Many think of fascism as a phenomenon of the 20^th century. But fascism isn’t history, it has simply mutated and adapted to the new millennium. It is more philosophically informed and operationally savvy, and at the same time just as against the modern world and its freedoms as the Taliban. To beat this new strain of fascism we need to reignite the ethos of liberalism and the left, writes Paul Mason.

Paul Mason will be speaking at HowTheLightGetsIn Festival, September 18-19th in London's Hampstead Heath. Explore more here.

Shortly after the Taliban took Kabul, inflicting strategic defeat on the West, the American far-right began a paroxysm of celebrations. “The Taliban is a conservative, religious force, the US is godless and liberal. The defeat of the US government in Afghanistan is unequivocally a positive development”, wrote far-right influencer Nicholas Fuentes.

Those who fantasise about the future disintegration of the US Federal state were ecstatic. For here was a model of how you do it: raise a generation of radicalised youth, detached from normal society, arm them, and take the country working from the remote areas inwards. What failed as a gestural insurrection on 6 January 2021 could one day succeed as a guerrilla war.