🧠 Sociogenic Cancer

08 Dec, 2024

There have been countless attempts to draw boundaries around fascism so as to declare something to definitively "be fascist". Liberals in particular yearn for an evil conveniently grounded in a mythologized victory over Fascists/"Fasciocommunists" in the 20th Century. These foundation myths depict fascism as an external force attempting to penetrate society from without, glossing over inconvenient associations with elements of the liberal democracies that claim to oppose it. It's not coincidental that the roots of eugenics, concentration camps and race science in those liberal democracies aren't part of the default narrativization of the defeat of Axis evils.

Fascism is thus boundaried, otherized and treated as an external force corrupting an otherwise pristine neoliberal system. To do otherwise would negatively impact neoliberal interests by implying conclusions that ultimately oppose them. An alternative that better highlights the contradictions in liberal antifascism may be helpful in framing both description and prescription in an understanding of fascism.

Here I propose "sociogenic cancer" as that alternative framework.

What is Cancer

It is as difficult to draw clear boundaries around 'cancer' as fascism, because it is the corruption of a process that is fundamental to the overall system and one that behaves idiosyncratically based on the cell tissues it resides in. Cancer is the subversion of cell division, beginning as a benign structure operating within normal parameters before becoming malignant through damage, dysfunction and/or external systemic effects.

Being corrupted process rather than an object; it is ever-changing, highly adaptive and extraordinarily quick at evolving responses to new threats. It mindlessly pursues inevitably self-destructive growth, subverting and subsuming the systems of the host to survive until a benign structure transitions into a malignant one. This malignant system then engulfs resources, invades surrounding systems and eventually undermines the stability of the host, resulting in a self-terminating cascading collapse of the entire system.¹

As it integrates itself into critical functions, removal becomes increasingly dangerous to the host. Through angiogenesis it develops new vascular structures to supply itself with resources from adjacent systems. Through metastasis it spreads to other systems, creating secondary tumours independent from the first. Through immunosuppression it inhibits the hosts defensive response or even its ability to recognise it as an existential threat. These are, importantly, mindless survival mechanisms requiring no sapient coordination; instead adaptations to selective pressures that exclude entities other than cancer.

The first useful takeaway here is the mindlessness of this self-sufficient growth. In much the way we see emergent properties in networks of non-sapient entities like neurons or colonies of ants, fascist communities do not require sapience. Importantly this is not to dehumanize members of these communities, but rather to emphasise the lack of need for intelligent guidance for these systems to be successful. This may even help explain the seeming success of these systems despite them being comprised of people generally considered less tethered to reality, less individually effective and less intelligent.

To go further, I'd argue that an unintelligent fascism is likely to overcome an intelligent neoliberalism. We do not have the cure for cancer today, despite it being a mindless entity, because it is intrinsically linked to the human host we are trying to keep alive.

This makes an intelligently guided fascism monstrously dangerous.

The Preconditions of Sociogenic Cancer

Cancer is a complex system to define, the most effective way to do so is to define it by what it has to overcome to exist. The host system has various filters and processes designed to prevent cancerous growths. Understanding which of these filters has failed helps us understand the risk of a given growth, and whether its benign or malignant. Theoretically if 5 out of 6 filters have failed, the last one can still hold the line, though often not without consequence.

Hallmarks of Cancerous Growth

1. Self-Sufficient Growth Acceleration
2. Inefficacy of Anti-Growth Measures
3. Evading Dismantlement by the Host
4. Infinitely Self-Reproducing
5. Sustained Accumulation of Resources
6. Invasion of other Systems

Let's look at an imperfect but illustrative example. Let's imagine the popular elected sheriff of a small American town begins to grow in influence. They fearmonger the incoming threat of bordertown immigrants and recruit more and more young men to the policing force, beginning an accelerated growth.

In theory this should reach an equilibrium with the need for policing that reflects reality. The Mayor, the voters, the Attorney General don't pushback. Maybe the narrative is convenient to their political needs, or the problem is obscured. The dampeners on growth fail.

Eventually this growth can no longer be ignored, and an attempt to reform or wind down the bloated policing force gains traction. But with the backing of a misinformed electorate, pressure from up high to be soft on police or a lack of resources, the attempt to dismantle the structure approaching malignancy fails.

At this point a microenvironment has emerged, including a diverse internal ecosystem of sociogenic cancer cells (Propagandists, bureaucrats, aggressive and passive), surrounded by cooperative healthy liberal cells ignorant of their supporting role. Perfectly "rational" incentive structures like democratic elections, reassuring public fears and the provision of community and work are corrupted in service of a malignant institution.

Now acting with impunity, the police force can begin expanding their influence, investing efforts in getting the mayor's office in line, involving themselves with the local council, requesting funding from the state to begin accumulating excess military gear. Now to dismantle a police force you have to dismantle an entire local government, reclaim military hardware and reformat the system at great expense and disruption to the local state, perhaps having to end it entirely. ²

This could be beneficial, but from the neoliberal "host" perspective this is utterly unacceptable. It's helpful to recognise that the host will not always act in the best interests of its constituent parts. A gangrenous limb is as likely to be amputated as healed, and a risk assessment will be made to determine which. This is grave news to members of the constituent limb who will be abandoned to maintain the whole. In this way, for example, prison populations are left in nightmarish authoritarian systems utterly vulnerable to exploitation with minimal oversight to facilitate excising problematic elements from the whole.

Systemic Causes of Sociogenic Cancer

Cancers arise spontaneously but are exacerbated by a variety of systemic factors, most notably cellular damage. You smoke, drink and spend too long in the sun and cells need replacement. How often are new structures deployed where the old ones fell? How often is a systemic shock occurring? How effectively are structures wound down after they've served their initial purpose? Are you sure that committee will cease operations after the crisis is over; that those temporary emergency powers are just temporary?

Every time we are forced to rebuild using the normal sociological mechanisms of power organization and deployment, we roll the dice again. It's logical then that cancers develop most frequently and quickly in fast growing structures with high-turnover exposed to damage and systemic shock like the digestive tract, bowel and skin. More damage, more rolls of the dice, more adaptation. The healthy cells are getting nuked on a regular basis, filtering for unhealthy cells that can adapt and resist damage, even intentional host-directed damage, instead.

This makes neoliberalism especially vulnerable to sociogenic cancers; boom/bust cycles instigating periods of systemic damage followed by periods of rapid growth. By the time equilibrium returns the angiogenic network is established and outcompetes others for resources. These defective systems often seem more effective at the goals laid out for them by deploying either overwhelming force or deceptive representations of their successes, warding off immune responses from the host. This is done in whatever way relevant to the superstructure, from law and order cops to pedophile hunting twitter communities, two structures notorious for containing greater quantities of the ills they respectively claim to combat.

This is most dangerous in immuno-privileged structures like the (brain-analogue) executive-branch: systems given special privileges to enable their necessary function. An inevitable and fundamental danger of privileging any structures beyond accountability is that in every hierarchical system there will always be an unaccountable node, you can't comb the hair on a coconut.³

The de facto (now de jure) immuno-privileged US president is an ideal medium for a benign structure to grow and turn malignant in. In cancers that reach the brain, survival rates plummet; particularly in hosts that have undergone more thorough systemic damage over the years. A minority of people survive their first bout with brain cancer. A recurrence carries an exponentially higher risk, as many of the existing structures are damaged by the first.

A second term could be terminal.

Treatments for Sociogenic Cancer

The cancer analogy, beyond being more descriptive, offers clearer prescriptions that don't handwave the accumulation of power in other contexts. It helps internalize fascism as a corruption of fundamental process gone awry with maladaptive results that can take any form depending on the superstructure it gestated in. But given this broad definition, how do we identify cancer cells hidden amongst healthy ones for treatment?

Chemotherapy

A slow growing cancer could be carefully dismantled, a fast growing one is deadly enough to require fast treatment. Luckily by growing so quickly, they provide a marker by which they can be targeted with Chemotherapy. Consequentially, systems that require rapidly growing cells like those in hair or the gastrointestinal tract also suffer, but the cancer is at least also targeted and destroyed.

These are sacrifices willingly made in a human body, but in a neoliberal society the fastest growing structures are prized above all else. Impeding authoritarian power accumulation will naturally limit billionaire elites from growing their wealth and power quarter to quarter. Systems of accountability that prevent overreaches by privileged states will weaken their ability to act in their own interests.

Like many systemic treatments, a half-hearted dose of chemotherapy can yield detrimental side effects and adaptations. Insufficient labour support led to just enough resources for whites to feel compelled to hoard them in the 20th century, even at their own eventual expense through instigating internal conflict within the working class. A one-off stimulus check from the government can easily be subverted with a presidential signature, the brief respite from desperate circumstances serving as a powerful propaganda tool that wouldn't be nearly as effective with more reliable government support.

These half-measures happen for a reason. Neoliberals often prioritize luscious hair over functioning internal organs, indicating that the representation of the system's health is far more important than the health itself. Too great a solution would imply too great an internal contradiction in neoliberalism.

Surgical Removal

Violent excision is also possible through surgery, but highly dependent on how vulnerable this leaves the host. If critical structures now flow through the tumour, or the tumour has grown too large to safely remove, violence is a dangerous option. If you do not remove all the cells, they'll rebuild again elsewhere. This can often buy time but will not resolve the underlying malignancy, especially a fast growing one.

Imprecisely butchering a growth can leak cancerous tissues throughout the system. It requires absolute precision, foreknowledge and planning to execute. You do not cut into a patient until you precisely know the nature and size of the growth.⁴

Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy is another means to halt growth, a non-invasive but targeted attack on the tumour. By inducing radiation damage in the cellular structure, the tumour as a whole is disrupted with minimal second order effects. In an ideal world this allows for a non-violent, targeted solution that should resolve malignancies. In practice there are limitations. Much of the damage received from radiation is committed by (appropriately named) free radicals, oxygen molecules binding with damaged structures and ossifying them. Limited oxygen supply to tumour cells can reduce the number of these free radicals - without exposure to oxygen there aren't enough radicals to significantly damage the internal structure. By limiting the exposure of their members to oxygen, the fascistic tumour can impede the effectiveness of memetic attacks on their structure. This is why successful neo-nazi groups inoculate their members against exposure to air, making them distasteful to liberals, untouchable and limiting their contact surface with oxygenating discourse.

Conclusions

Neoliberalism is a host with warped priorities. Unwilling to undergo superficial harms to its self-image while willingly excising entire limbs to survive bathing in carcinogenic contradictions. It deploys surgical violence reactively when it is far too late, radiotherapeutic antifascist messaging when the environment is not conducive to it, and chemotherapeutic systemic reform in small (likely innoculating) quantities as a rare last resort.

Today we are attempting to fight a metastasized cancer on multiple fronts without one of the most critical tools available to us. Surgery and Radiotherapy are useful, but the most effective approach to treatment has always been a combined one, and without systemic tools in place to widely target the causes of malignant growth, we'll likely never resolve the problem widely enough to prevent it rooting in more systems and eventually crucial immuno-privileged structures like the presidency.

Recognising fascism as a natural corruption of sociogenic structures exacerbated by the host body politic's own vulnerabilities is critical. It doesn't require (though is certainly benefitted by) cultivation and deliberate malevolence to form, but instead gestates in damaged and vulnerable structures, accumulating power for power's sake until it collapses in on itself.

We're left with the choice of continuing to nurture contradictions that nourish malignant structures, or creating an environment inhospitable to sociogenic cancers.

Footnotes