Today, 09/09/2020, we have heard the UK state-executive make a statement that has the effect of driving us deeper into the fascist global quagmire. The UK government has openly stated in parliament that it is going to renege on an international legal arrangement covering the passage of trade between Northern Ireland and the the rest of the UK. In itself this may end up being a danger to the Northern Ireland peace process. But as discourse it signals a qualitative ideological shift in the relationship between political power and the citizenry. It is inciting a fascist psyche, one that is no long living in neurotic uncertainty about the moral worth of political decisions, but is a psyche plunged into an identification with power itself and its political decisions, made by an apparently omnipotent (totalitarian) UK political executive.

The citizen’s psyche is now left with no doubt in his or her mind, she or he is now demanded or coercively invited to become, subjectively, or to identify as, a part of that apparently omnipotent power – based on nationalist myths and pseudo-imperialism, and will do all he or she can to protect it, even sacrifice him or herself. The question is who will be the necessary victims to sustain the exercise of that power. No doubt, the immigrant, the poor and marginalized.

“We are a law abiding country but …. we are breaking international law, in this case … “

This is like the racist who says “I am not racist …. but, I am going to be racist, in this case, by marginalizing and abusing ethnic minorities and blame them for the tribulations of the poorest”

The UK state’s statement, explicitly admitting breaking international law, explicitly denies the existence of the illusion that sustains belief in the UK state as a law abiding parliamentary democracy. Of course we know very well that the UK is already breaking international laws by for example providing arms to states like Israel and Saudi Arabia blatantly committing crimes against humanity every day. But, crucially, the citizenry of the UK, and its flagship media, maintain the lie that we do not break the law.

It follows the pattern set when Johnson illegally suspended parliament and lied to the Queen about the reasons. And, of course, the UK executive did with this impunity, which further entrenched its sense of entitlement to power.

This is a rejection of this ‘law abiding democracy fantasy, or in other words, a ‘negation of disavowal’ that changes, or incites a change in, the psychic attachment of citizens to the ideological fantasy of UK political power. It makes the political power of this government inhere in the executive itself and no longer in any, albeit illusionary, parliamentary process. This is an exemplary fascist, or more universally perhaps, totalitarian move.