Affective Liberty and Fascist Joy

The authoritarian turn we observe all over the world affectively operates with the promise to 'liberate': to liberate speech from the fetters of so-called cancel culture; to liberate majorities from the fetters of minority rights; to liberate (national) economies from the burdens of redistribution to the allegedly 'non-deserving' (Tosic/Streinzer 2022); to liberate knowledge from the fetters of scientific standards; to liberate "us" from "them".Not only do these orders promise to liberate, they remove the constraints on (some) affects wherever they come to dominate.They provide affective liberty.My argument will be that this affective liberty is central to the offers and attractions of fascism.Affective liberty comes to mean impunity for deeds of hatred, contempt, and greed.It makes for both empowerment and joy thereof.And more: Joyful affective liberty, while being affectively anti-institutional, prefigures institutions of supremacy. PogromsIn 2002 when more than 1000 Muslims were killed by Hindu nationalists in Gujarat in western India, their shops and homes looted by Hindu rioters, ordinary people participated in a mode, or rather, a mood that resembled the run on summer sales, carefree and thrilled.Something had evidently changed.After the so-called "Bombay-riots" in 1992/93 that had followed the destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya by Hindu