The extremes are back but in an oppressive form. There are not totalitarian as they used to be in the XXth century under Hitler, Mussolini or Stalin. Actually they take a much more classical form. Mankind didn’t know many monster or totalitarian regimes but knew a great deal of oppressions. This is the reason why the extreme right, for instance, is knowing a very “classical” form which is closer to Franquist regime than the Hitlerian one.
The extreme right of Franco was much more “moderate” than the Hitlerian one. It survived the nazi regime and the fascist one, and accommodated to the Cold War with the American need to contain communism in Europe. Franco smartly used this context to stay in power and died in the early 1970’s. This dictator came to power after the Spanish war in the 1930’s against the Republicans, who were quite disorganized but assembled many leftist ideas, from the communist to the center left. The Nazis “trained” for the Second World War bombing for instance Guernica and helped Franco to go to power. Franco was not racist and antisemitic as Hitler was, but he built for instance concentration camps for opponents.
The revival of the extremes today is closer to this kind of model than the totalitarian one. On the left side there is the same kind of idea. There is no comparison with the Stalinian regime and the Goulags, but there are oppressive aspects to take into account. It is however a real new aspect of the oppressive tendencies of today : its Marxist vision. While the Franquist oppression is very traditional, from the Empires to the colonies…, the Marxist one is a lot more recent, as the communist ideas are quite recent is History. However both ideas have common grounds : for instance the distinction between the “pure bloods” and the “impur bloods”. It is the reason why humanistic parties have to oppose to these ideas which are detrimental to democracy and humanistic values.
In the “revolted man”, Camus thought that Marx was wrong to consider his ideas as “scientific”. He was opposing an absolute vision of things and of mankind. Thinkers like Deleuze or Ricoeur will also write to look for nuance in opinions, opposing the same way to extreme ideas. These nuances don’t hide realities which can be very important, but insist on the complexities of the situations. It is the reason why, for instance, socialism made a work, opposing itself to communism, to take into account social realities as well as individual ones.
Misfortunately, with the rise of social media, simplistic ideas tend to be more and more important. Superficial and caricatural ideas tend to take place and it is detrimental to really useful debates of ideas. The consequences can be seen in the political stage : debates look to be less and less focusing on the fight of ideas which should be the most important in the political area. It favours extremes which give simplistic solutions to often more complex issues. It is the reason why democracy goes often hand to hand with reason and education. As democracy is made, as it was said in the XVIIIth century, for rational people, the oppressive tendencies we see today is often the result of the decline of reading, interest to culture… It is the reason why it is also a good thing more and more initiatives are taken to control the access to social media. Culture and education are more useful than “bread and games”.
The observer 