How Fascism Stabilises — and How It Can Be Undone: 6 Responsibility in Times of Authoritarian Drift

Having traced fascism as a coordination pathology, examined fear and simplification, explored normativity under siege, and outlined how opposition and subversion operate, we arrive at the final, unavoidable question: what does responsibility look like in times of authoritarian drift?

Responsibility here is not a moral prescription; it is a structural and relational stance within evolving systems.

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1. Responsibility as Structural Sensitivity

In relational terms, responsibility arises from awareness of your effect on coordination:

• how your actions reshape intelligibility

• how your interventions alter possibilities for others

• how your presence amplifies or mitigates system pressures

It is not about guilt or heroism. It is about calibrated participation in a system that is itself under stress.

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2. No Neutrality Exists

In authoritarian drift, pretending to be neutral is itself an intervention:

• inaction communicates toleration or acceptance

• silence can reinforce compression and rigidity

• every choice, even the choice to wait, alters the field

Responsibility begins with recognition: you cannot opt out of coordination. The only question is how your participation shapes the system.

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3. Incremental, Distributed Stewardship

Responsibility is not exercised individually or through spectacle. It is distributed and iterative:

• local interventions that expand intelligibility

• attentiveness to uptake and unintended stabilisations

• willingness to revise interventions in light of system feedback

The ethical task is care for possibility, not moral victory.

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4. Managing Risk Without Recklessness

Interventions carry risk: misjudged actions can reinforce fascist coordination, unintentionally punish participants, or collapse fragile intelligibility.

Responsibility here demands:

• deliberate pacing

• constant monitoring of effects

• tolerance for ambiguity and slow uptake

Ethics is thus inseparable from technique: responsibility is the practice of measured, informed recalibration.

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5. The Long View

Authoritarian drift is rarely a singular event. It is a process: slow, punctuated, and cumulative.

Responsibility requires:

• endurance rather than drama

• patience rather than confrontation

• commitment to keeping revisability alive, even under pressure

Those who intervene must accept that success is not immediate, and that maintaining open, intelligible fields is often itself the most subversive act.

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Conclusion

Responsibility in times of authoritarian drift is not about being righteous, defeating the system, or standing visibly opposed. It is about attending to coordination, expanding intelligibility, and preserving revisability.

It is a careful, relational practice — slow, iterative, and attentive to the consequences of one’s cuts.

To act responsibly is to act in a way that keeps the future intelligible and possible, even when the present is compressed, fearful, and rigid.

Fascism may seem inevitable, but relational insight shows us where possibility still exists — and responsibility is the willingness to work within those openings, carefully, persistently, and without spectacle.