The Road to Fascism: For a Critique of the Global Biosecurity State — 28 September, 2022
by Simon Elmer
Hardback: £30.00
Paperback: £20.00
E-book: £10.00 (please specify that you are paying for a copy of this book, and check your junkmail for the return email with the e-book)
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Description
With the lifting of the thousands of regulations by which our lives were ruled for two long years there has been an understandable desire to believe that the coronavirus ‘crisis’ is over and we will return to something like an albeit new normal. But as new crises have sprung up to take its place — war in the Ukraine, the so-called ‘cost of living crisis’ and the return of the environmental crisis — it’s increasingly difficult not to look back on ‘lockdown’ as the first campaign in a war that has not been declared by any government but is no less real for that.
The willingness of our governments to use the forces of the state against their own populations on the justification of protecting us from ourselves signals a new level of authoritarianism — and something like the return of fascism — to the governmental, juridical and cultural forms of the formerly neoliberal democracies of the West, and one of the aims of this book is to examine the validity of this thesis. Its purpose in doing so, however, is not to contribute to an academic debate about the meaning of the term ‘fascism’, but rather to interrogate how and why the general and widespread moral collapse in the West over the past two-and-a-half years has been effected with such rapidity and ease, and to examine to what ends that collapse is being used.
The more deliberate is the immiseration of the populations of Western democracies, the clearer it becomes that the war started by COVID-19 is not between nation states but a civil war waged against our institutions of democratic governance and the division of powers between executive, legislature and judiciary. Insofar as these institutions and this division are being dismantled and replaced by the rule of international technocracies that, under the cloak of the ‘pandemic’, have assumed increasing power over our lives since March 2020, this war represents a revolution in Western capitalism from the neoliberalism under which we have lived for the past forty years. Where it is heading with ever greater speed and finality, and which The Road to Fascism sets out to demonstrate, is the new totalitarianism of the Global Biosecurity State.
List of Contents
Preface | 1. The Return of Fascism | 2. Eternal Fascism | 3. The Fascist State and Human Rights | 4. Fascism and the Decay of Capitalism | 5. The Psychological Structure of Fascism | 6. The Aesthetics of Totalitarianism | 7. Fascism, Neoliberalism and the Left | 8. The Camp as Biopolitical Paradigm of the State | 9. The New Totalitarianism | 10. Humanity in Dark Times | Conclusion | Appendix: Laws for the Protection of People and State | Bibliography
About the Author
Simon Elmer was born in London. In 2002 he received his PhD in the History and Theory of Art from University College London, and he has taught at the universities of London, Manchester, Reading and Michigan. In 2015 he co-founded Architects for Social Housing, for which he is Head of Research. His books include The Colour of the Sacred: Georges Bataille and the Image of Sacrifice (2007); COVID-19: Implementing the UK Biosecurity State (2020); Brave New World: Expanding the UK Biosecurity State through the Winter of 2020-2021 (2021); Virtue and Terror: Resisting the UK Biosecurity State (2021); and with Geraldine Dening, The Truth about Grenfell Tower (2017); Central Hill: A Case Study in Estate Regeneration (2018); For a Socialist Architecture: Under Capitalism (2021); and Saving St. Raphael’s Estate: The Alternative to Demolition (2022).
Publication Details
Publisher: Architects for Social Housing (September 2022)
Printed and bound by Lulu Press, UK
Language: English
Hardback and paperback: 318 pages
ISBN 978-1-4710-6819-5 (clothbound)
ISBN 978-1-4716-0172-9 (paperbound)
Dimensions: 15.87 x 2.54 x 23.5 cm | 15.24 x 1.94 x 22.86 cm
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Thanks to the generous work of Pablo Stern, my book is now also available as an E-book. I’d much prefer you bought a hard copy, but if you’re hard of seeing and prefer an e-reader, you can order it as follows:
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Please note, it took me 8 months to write this book and another 18 months of research before that, so please don’t share this E-book. For obvious reasons, I don’t have a publisher for a book that contradicts everything we’ve been told over the past two-and-a-half years, and this is the only way I can make some financial return on my work. Thank you. Otherwise, whatever format you purchase, I hope you find my book informative, interesting and useful.
Simon Elmer
Architects for Social Housing
A Communist in Hong Kong 
I completed reading your book about a month ago. As you correctly pointed out, the totalitarian societal model that we are heading for is that administered by the Chinese Communist Party, which is ‘communist’ in name only. It oversees a capitalist economy run by party cadres, an issue highlighted by Clive Hamilton in his books ‘Silent Invasion’ about its influence in Australia and ‘Hidden Hand’, co-authored with Mareike Ohlberg, about its influence in the West.
As regards the political left, the majority still believe the ‘pandemic’ narrative, but within that majority there are some who, maybe belatedly, are questioning the authoritarian response. One such I believe is Dr Gemma Ahearne of the University of Liverpool, as last month she tweeted something to that effect (which showed up in my feed, although I don’t follow her, but because she is followed by several people whom I do follow, such as Daniel Fooks).
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Hi
I bought this hardback book from your website 3rd March. I wondered when I can expect it
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Hello D Ryder, I’m sorry to hear that. Depending on where you are in the world, you probably should have received it by now if you’re in the UK or Europe, perhaps not if you’re further away. The book is printed and distributed by Lulu, to whose website the links on our website direct you. They should have given you an estimated date for delivery. If the book still hasn’t arrived within 10 days of that date, they will refund you or send you another copy. I’d advise you to contact them directly with your order number. Let me know how you get on, and please accept me apologies for the delay. Best wishes, Simon Elmer.
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Just written a review of your superb book, THE ROAD TO FASCIM. I really enjoyed it. My review is under the name Bernard Marsden and will hopefully appear at Amazon in a few days time. Excellent work which really nailed the madness of the times since March 2020 and containing great warnings about the future if people do not wake up.
Oh, also saw you read from the book at a very hot pub in Soho, that was great too.
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Thank you, David, that’s very kind of you. I look forward to reading it. Best wishes.
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As I reviewed it six days ago it looks like Amazon don’t want to add the review on. Unsurprising, I guess. Obviously, there is no way one can complains to Amazon
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