Fascism, in its classical form, was an ultranationalist creed. Power concentrated in one man or one party and dissent crushed under the weight of state sanctity.

From Mussolini’s Italy to Hitler’s Germany, the pattern was unmistakable. You have the glorification of the leader, the silencing of opposition, victimization of particular groups and the deification of the nation.

Today, Bangladesh offers a disquieting echo of that past. But it is not only political fascism that threatens the republic; it is what the psychologist Albert Ellis once called intellectual fascism–the conviction that some minds, by virtue of their education, ideology, or creativity, possess an innate right to rule over others.

As Michel Foucault warned, knowledge can itself become a form of domination. Those who control the discourse determine what counts as truth and morality.

In Bangladesh, a class of educated Bengali nationalist elites–academics, journalists, and civil society figures–have weaponized this intellectual authority to sanctify one-man rule and stifle dissent.

The first sign came early. In 1975, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s establishment of BAKSAL–a one-party state–was defended by leading thinkers as a “national necessity.” That tradition of rationalizing repression has flourished under Sheikh Hasina’s government since 2009.

The regime’s machinery of mythmaking–lavish hagiographies and mandatory veneration of Sheikh Mujibur as the “Father of the Nation,” and the seductive slogan “development over democracy”–has created a cult of infallibility.

Critics are smeared as “anti-state,” “anti-liberation,” or “fundamentalist.” Failures are never systemic, only the fault of a few “bad elements.” The narrative, repeated by sympathetic intellectuals, is one of authoritarianism dressed as stability.

The consequences have been grimly predictable. The past decade has seen the systematic persecution of journalists such as Mahmudur Rahman of Amar Desh, Abul Asad of Dainik Songram, and Shafiq Rehman of Jay Jay Din–all imprisoned or exiled.

Mainstream intellectuals, with rare exceptions, looked away. Some even echoed the government’s talking points, branding dissenters as “reactionary.”

The entanglement between scholarship and state power had deepened during the Awami era.

Economist Abul Barakat’s theory of an “Economy of Fundamentalism” provided convenient justification for government seizures of Jamaat-affiliated banks and institutions–many later absorbed by conglomerates like the S. Alam Group, whose profits allegedly benefit the ruling Awami family.

Policing on intellectual thoughts

On university campuses, student wings of the ruling party have unleashed violence with impunity. The murders of Abrar Fahad and Bishwajit Das–both accused posthumously of “anti-liberation” leanings–were met with chilling silence from the nation’s intellectual class.

The repression had been particularly brutal toward women linked to opposition groups. Thousands have been arrested and assaulted for the crime of belonging to the wrong political family.

Yet Bangladesh’s most visible feminist organizations–once champions of women’s rights–remain conspicuously silent. Their solidarity stops at the borders of the “Independence camp,” the ruling Awami League and its allies.

Women outside that circle were invisible, their suffering inconvenient to the dominant narrative.

Even the so-called “progressive” space had not been spared. The Shahbagh bloggers, once celebrated as secular heroes and tacitly protected by the state, were later hunted down by Islamist extremists while law enforcement stood by.

Writers, artists, and academics who refused to conform fled abroad, withdrew from public life, or learned to speak in whispers.

Over the past decade under Awami rule, Bangladesh’s system of patronage has turned loyalty into currency. Prestigious honors like the Ekushey Padak and the Independence Award, as well as foreign scholarships and fellowships, increasingly flow to those who praise the regime.

Economists mint propaganda by coining terms like “Hasinaconomics” to glorify doctored growth statistics. Television anchors and columnists turn sycophancy into a career strategy–some rewarded with luxury apartments, government contracts, or regulatory favors.

Meanwhile, independent broadcasters such as Diganta TV, Channel One, Islamic TV, and Peace TV were shuttered; Ekushey TV, once critical, was quietly absorbed by state influence.

Education and culture, too, have been conscripted into ideological service.

Textbooks have been rewritten to center Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as the sole architect of liberation, erasing broader anti-colonial and linguistic struggles, and eradicating contributions from those outside the ruling party’s mythology.

Universities and schools tied to opposition figures have been seized or shut down under the watchful eyes of military intelligence.

Religious symbols like the beard or hijab coded as “extremist,” while Kolkata’s cultural imports–films, songs, and literary tastes–were celebrated as emblems of “liberal modernity.”

The result was an aesthetic hierarchy where only the elite’s vision of Bengali culture is deemed authentic. Artists such as Asif Akbar, Nancy, and Monir Khan have been banned for their BNP affiliations, while cultural collectives like Saimum Shilpigosthi face harassment and arrest.

Even Hero Alam, a working-class YouTuber, was detained for singing Rabindranath Tagore “improperly.”

The absurdity was not lost on anyone: in a republic once built on freedom of expression, failing to intone Tagore “correctly” has become a crime against the nation’s sacred sensibility. It was Rabindrabhakti.

Deepening the fascist control

Through these acts of intellectual policing, the Bengali nationalist elite has achieved what brute force alone could not: control not just over politics, but over meaning itself.

Perhaps the gravest expression of Bangladesh’s intellectual fascism was its quiet acceptance of institutional rot. For fifteen years, the country’s scholars and jurists have largely watched as the judiciary, bureaucracy, and Election Commission were stripped of independence and repurposed into extensions of the ruling party.

A few voices protested; most adjusted.

The moral collapse was on full display during the 2013 Shahbagh movement, when prominent intellectuals demanded the execution of opposition leaders through tribunals already discredited for political bias, celebrating it as a “second liberation war.”

Two years later, as state forces unleashed violence on BNP and Jamaat supporters, professors and left-leaning commentators rationalized the crackdown as a “defense of democracy.”

Rights, once universal, became partisan property. Even members of national human rights bodies–those entrusted to guard conscience–began to speak the language of selective justice.

Meanwhile, a cottage industry of government-aligned academics and consultants emerged, producing glossy “research reports” and “seminar papers” for international audiences.

Their task was to repackage authoritarianism as progress—to sell the image of a disciplined, development-driven Bangladesh while airbrushing out the repression that sustained it.

Yet history does not always obey its architects. Despite censorship and intimidation, a younger generation of citizens, particularly students, turned the internet into an insurgent public square.

Through social media, podcasts, and anonymous blogs, they dismantled state propaganda and reclaimed truth from the margins. Their defiance built the momentum that culminated in the July uprising.

But while political fascism may have fallen, its intellectual counterpart remains deeply entrenched. It lingers in the universities where dissent is still career suicide, in newsrooms conditioned to self-censor, and in cultural institutions that continue to mistake reverence for patriotism.

Bangladesh’s next chapter demands more than political reform; it requires intellectual decolonization. The country must rewrite its history without fear, reclaim its culture from propaganda, and rebuild its moral imagination around the experiences of ordinary people.

A Bangladesh 2.0 will not be born from another party or slogan, but from an awakening of the mind: a rejection of inherited dogmas and a rediscovery of intellectual honesty.

Only by dismantling the architecture of intellectual fascism can the nation finally belong to its people–and truth, once again, stands on its own feet.

Md Talha is the Co-founder of Citizen Initiative. He can be reached at mjh.talha@gmail.com

Published in Bangla Outlook English on 12th of November, 2025