car. Money is the basis on which a quality of life rests. Money is the condition of the possibility of poverty, for social and economic hierarchy, for class. Money is the means for survival upon the earth. Money is a basic origin of crime.

A great deal of social and economic hierarchies exist due to money and its figuring into capitalism. All hierarchies and bigotries can be analyzed in this way. In a monolithic way, if money and capitalism were abolished (and the State), these systemic problems would be alleviated. Although, I’m not so naive to believe that socialism alone and by itself would miraculously fix these problems in whole. That’s because the origin of these things is power relations. They merely characterize a comorbidity of capitalism. The full diagnosis is power and capital. After the destruction of capital, power relations still remain. What is needed is a characterization and diagnosis of them through a reorientation of being: a disclosure of all peoples as being stewards of the earth.

And therein lies the paradigm of egalitarianism. In order to set forth human beings for the first time as stewards of the earth, in the dismantling and destruction of all States, empires, hierarchies, capital, money, and systemic racial and social oppression, there must be real violence done to and against the State and all its so-called democratic and liberal institutions. This will necessarily be called terrorism by the established status quo.

We cannot simply and in principle change an aspect of capitalist society to be more aligned with the principles of egalitarianism while keeping the whole unaffected. 1. they are mutually exclusive and 2. as being mutually exclusive, the capitalist State will seek to root out and destroy what has been created under egalitarianism. For they are incompatible to the extent that they can’t exist together. Egalitarianism, anarchism, seeks to rectify the contradictions of capitalism and, to do this, it must destroy capitalism in the process. The whole of capitalist society and the State must necessarily be destroyed and replaced in order for socialism to work and function at all. To set it forth, there must necessarily be violence and terrorism against the State in order to destroy it. It is purely, utterly, and wholly a complete paradigm shift. Simply nothing but total revolution will suffice.

But the violence and terrorism here is completely different and other than that of fascism. Socialist violence, including terrorism, against the State and its hierarchies is liberatory. The violence and terrorism of fascism are oppressive. One seeks true liberation and freedom, the other seeks oppression and domination.

Socialist liberation and revolution is liberatory. Fascist upheaval is oppressive. To say nothing of the violence of capitalism which already exists and which we are subjected to everyday in our lives. The violence of exploitation, the violence of money, the violence of every resource being stolen and expropriated from us. The anger and rage which manifest at the burdensome system of the industrial and technological machine and its robbing of vital labor, energy, and time. Its robbing of life and shelter. Of community and flourishing. The utter hostility and ire at the mechanized technological concrete jungle.

The two paradigms: authoritarian oppression and egalitarian liberation.

The Metapolitics of Radicalism, Extremism, and Terrorism

Originarily, the “radical,” the “extreme,” and the “terrifying” go together in a threefold unity. Radix and radicalis mean the origin and that which concerns the root, fundamentally. Extremus means the outermost, the farthest, at the extreme end. Terrere means to frighten, to terrify, to cause to tremble.

In their originary unity, thought most radically and fundamentally, this means that which is at the root, the farthest and outermost in the most subterranean and deepest abyssal ground and, as being way down at the root at the most extreme, outermost, and farthest end, is most terrifying. As being most terrifying, it’s the most unthinkable. As the most unthinkable, it’s the most shocking. This is the cause for trembling.

Radicalism as extremism, as these two sit on the political right, play out through radicalization as extreme and fanatical political activation. This activation in turn plays out through stochastic domestic terrorism. The activation of the fascist terrorist happens through the discourse of hatred and the goading of violence by the hysterical and fanatical fascist others. What is most terrifying to the radicalized fascist is a perceived dislodging and destruction of a community done at the foreign and degenerate hands of Jews and multiculturalism. Their shocking terror is a response to what they perceive as racial replacement—of the "pure white race."

Not merely and purely a belief, this deep-seated sentiment is a peculiar and particular disposition. An attunement. A fundamental comportment to and with a world. A disclosure of the being of beings. Not in fact something which is purely cognized and brought before the self to be processed by itself, to then be formed into a pathology of psychology or political psychology, sociology, or anthropology. The presentiments of fascism aren’t something you can explain logically or pathologically. For this political system exists in the domain of illogic. It’s irrationalism and superstition, primitive emotionalism and unreason. Before all formal and logical structuring of beliefs in the mind, it’s a particular call of being which situates the infected and rabid human within a world, which finds its meaning in the most diseased public dwelling. The fascist has become infected and rabid by poisoned language. This poisoned language has its place in inauthenticity. What radicalizes and terrifies, racial replacement, is rooted racial hatred. What radicalizes and terrifies the sick and diseased here causes them to become “radical” and to then terrify.

But to terrify also out of a position of fear for losing the privileges of white racial hierarchies. It’s not that the white race is being replaced, a certain custom and racial community, but that the privileges of white racial domination are perceived to be threatened. But not merely threatened today but actively attacked. This is purely nothing but racial entitlement. Fascism says of itself that it will and must unite the white race, from the working class to the ruling class, to beat down and destroy the Black, dark, and other races, in order to bring back economic and racial revival and purity. What is implicitly said in this is that what conservatism was supposed to conserve, the white racial establishment and status quo, will be conserved for the first time under ruthless brutality, and that the white racial hierarchy will be preserved together with its social and economic privileges.

And this is the fundamental reason why fascism isn’t properly radical: because what it sees at the farthest, deepest, abyssal root, in its extremity, if it was to look at all, is terrifying. And what is so terrifying at the extreme end of the root? It’s the threat and fear of losing its world privileges gained through the hierarchies it violently maintains, the challenging of its power, and loss of its authority. If fascism were properly radical, in the terror faced from the deepest root, it would seek its diagnosis in the foundation of society and government: in the fundamental way the sight of the State frames, reveals, its mode of ordering and organizing. That is, all this if the non-white, the Black race foremost, could rise in revolt and dethrone the supremacy of whiteness which colonizes the world. If the Black race could challenge repressive State power and the machinery of capitalism. If the Black race could destroy the established order. And more terrifyingly, if the Black race could build for itself from the roots of its oppression a more safeguarded, a more soulful exhibition of the human than the antihuman white European.

Now what originarily is the most radical, extreme, and terrifying is being itself, in the understanding of the meaning of being. Being itself is the originary root. The root of all beings (but not as cause: ontotheology). As the root of all beings, it’s the most extreme, in its deepest and abyssal reaches, which reaches into beings and also into nothing, nonbeing. Being not as cause, but as radix: the root or source or origin of—of beings. Being is that on the basis of which beings are made intelligible: the originary and primordial clearing of beings. As the most extreme root of beings, as what seems to come from out of the nothing, it’s the most terrifying. Being is the most mysterious and the most question worthy. Beings dwell in the light of being but this light itself is also what is farthest.
What also seems to be the farthest, as the farthest from being, is nonbeing. This mysteriousness which lies at the deep root is both intriguing and shocking. What is intriguing becomes wonder. What is shocking becomes terrifying. All this as a peculiar structure of being, and the mysteriousness of being this being who fathoms it, who lives it, dwells on the basis of it.

Now similarly, in the paradigm of the US empire under racial capitalism, what is most radical and extreme is also what is most terrifying. As such, it’s the most shocking and, therefore, the most unthinkable.

Ontotheopolitics, or Ontopolitical Theology

Ontotheology is the location of the origin of beings in a most supreme being, namely, god. God is the most perfect and supreme being who is an unmoved mover of beings—god is the origin of all beings as the creator of all beings. In Western metaphysics, this is the Christian god. This god, a being, is conflated with being as such. The essence, the meaning, of everything that is receives its signification on the basis of god. But there has also been an overlooked development of ontotheology which manifested politically throughout history. This development consists in the end teleology of the State. For the State reflects the essence of ontotheology. This is prominently seen in Burke in his defense of the monarchy and the State. The brutal and dominating rule of the State in its “natural hierarchy,” for Burke, reflects something theological and divine.

The State is supposed to represent order and orderly rule, peace keeping, and supreme authority. In its rule, it reflects the divine order of god. Now what’s essential in ontotheology is order and organization. These are guiding principles which organize all understanding and organization. These are a stand in for being: not being but beingness. In a sense, they’re not even a stand in for being but a degeneration of being into beingness. The reduction of all beings to substance and objects. The beingness of beings as objects constituted by substance, reason, representation, and having their ground, their cause and reason, in god, the being of all beings.

This is a guiding and organizing principle. This is the essence of ontotheology. Order and organization is essential there and develops with technological enframing into order and organization, seen in the State and theories of politics.

Order and organization from the divine order of god, from god as the beingness of beings in their cause and reason: ontotheology. But within the technological history of enframing—the essence of technology revealing the earth itself as resource to use and use up as standing reserve (which implicitly lies order and organization in concealment)—ontotheology has developed into, not just what is theological, but the political.

Something ontotheological and religious, fetishistic, lies in the State itself and the political. From god as the reason and cause for beings, the beingness of beings, which orders and organizes the relationships of human beings, the State and the political too have become a stand in for order and organization which imparts the meaning and teleology for human beings.

In Burke, the order, inequality, and hierarchy of the monarchy, the State, in its supreme rule and ordering, reflected the divine order and inequality of god: that human beings are fundamentally unequal to the perfectness and perfect justice of god. That god keeps all in order from out of the fundamental inequality and barbarism of the universe. The “natural” inequality and hierarchy is reflective of our unequal stature to god. The State and all political systems are therefore “natural” and “justified” in their supreme rule and rule through hierarchy.

The State, just as god, orders and organizes all of human activity and relationships. All human beings in society therefore have their natural place. The poor are naturally to be poor and must accept their impoverished lot, for the divine rule of kings has been put there by the sovereignty of god, and they alone have the capacity, blessing, and knowledge to rule. Only god, and now the State, through its long and slow ontotheological history, have the sacred power to redeem and to rule judiciously.

There is something like a sacredness and divine capacity housed within the State. The State was built with divine right in the image of god and so is held as sacred. The beingness of beings as god which gives and imbues all beings with order and which organizes a people in all human relationships. There has been a slow and long historical transferring of this order and organization to the realm of the State and the political.

The reverence and kindling of sacredness through god as the beingness of beings sees its stand in through the State and the political. The State is sacred and is seen as the final power which guides all human beings through its rule, order, and organization. It was Heidegger’s task to seek the guidance of the poet through their pointing to the traces of the fugitive gods, to catch sight of the passing by of the last god: the last vestige of sacrality and historical calling and historical decision making. Our age has become destitute by the abandonment by being. Being has abandoned us through technological enframing. Beings are no longer let be the beings they are but are now sources of exploitation, extraction, and profit. Beings in themselves have withdrawn from us and have left us with an appearance of representation and objectivity. That is, our age is characterized by technological domination.

But this very plight is located within the State. Technology isn’t merely something technological but is a way of revealing—through the frame of enframing. The State too is a way of revealing but not as a free and free floating apparatus which just anyone can peer through. The State is a way of revealing but as a dominate, dominating apparatus which forces and enforces its viewing upon all human beings. It forces all peoples to conform to its viewing.

Now Burke was a guardian of monarchy. He saw what’s truly terrifying in the terror of revolution. It’s the perversion and destruction, to him, of the divine order of the monarchy and State rule. The whole of society is uprooted in complete chaos. It was so puzzling to him that he thought god’s will and divine plan might have a possibility of being concealed within the French Revolution but not apparently seen. The mysteriousness and uncertainty left in the wake of revolution was something to be marveled at in astonishment. It caused a wonder to befall Burke in the destruction of the sacred and holy.

What’s essential to wonder is its twofold character to astonish and to marvel. To wonder at that which goes beyond the human itself discloses that which is most radical, extreme, and terrifying. That which is most radical, pertaining to the most extreme end of the abyssal root, is being as such, and is therefore the most wondrous: the most mysterious, uncertain, shocking, and terrifying. Here the order, structure, and organization of society was completely upended in revolution. It invited and attuned the mysteriousness and uncertainty of existence itself. But Burke couldn’t sit with mystery and uncertainty. He was determined by the very development of ontotheology to seek some sort of mysterious and uncertain capacity of god in the revolution to, perhaps, save the foundation of sanctity from violent upheaval.

That what’s theological in ontotheology developed into the political. The State has, in its history, often invoked its sanctity and divine right from the scriptures themselves. The State was something of a culmination or consummation of the sacred. It was to have been imbued with the sacred and therefore embodied it.

The State was the embodiment of the sacred. Indeed, the fulfillment of it. It’s the fulfillment of the sacred even into its complete opposite. The sacredness of the State is the insanctity and unsacred defilement and destruction of all peoples and the earth. It’s the plunder of labor and wealth, and it purifies and enriches itself while subjugating its people. Sedition, subversion, mutiny, high treason, and conspiracy are all charges against those who seek to upend, destabilize, or destroy government and State authority. But what these are instead is the State’s unmitigated coup and comeuppance against its own people and the very peoples of the earth.

To speak against the State is blasphemy and apostasy, “dangerous” speech. This attests to the State’s holiness and sacrality. This theological character of the State and the political, developed from ontotheology, we call ontotheopolitics or ontopolitical theology (what is called civic religion). This merely takes place within the history of an already technological metaphysical tradition, one of machination, calculation, representation, orderability, and domination. The epoch of enframing takes place as soon as the whole of society is organized by monarchical and State rule, which discloses the earth as resource, and ontotheopolitics happens as soon as the king is seen as holy and having a divine right to rule.

The State stands now as the last theology and the last decision. The last theology as the last transformation and culmination of being as beingness, and the last decision as the last historical decision, as whether or not to save the earth and its peoples, to destroy the State and all hierarchies. The world now in its essential history is at an end, and it can’t be saved until the decision as to whether or not to destroy it is decided. We must prepare the laying of this question by preparing the indictment posed in this question. For it’s we who are indicted in its posing. Indictment and judgement lie within the question, which implicates us in our constitution of responsible stewards of the earth.

Can the earth still be saved? Can human Dasein be redeemed in its responsibility to itself and the earth? Is the decision worth sacrifice? Can we see today how sacrifice for the god has transformed into sacrifice for the State? Can we see through weeping tears the destruction of a world and the uprooting of all peoples from what shelters them? Are we strong enough to hold out the mysteriousness and uncertainty beyond all political apparatuses, which cause us to wonder? What is fascism, and authoritarianism more broadly, if not the most telltale sign of the most destitute and soulless age of ontotheopolitics?

Wonder: marvel, astonishment, and terror at the most radical and extreme abyssal ground of being. It would be too easy to say that fascists individually, in peering into the uncertainty and terror of existence, if they do at all, then cast the uneasiness at the uncanny fact of existence onto their political enemies. No, it’s not about individual, atomized people and politics. It says more about the transformation of god as beingness, cause, and reason of beings to ontopolitical theology and its principles of order and organization. Not individuals, but the State as that which orders and organizes. Yet, being can’t be reduced to the absolutely concrete.

The most radical in its extremity is the most terrifying. What’s most terrifying is that which is most unthinkable. In light of the holiness of the State, the development of ontotheology into ontotheopolitics, ontopolitical theology, what is most terrifying as the most unthinkable is the abolition and destruction of the State.

And this can bring about what we call the second beginning. A beginning anew in which being appropriates the human being and all human relationships, and we may become for the first time, truly, stewards of the earth. A new beginning in which, with tears and terror, wonder, we may look out into the the darkness that lies beyond all States and nations and capitalism, gazing horrified at the horizon of possibility, pregnant with uncertainty and potentiality, lacking a fundamental guide, and hold out with the crushing uncertainty and creatively, poietically, reclaim our souls as stewards of the earth. Dwelling not under god, king, or State, but as a self-governing people who are neighbors, near dwellers, in a community and society harvesting the earth. Sociare: originary sense of socialism.

But this second beginning must be prepared in the preparation of the indictment of the human being in the question of the decision as to whether to keep the State and continue to dwell in the destitution of ontotheopolitics, or to abolish and destroy it, and to dwell in a new paradigm of being in which the earth becomes once again a place of our dwelling and that which offers shelter and sustenance.

We must await in the preparation of the second beginning. We must await in the releasement of an attunement which discloses new, urgent, and emergent understandings of being. Understandings of the essence of the human being. Those which reveal a more safeguarded and soulful conception of the human being. One that recollects the soulfulness of the soul in the most soulless and destitute age.

From ontotheology to ontotheopolitics. What may lie beyond this which discloses the way to our soulful dwelling and full constitution of stewards of the earth?