THE STATE WE ’RE IN
thinking rests on theological foundations. As McMahon writes of 18th-century reform ef orts, ‘ T e very fact that equality was on the horizon at all owed much to these varied Christian ef orts. Over the course of centuries, Christians had made of equality a moral good, investing it with a sacral status … Equal was how God had made us; equal was how God intended his beloved to be.’
St Paul famously claimed that the incarnation demolished old distinctions, so that ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’. But the question for Christians is the same as the question for all those advocating equality: what does the word mean in the real world, in the thick of daily life, for politics and economics? McMahon notes that religious claims of equality often had little purchase in the material world. St Paul instructed Christians to obey their earthly masters. T ere was no condemnation of slavery as an institution. Master and slave were equal in God’s eyes. But right here and right now, their position was unchanged.
to take the equality claims of the Right, including those on its extreme end, seriously. T e origin of the word ‘fascism’ is fascis, the term for a bundle of rods with a protruding blade. T is was an emblem of magisterial power in ancient Rome but also of connection, community and equality. T ere are fasces f anking the speaker’s rostrum in the US House of Representatives. T ere is a fascis underneath each of Abraham Lincoln’s hands in his memorial sculpture in Washington, DC.
T e fascists of the 20th century were dismissive of liberal versions of equality, in part because these ducked the hard realities that must be faced to achieve
Germany, developed a more explicitly racial typology, leading to the genocidal implementation of Schmitt ’s argument that, to f ourish, societies require ‘the elimination or eradication of heterogeneity’.
T e success of fascist politics was down to its clear signalling of who would be the winners, the equals, in a new political order. Fascist scholars and leaders understood that the desire for recognition within a necessarily unequal society created resentment, which could be amplif ed and weaponised. Drawing on the work of the Dutch scholar Menno ter Braak (who committed suicide in 1940 rather than live under Nazi rule), McMahon of ers a chilling but necessary reminder: ‘Where the belief in equality prevailed, resentment would f nd a place. With the consequence that democratic societies would always produce a steady stream of the very poison that could be used to kill them of .’ T e desire to be seen and valued can curdle into reaction and hatred. ‘All human beings seek recognition,’ McMahon writes. ‘And as populist politicians of the Right have arguably understood far better than most in recent years, politics is well placed to provide it.’
T e Roman Empire in which Christianity f ourished had its own abstract ideal of equality under natural law for all male Roman citizens, omnes homines aequales sunt (‘all men are equal’), a principle that became part of the legal code itself under Emperor Justinian. McMahon distils the partnership between secular and religious forces: ‘T us did the Roman law and Christian theology work together, each in its own way, to situate equality amid inequality, while concealing inequality in equality itself. T e one justif ed the other. And as both the empire of Christianity and the empire of Rome grew, so did that complementary and reinforcing function.’
T e question of what makes up the substance of equality occupied the f nest theologians for centuries. It is central for secular egalitarians too. And some of the deepest thinkers on this question come not from the Left but from the Right. Perhaps McMahon’s greatest achievement is
Fasces before fascism: the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC
equality within a group: f rst, a clear def nition of that group; second, the deliberate exclusion of others. Fascist thinkers were explicit about the exclusionary implications of equality. T e Nazi legal scholar Carl Schmitt wrote in 1923 that ‘the question of equality is precisely not one of abstract, logical-arithmetical games. It is about the substance of equality.’ What would this substance be? Schmitt said it could vary. It could be religion, belief, nationhood, tradition or ‘ideas of common race’. But the key concept was ‘equality of type’, or Artgleichheit . T e idea of the Vo l k provided a broad umbrella, shaped by common history, culture, language and experience. But, over time, fascist thinking, especially in
T e rancour of modern politics is an obstacle to the practical pursuit of greater equality. Right-wing nationalists are dusting of the playbooks of the 1920s and 1930s, whether they admit it (or even know it) or not. In the face of growing concerns over immigration, the proto-fascist French thinker Maurice Barrès wrote at the end of the 19th century, ‘the idea of the fatherland implies an inequality, but to the detriment of foreigners, not, as is the case today, to the detriment of French nationals.’ Meanwhile, too many on the Left are practising a rancorous identity politics of their own, in which, as McMahon writes, ‘white heterosexual men are cast as uncertain allies and privileged exceptions to the rest of humanity’.
T ere is some hard politics ahead of us, for sure. If we are to stand any chance of cultivating a humane reimagining of equality, we will have to do some hard thinking too.
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