Beyond the F-Word

We reach for the word “fascism” quickly. It rolls easily across television studios and social media feeds with a sense of moral finality. It signals alarm. It signals fear. But it also creates distance. It suggests the problem was alien, that we were victims of ideology rather than participants in a system.

Historically, fascism meant total ideological control: the fusion of state and myth into a single unquestioned narrative. Bangladesh is not that. We held elections, however contested. Markets functioned, however unevenly. Civil society endured, however pressured. Institutions became politicized. Power centralized. Personalization became visible. But that is not fascism. It is institutional distortion shaped by extraction.

Calling it fascism narrows our field of vision. It directs us toward interwar Europe -- uniforms, total mobilization, ideological conquest -- when our own trajectory resembles something different. Our cautionary tale lies closer to pre-revolutionary France.

The parallels to the Ancien Régime are structural. Public offices were sold. Tax burdens fell disproportionately on those least able to bear them, while elites negotiated exemptions. Fiscal crises mounted not because the state lacked revenue, but because revenue flowed unevenly. Privilege hardened. Trust thinned.

For years, the system functioned. Infrastructure expanded. Authority appeared intact. But risk was redistributed downward while protection accumulated upward. When fiscal shock came, legitimacy had already eroded. Reform arrived too late. The rupture that followed did not produce stability. It produced volatility, radical swings, purges, and counter-revolutions.

Equilibrium took decades.

That pattern is more familiar than we may wish to admit. In banking, politically connected borrowers accumulated non-performing loans while depositors absorbed fragility. In supply chains, “syndicates” shaped the price of daily essentials, turning access into leverage over household dignity. In the electric grid, reliability clustered around power while volatility clustered around production.

In districts like Mymensingh, welding machines fall silent while high-rise air conditioners hum in Dhaka. Instability is not absorbed at the center; it is absorbed locally and passed forward through inflation. Different sectors. One structure: Reward flows upward, vulnerability flows downward.

Extraction does not collapse a system overnight. It embeds in procedures. It coexists with growth. It delivers visible gains while deferring invisible costs. Over time, risk concentrates downward and protection concentrates upward. Trust fades. And once trust fades, even moderate shocks feel existential.

History shows different exits. Mexico strengthened electoral rules and prosecutorial independence. Indonesia reformed institutions without dismantling the state. Singapore’s durability rests on bureaucratic insulation and predictable enforcement. The takeaway from this: Power needs to be held to account. We need institutional guardrails.

Extraction endured because it was self-sustaining. It funded patronage. Patronage consolidated control. The choice before us is less dramatic than revolution and more demanding than denunciation.

Democracies do not stabilize because one side wins. They stabilize when defeat is survivable and rules are predictable. They are not built by grievance, but built by guardrails -- and by making power less worth capturing in the first place.

Saba El Kabir is a development practitioner and founder of Cultivera Limited. He can be reached at [email protected].