Digital Fascism and Digital Capitalism

What is digital fascism? What is digital capitalism? How are they related? This article theorises digital fascism as a contemporary form of right-wing authoritarianism rooted in capitalism and reorganised through digital infrastructures. Building on the Frankfurt School’s analysis of authoritarianism, it reconceptualises fascism as a terroristic, anti-democratic mode of organisation – leadership cults, nationalism, friend/enemy polarisation, and militant patriarchy – whose resurgence is catalysed by capitalist crises. The paper advances a dual framework: fascist practices (cognition, communication, co-production) and digital structures (platforms, algorithms, datafication) recursively produce one another – the tripleC dynamic – enabling user-generated hate, post-truth propaganda, algorithmic targeting, cyber-attacks, and digitally mediated violence. Ten historical hypotheses map shifts from broadcast propaganda to influencer networks, from street militias to partially automated conflict, and from overt anti-democracy to “creeping” authoritarianism that claims democratic legitimacy. Integrating political economy evidence, the article demonstrates how key fractions of digital, financial, and fossil/transport capital fund and legitimise emergent authoritarian projects, crystallising an authoritarian digital capitalism whose boundary with digital fascism is porous. The conclusion argues for a digital democracy that counters the fusion of big business and big power in the digital age.