Fascism and Paranoia in the Market of Information

Abstract

My paper is a theoretical exploration bringing together psychoanalysis, political theory and media studies to show how conspiracy media are expressions of paranoia that, in their attempts to resolve the contradictions present in liberalism, necessarily reproduce fascist ideology. Alternative political cultures and neoliberal media structures are posing increasingly greater challenges to the ideological authority of liberal institutions, exposing media users to the contradictions inherent in liberal democracy. Paranoia in the Lacanian structure is characterised by the radical rejection of the authoritative signifier, substituting this authority with some other, usually malevolent, omnipotent authority via a delusion. In substituting this authority, the newly formed reality retains investment in the signifiers of the old symbolic order but is imbued with new meaning. Fascism has been argued to be an ideology that attempts to purify the contradictions of liberal democracy, by either privileging the popular will over the rights of the individual or privileging the rights of the individual over the popular will. In my paper I draw on existing Lacanian analysis of fascism as containing a paranoid structure where, in confrontation with its failures, radically rejects the traditional authority of liberalism, resulting in the substitution of authority with some imagined corruptive obstruction (such as a Jewish cabal). As such, it is an ideology that distorts and gives new meaning to the discourse of liberal democracy. I will then link this argument to contemporary conspiracy theory media, demonstrating its paranoid character and how it reproduces the ideology of fascism in its attempts to reconcile the failures of liberalism by imagining some corruptive obstruction.