A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #363 - Culture - Read: Mark Fortier, "Becoming a Fascist: My Conversion Therapy" (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

No, no, you're not dreaming! This isn't a job interview, even though 
this sector is under pressure! ---- What brilliance, just in the title! 
---- You hesitate to pull out this book in a waiting room for fear of 
being perceived negatively, and yet it's worth a look. On the beach, it 
would be the worst possible impression. There are plenty of writings on 
anti-fascism where seriousness rivals richness and dryness of 
documentation. ---- Mark Fortier has chosen a completely different angle 
of attack. He questions the slide, follows this slow and gradual drift 
towards the abandonment of so-called left-wing convictions.

Mark Fortier, "an obscure scribbler whose arrogance and bad faith know 
no bounds," far from it. In his short book, the author skillfully wields 
the pamphleteering style. His satirical style hits hard. Will his 
conversion therapy to become a fascist be a success? This is not the 
place to reveal the outcome of this long journey, which, from letting go 
to gradual renunciation and resilience, leads the author to question and 
ponder his relationship with fascism.

He has chosen a fairly light, easy-to-read style, echoing the 
uninhibited, baseless, and outrageous register of fascism. He has 
boarded this sinister vessel with sharp weapons, subtly delivered 
throughout the pages. By opting for an initiatory, conformist, and 
supposedly more protective path, he has tried to imagine himself taking 
the great leap into the fascist unknown to conform before being 
devoured. We discover him within his close family, whom he must inform 
of the why and how of his conversion, and try to understand the ritual 
quibbles.

Mark Fortier, with a deceptively naive air, lucidly analyzes fascist 
discourse in its full and implicit form, especially in its implicit 
form. He travels and crisscrosses the thought paths of Meloni's Italy, 
Trump's United States, and Orban's Hungary. He invites Democratic, 
Republican, and Socialist political figures to the great ball of lies, 
to the great circus. He meanders through the twists and turns of the 
discourses of power in the 1980s and beyond, demonstrating the slow 
logic of the expansion of the soft underbelly of capitalism, of the 
gradual acclimation to fascism, not a Mussolini-esque fascism or a 
Hitlerian Nazism, built around the veneration of the State and planning, 
but rather an illiberal fascism, deconstructing social relations and 
advocating an uninhibited heap-taking by the wealthy. Mark Fortier 
demonstrates the full fallacy and danger of these discourses, far beyond 
their trivialization. He sweeps aside these nauseating claims to defend 
the identity of civilization, where only the preservation of their 
privileged class interests matters. He addresses the shift from the 
notion of equality to that of diversity and the resulting dilution of 
individualism.

Mark Fortier, through a wealth of quotations, weaves a formidable 
anti-fascist web. However dearly his therapy cost him, let's hope he 
fails in his conversion.

Dominique Sureau (UCL Angers)

Mark Fortier, Becoming a Fascist: My Conversion Therapy, Lux, Lettres 
libres collection, September 2025, 144 pages, EUR16.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Mark-Fortier-Devenir-fasciste-Ma-therapie-de-conversion
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