We all know the old footage. The stark, monochrome marches, the rigid salutes, the frenzied crowds. It’s the ghost that haunts our modern world, and we’ve convinced ourselves we’d spot its return a mile off. We tell ourselves, “Never again,” with a quiet confidence that comes from knowing the enemy’s uniform. But what if the uniform has changed? What if the new fascism isn’t wearing jackboots, but a tailored suit, a tech bro’s hoodie, or the ironic grin of a meme?

That’s the unsettling truth we have to face. The aesthetics of authoritarianism have undergone a quiet but total redesign for the 21st century. It’s a friendlier, more insidious form that creeps in not with the bang of a dictator’s fist on a podium, but with the soft, persuasive glow of a smartphone screen. It’s less about stormtroopers and more about Silicon Valley’s vision of a tech-utopia, less about blood-and-soil rallies and more about the curated nostalgia of a “lost” masculinity. To my own mind, the most dangerous trick it’s pulled is making the whole thing feel like one big, bad taste joke.

Take a look around. The Italian Futurist Artists glorified war and speed; today’s tech oligarchs preach a gospel of progress, selling us a shiny, minimalist future where their corporations, not nations, are in charge. It’s a vision of power wrapped in the cool, unobjectionable aesthetics of a corporate keynote. And when that feels too cold, it offers Solar Punk—a beautiful, green-washed dream of harmony that can so easily be twisted to justify eco-fascist ideas of population control and exclusion. It’s utopia as a sales pitch, and it’s dangerously persuasive.

But the real shift, the one that leaves many of us feeling like we’re shouting into a void, is the weaponisation of irony. The symbols of hate have been replaced by cartoon frogs and anime girls. The dehumanising rhetoric is hidden behind layers of “just banter, mate.” It’s a shield of plausible deniability that allows cruel ideologies to spread through gaming chats and podcast bro culture, targeting young men who feel adrift. When you try to point out the nastiness lurking beneath the surface, you’re instantly labelled a humourless “snowflake.” It’s a brilliant, frustrating tactic: they make the world meaningless, so that caring about anything at all becomes a sign of weakness.

And now, we have AI. This, to me, feels like the final stage of this aesthetic hollowing-out. We’re being flooded with AI-generated slop—politicised art created without a shred of human conviction or creativity. It’s the ultimate tool for aestheticising politics, turning historical atrocities and genocidal fantasies into just another piece of content, stripped of all weight and horror. When everything can be faked and every image is just empty aesthetics, how do we hold on to truth?

So, how do we push back against something that’s designed to be slippery, ironic, and everywhere? I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I believe it starts with a kind of stubborn, clear-eyed authenticity.

First, we have to get better at reading the aesthetics. We need a new kind of literacy that looks past the what and questions the how. Why does that political ad look like a video game trailer? Why is that leader communicating entirely in memes? We have to name the tactics when we see them, pulling back the curtain on the irony and the aesthetic whitewashing.

More importantly, we have to offer a better, truer story. You can’t fight a sense of belonging built on hatred with a list of policy points. We need to build real, tangible communities—through unions, local projects, mutual aid—that give people a genuine stake and a connection that no online cult can match. And we need to champion art and narratives that are unafraid of complexity and rich with empathy, that offer a vision of a future worth fighting for, one that includes everyone.

Ultimately, it comes down to a simple, profound choice: we have to insist on meaning. In a world that’s being deliberately drained of it, we must value truth over fiction, complexity over simplistic lies, and the inherent dignity of every person over the fascist’s cruel hierarchy of worth.

It’s not about winning an online argument or a single election. It’s a long, persistent effort to build a world where people feel secure and respected enough to see the new fascism for what it is: a seductive, well-designed package with nothing but emptiness inside. And that requires us to be, above all else, true to ourselves.

The Keep Sane in Troubled Times Playbook
1. Develop Critical Aesthetic Literacy
The first step is to recognise the weaponisation of aesthetics. This means moving beyond analysing what is said to how it is presented.

• Teach Media Literacy 2.0: Go beyond identifying fake news. Teach people to deconstruct visual rhetoric: Why does a political ad use a specific type of animation? Why does a leader’s social media feed look like a meme page? What emotions is a corporate “utopian” video trying to evoke, and what material realities does it hide?
• Name the Tactics: Publicly label the strategies when you see them. Point out the irony-poisoning, the co-option of subcultures, the use of AI slop to flood the zone. By making the mechanics visible, you rob them of their power.

2. Rebuild Trust through Material Politics and Local Organising
Fascism feeds on alienation, despair, and the collapse of trust in institutions. The most powerful antidote is to demonstrate that collective, democratic action can improve people’s lives.

• Focus on Material Conditions: Shift the conversation from the abstract culture war to concrete, material issues: affordable housing, healthcare, wages, unionisation, climate resilience. Fascism offers scapegoats; a real alternative must offer solutions that address the root causes of anxiety.
• Strengthen Local Community: Support and participate in local unions, tenants’ associations, mutual aid networks, and community gardens. These organisations build real-world solidarity, trust, and collective power that is immune to online manipulation. They provide a sense of belonging that is not based on hatred of an “other”.

3. Create Competing, Hopeful Narratives and Aesthetics
You cannot defeat a powerful aesthetic with a dry policy paper. The left and centre must relearn the art of storytelling and vision-building.

• Articulate a Positive, Inclusive Future: Solar Punk, as mentioned, has positive potential. We need compelling, artistically rendered visions of a future that is both technologically advanced and socially just, ecologically sustainable, and inclusive. This vision must be attractive enough to compete with the nostalgic fantasies of the far right.
• Support Art and Culture that Builds Empathy: Fund, celebrate, and amplify art, films, music, and games that celebrate complexity, diversity, and human dignity. Counter the dehumanising caricatures with rich, humanising stories.

4. Strategic, Unified Opposition and Deplatforming
While open debate is ideal, the video correctly shows that these movements often argue in bad faith, using debate as a platform to spread conspiracies.

• Do Not Normalise: Avoid treating fascist ideology as a legitimate point of view in political discourse. The goal is not to “debate” whether some people are inferior, but to isolate and discredit those ideas. Media outlets have a responsibility not to platform figures who traffic in replacement theory or Holocaust denial for “balance”.
• Strengthen Institutional Guardrails: Defend and strengthen independent journalism, an independent judiciary, free and fair elections, and the rule of law. Support projects that document hate speech and extremist networks. This is the unsexy, bureaucratic work that is essential for democracy’s survival.

5. Personal Responsibility and Courage

• Interrupt Casual Bigotry: Do not let racist, homophobic, or antisemitic “jokes” slide in personal conversations. A calm, firm response like, “I don’t find that funny,” or “Why do you say that?” can disrupt the normalisation process.
• Support Victims: Stand in solidarity with those targeted by hate. If you see someone being harassed, be a proactive bystander. This demonstrates that the community will not tolerate intimidation.
• Protect Your Mental Space: The constant barrage of corrosive content is designed to exhaust and demoralise. It is essential to log off, engage in real-world communities, and protect your capacity for empathy and hope. You cannot fight a long-term battle while burned out.

The Core Challenge: Rejecting Meaninglessness
The video concludes that the ultimate goal of this aestheticisation is to make everything meaningless. Therefore, the most profound act of resistance is to insist on meaning.

This means:

• Valuing Truth: Upholding the distinction between fact and fiction.
• Valuing Complexity: Rejecting simplistic, us-vs-them narratives in favour of nuanced understanding.
• Valuing Human Dignity: Constantly affirming the inherent and equal worth of every person, against the hierarchy of worth that fascism promotes.

Countering this new fascism is not about winning a single election or a viral online battle. It is a long-term, cultural, and political project to rebuild a society where people feel secure, respected, and hopeful enough to reject the seductive but deadly lies of fascism in any aesthetic guise.