The Mirror: Fascism Is a Political Filter, Too

Rastinews — Yeter Gültekin (Fırtına) died recently — the woman who cried out, "Don't forget Madımak." Her loss is, of course, the loss of a person; but it is also the end of a testimony, the end of a vigil of memory. What she leaves us is a responsibility: to remember, not to forget, and not to let others forget. Where a society rushes to forget, someone must carry on the heavy but honorable labor of remembering. This piece is, in truth, a thank-you to Yeter — for her testimony, her devotion, the dignity with which she carried her grief. Farewell, dear Yeter.

To face oneself, a person needs a face. Not a mask.

A child grows up under the loving gaze of its mother. Being loved, watched with admiration, gives the child a sense of being worthy of love. But the child does not know whom the mother loves — that is, how it looks from the outside. Only when the child meets a mirror does it begin to understand whom its mother or father loves. For the first time, it encounters its own outward appearance. The experience often startles the child; some children are even frightened by their own reflection. This is where self-worth comes in. A person with weak self-worth often avoids looking at themselves. They do not want to look in a mirror, because looking in a mirror is not just seeing an image — it is facing oneself. People who are not at peace with themselves, who are not satisfied with themselves, or who feel worthless, may avoid mirrors for this reason. A mirror can shatter the spell a person has cast over their own self-image. The mind sometimes builds an idealized identity of itself. Looking in a mirror can break that image. This is why some people keep their distance from mirrors, preferring to keep alive the identity they have built in their own minds. Yet looking in a mirror is necessary if a person is to compare themselves with how they appear from the outside. Only through such an encounter can someone form a more realistic idea of who they are. In this sense, a mirror is not merely a surface — it represents the very possibility of seeing oneself from the outside.

The same thing happens when people hear their own voice. The voice a person hears while speaking is not the same as the voice they hear on a recording. That is why so many people are startled the first time they hear a recording of themselves. Couples and family therapist Virginia Satir described feeling intense irritation the first time she heard her own voice on tape — she initially refused to believe it was hers.

Defining oneself — one's identity — follows a similar process. What I say about myself does not contain the whole truth about me. What the people who know me, my friends, those who dislike me, and those who compete with me say about me also belongs, in part, to me. A person can be defined more fully only by adding what others say about them to their own account.

Kurds are, in truth, a mirror for the Turks. That is why they get hurled against a stone and shattered…

The same holds true for nations and social groups. What Turks, Kurds, or Germans say about themselves is not enough on its own. These accounts must be joined with the experiences and narratives of other peoples. What Kurds say about themselves must be supplemented with the experiences of Turks, Arabs, or Iranians. The same applies to Turks. The stories Turks tell about themselves remain incomplete unless considered alongside the experiences of Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, and Alevis. In this sense, Kurds are a mirror for Turks. Turks often look at themselves in the mirror the Kurds hold up, and dislike what they see. But instead of changing themselves, they try to break the mirror, insisting it is at fault. Yet it is in the mirror that a child sees whom its parents love. Looking in the mirror can be unsettling — but it is also the way to confront the truth.

The racists' mirror

Fascism often functions not merely as an ideology but as a technique of reflection. It offers people not so much a program as an image, a feeling, an identity. That is why the phrase "fascism is a person seeing themselves in a funhouse mirror" captures this dynamic in a single image. Fascism manufactures a mechanism that lets a person, or a society, see itself as larger than it is. What happens is simple: reality does not change; the reflection does. And people usually attach themselves not to reality but to its reflection. Think of the concave mirrors at fairgrounds: height stretches, shoulders widen, the body swells out of proportion. In the mirror, a person sees themselves as "stronger," "more imposing," "more important" — but once they step away, the body is the same body as before. There is another dimension we miss in that moment: in the funhouse mirror, a person stops being a "normal" human being. They take on a kind of grotesqueness — the bigger they grow, the stranger they become; the stronger they grow, the more frightening. Isn't fascism, too, a state of ceasing to be human?

Fascism does something similar on the collective level. I believe I first read this in Zygmunt Bauman: modern people are, in truth, indebted for life, yet because they carry no bank loan, they consider themselves free of debt. In reality, all of us live in a kind of indebtedness. Living is, in a way, like paying off a loan every month — rent, phone, electricity, water, heating. Even people who think themselves debt-free pay these bills regularly, month after month. In this sense, living is already a form of indebtedness.

It is no surprise, then, that people who do not own so much as a single tree to sleep under are often the most fervent singers of anthems declaring "this homeland is ours." The most convincing trick of modern society is its ability to make the poor feel that a vast homeland belongs to them. This is how a person who would never defend against their own class inequality comes to sincerely believe they must defend the homeland instead.

Yet every human being is an extremely small creature in this world — almost insignificant. Still, they come to see themselves as a historical subject responsible for protecting the homeland, and genuinely believe they are indispensable to its defense. This narrative turns the ordinary individual into a "historical subject," the powerless citizen into "someone hugely important in the world," and the person struggling economically into "a member of a nation that shapes global affairs." The individual's daily life, income, security, and future do not change — only their identity is inflated.

People begin to view themselves and their ethnic identity through a magnifying glass. This magnification lets ordinary people feel like historical figures — protectors of the nation, fighters against the enemy, figures "standing alone against the world's great powers." They stop living at their real size and start living at the size they see in the funhouse mirror. And after a while, they no longer want to step out of that mirror.

The collective filter: erasing the flaw

When people are dissatisfied with themselves, today they turn to recreating themselves. I have touched on this in some of my other writings. The psychoanalyst Horst-Eberhard Richter titled one of his books Der Gotteskomplex (2005). Richter argues that as advancing technology expands what people can do, it breeds an exaggerated self-confidence — humans begin, in effect, to put themselves in the place of God. People now believe they can recreate themselves. Christopher Lasch, in Das Zeitalter des Narzissmus (1995), described the age we live in as an "age of narcissism" — a human type that is self-admiring, self-centered, and, at times, places itself in a godlike position…

Fascism feeds this narcissistic tendency on a collective level, too. It offers people a pure, unblemished, flawless collective identity built on their lineage, their history, their language and their supposed human virtues. "Turks are intelligent," "Turks have lived free throughout history," "Turks are a nation of soldiers," "brave," "compassionate" … Narratives like these hand people an idealized, seamless collective self. Holding such an identity makes a person feel strong and worthy. That is why these narratives are so seductive. Narcissism appears here in two distinct forms. People once believed they were created by God. Today, they object to what God made of them; they set about correcting the supposed "flaws" God left in them. With a scalpel, with Botox, with a syringe… They try to recreate themselves.

Fascism does not merely correct; it also applies a filter, a retouch. It does not remove flaws — it makes them invisible. Today's social media filters make this mechanism far more visible. A filter erases wrinkles, hides fatigue, softens flaws, renders the face "ideal." Remove the filter and the real face is still there. But after a while, a person no longer wants to see themselves without it. Because the unfiltered image brings back shame, inadequacy and fragility.

Fascism is a political filter, too. It renders economic fragility invisible; it covers over institutional weakness, foreign dependency, internal contradictions. In their place it installs images of "power," "historic mission," "great state," "world leadership." These images do not correct reality; they cover it up. What gets covered is not only data — it is feelings of inadequacy, helplessness, shame and worthlessness. A filter does not just "make things look beautiful"; it also makes them "bearable."

Because some realities in the modern world are heavy: economic crises, wars, climate disasters… And more often than not, they lie beyond any individual's control. You pay the price, but you are not the cause. The fascist filter cuts off exactly this reminder.

From Helplessness to Grandeur: Narcissistic Identification

Matthias Quent is one of the leading researchers working on fascism. In his book Keine Macht der Ohnmacht (2025), published in recent weeks, he describes how fascism harnesses the power of helplessness. Fascism turns the helplessness of the helpless into power. The helpless are the bearers of fascist rule. According to Quent, fascist propaganda converts the anger born of people's helplessness and their powerlessness before the existing order into political capital. Helplessness is not simply suppressed; it is organized and directed. One of the basic experiences of modern life is powerlessness. This powerlessness constantly produces a sense of inadequacy and weakness. The helplessness of being unable to change things is traumatic: crises arrive, decisions get made, wars break out, the climate deteriorates — and you have no say. You pay the price for something happening on the other side of the world. A tanker sinks at sea, and coastlines hundreds of kilometers away are polluted; the sea is fouled, and the person who bears that pollution cannot hold anyone to account. This accumulated sense of powerlessness weighs heavily. Fascism promises a leap right at this point. It appears not to deny the powerlessness a person feels; instead, it reframes it. "You are not powerless," it says; powerlessness is not individual — it is simply a feeling misplaced. By saying "we are powerful," it makes the individual part of a collective might. "You are not small," it says, dissolving the feeling of smallness into the vastness of the whole one belongs to. By saying "you cannot control it, but the state/the leader/the chief/the Führer can," it builds a higher subject that compensates for personal ineffectiveness. In this way, individual helplessness is transformed within a narrative of collective might; even though the person has not overcome their own limits, they feel they have grown by leaning on the limitlessness of the structure they belong to. In other words, by turning "you" into "we," it inoculates the individual with "we's" sense of power. This is not real control; it is the feeling of control. Sometimes a person wants that feeling more than real control itself. In this way helplessness is converted into a sense of grandeur; wretchedness evolves into "historic mission," smallness into "imperial horizon." And no one wants to lose that feeling.

History is read selectively. The seduction of being "the grandchild of Mehmed the Conqueror rather than of Ibrahim the Mad"… The allure of choosing to be the grandchild of "heroic ancestors" instead of confronting the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide… Every person has a founding myth, an origin story they deem fitting for themselves and their people. This mythology is fairy-tale-like; it feels good. People romanticize the moment of their own existence.

Psychodynamically, the mechanism is familiar: the real self is fragile, the ideal self is grand. Fascism produces a collective ideal self. The individual says, "I may be small, but the structure I belong to is great"; they take refuge in the feeling that "I may be ordinary, but we are magnificent." This refuge temporarily repairs the fragile self; but the price is steep: tolerance for complexity shrinks, criticism becomes unbearable, and the bond with reality weakens. The funhouse mirror does not love complexity — it loves grandeur.

The Mask of Defense: When Aggression Feels Like a Moral Right

Daniele Giglioli (Opferfalle, "The Victim Trap," 2016) argues that today's heroes are victims. The victim is the one in the right, the innocent one; people instinctively move to protect the victim. Moral values are, more often than not, positioned on the victim's side. That is why victimhood also generates power. This is exactly where fascist movements step in. By declaring themselves victims, they take shelter in this zone of moral protection. The violence they then commit gets presented as "justified violence" and is, more often than not, met with tolerance.

I think Giglioli somewhat underrates the victim's real, lived pain here. It is understandable for a victim who has suffered persecution for years to hold on to their victimhood; at times, that holding-on even needs to be recognized and supported. Because victimhood is not only an identity — it is also a lived wound. But another issue enters here: empathy fatigue. Left-leaning culture, in particular, tends to feel the pain of the world, of nature, and of distant people as its own. It builds its moral sensitivity largely on this capacity for empathy. But as communication technology advances and bad news from every corner of the world becomes constantly visible, this can, after a while, also produce empathy fatigue. A mind that keeps encountering suffering eventually starts to grow numb to protect itself. Some forms of cruelty become invisible; the capacity to see and to feel diminishes. In this sense, living without some degree of emotional distance is nearly impossible. Because a person cannot carry every pain at the same intensity; otherwise both the capacity to think and the capacity to act would be paralyzed. This delicate balance between empathy and distance is one of the basic conditions for both moral sensitivity and psychological resilience.

In recent years, a great deal of persecution has been carried out by persecutors wearing the mask of the victim. The narrative that legitimizes persecution is often built exactly this way. Within such a narrative, even Berkin Elvan can be presented as a "criminal," a "terrorist" who deserved to die. A similar mechanism operates when certain groups are declared "terrorist." Once someone is called a terrorist, their rights are, more often than not, suspended without question. And because they are assumed to be terrorists, they can be deemed to have deserved death in advance. Fascism rarely begins by openly saying "let's attack." First a discourse of defense emerges; a narrative of victimhood is built: "They are doing us harm." "They are surrounding us." "There is an attack on our culture." "We must protect ourselves."

People's tendency to view defense as morally legitimate is strong. Almost no one objects easily to defense. That is why the initial victimhood narrative lays sufficient groundwork for producing a perpetrator. The justification of defense strips an attack of almost all its criminality. The figure of the "national killer," occasionally found in newspapers, is a product of this same logic. Such people are presented as innocents forced to kill for a lofty cause. "They fought terrorists," and killing a terrorist is not a crime. And it is, again, the authors of this narrative who decide who counts as a terrorist. The threat is continually magnified, portrayed as a permanent, existential danger. Defense then comes to be defined not only within borders, but beyond them as well. The logic of "the best defense is offense" takes over. The language is still the language of defense; but the practice grows steadily harsher. Once aggression calls itself defense, violence begins to feel like a moral right. The country gets "cleansed of terrorists"; and that is no longer seen as murder.

Breaking the Mirror: Discrediting Criticism

A mirror image is not just a reflection; it is also a boundary. It says "this is who I am," but it also says "this is all I am." A mature self can look into a mirror; it can see its flaws, carry its limits, tolerate criticism. Societies have mirrors too: intellectuals, critical thinkers, artists, journalists, academics. They offer society a way of looking at itself from outside: "This is who we are," "This is where we are weak," "This is where we go wrong." That view is never comfortable, because a true mirror never gives a pleasing image.

This is why fascism turns first on critical thought. Criticism is a mirror; it sets a boundary, it breaks the image of greatness. It brands the critic a "traitor," turns the intellectual into a "foreign agent," labels the journalist a "terrorist." This is not simply political repression; it is an attempt to shatter the mirror. For fascism, criticism is not just an opinion — it is a threat, because criticism says, "you are not who you claim to be." This is why fascism's most active defense mechanism is devaluation. Devaluation, in psychoanalytic terms, is one of the core defenses of narcissistic structure. An object that cannot be reached, controlled or that poses a threat gets diminished. "We didn't really want it anyway," it says. "It doesn't matter," it says. "It was worthless anyway," it says. "It was bad anyway," it says.

At the social level, this mechanism becomes something else: under the guise of "criticism," a person is discredited. The idea is not debated; the person is smeared. This is why certain names become targets not for their ideas alone, but for their very existence. Figures like Erdoğan seize the microphone to hurl insults and accusations. Those held in prison, those systematically discredited even years later, those turned into enemies even after death — the issue here is not just individuals. It is the mirror they represent.

In an order where women and children are killed, where workers lose their lives in deaths labeled "accidents," sensitivity is selectively directed. Some crimes are rendered invisible, while certain historical events are kept in constant circulation to construct moral superiority. Yet if the real concern were confronting murder itself, the same ethical consistency would apply to every killing. Selective sensitivity turns into a deliberate technique of discrediting. In the end, the target is not only individuals. The target is the mirror that sets the boundary. Because as long as the mirror remains, the image of greatness stays fragile. Once the mirror is broken, all that remains is a hall of mirrors.

As long as fascism keeps breaking the mirror, only a distorting mirror remains. Society begins to see itself not in its real proportions, but through its inflated image. No one says, "stop, this is all you are." No one speaks up to say, "there is a mistake here." Where the boundary disappears, measure disappears with it. A structure unable to accept its own fragility clings ever more tightly to its fantasy of greatness, because that fantasy suppresses the pain of reality. Fascism breaks the mirror not because it is strong, but because it is fragile. A true mirror says: "This is all you are." The distorting mirror whispers: "You are limitless." These two voices cannot exist at once. One sets a boundary, the other erases it. One imposes responsibility, the other exalts. When the mirror remains, the myth of greatness cracks; when the distorting mirror remains, reality is lost. Viewers of loyalist media, narratives of Turkishness on social media…