This
is an interesting collection of fascist characteristics noted by the
late Umberto Eco. Look at them , read them in detail. Do you
recognise them in trump, in Nuttal on Neath Voice for Everybody/ Port
Talbot Debate and Argue. Have you met people who say these things/ do
these things? Argue in this way? Have you read then in the Daily Mail
or heard them on the bus? I have seen them everywhere. I hear it in
the phrase spoken regularly by communication directors..the phrases
are simple “doom and gloom” “remoaners” and “snowflakes”.
These 14 points are described by Eco as follows,,,,,,,
In
spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various
historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list
of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism,
or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system;
many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other
kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them
be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.
* * *
1.
The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.
Traditionalism
is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of
counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution,
but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to
classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of
different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the
Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn
of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist
mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of
forgotten languages -- in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes,
in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia.
This
new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not
only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different
forms of belief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate
contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of
wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible
things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the
same primeval truth.
As
a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already
has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep
interpreting its obscure message.
If
you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled
New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I
know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge
-- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.
2.
Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.
Both
Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist
thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual
values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial
achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an
ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The
rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the
capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is
seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism
can be defined as irrationalism.
3.
Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's
sake.
Action
being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without,
reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is
suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust
of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism,
from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play
("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to
the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate
intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs,"
and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist
intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the
liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
4.
The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign
of modernism.
In
modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way
to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is
treason.
5.
Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.
Ur-Fascism
grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the
natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist
or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders.
Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.
6.
Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.
That
is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was
the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class
suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political
humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.
In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty
bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political
scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new
majority.
7.
To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism
says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in
the same country.
This
is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide
an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the
Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot,
possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The
easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the
plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target
because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and
outside. In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot
obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World
Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.
8.
The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth
and force of their enemies.
When
I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal
people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians.
Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual
assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be
convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous
shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too
strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars
because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating
the force of the enemy.
9.
For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is
lived for struggle.
Thus pacifism
is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is
permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon
complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final
battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But
such "final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a
Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No
fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.
10.
Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as
it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic
elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.
Ur-Fascism
can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the
best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among
the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the
party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the
Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him
democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force
is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need
and deserve a ruler.
11.
In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.
In
every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist
ideology heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked
with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the
Spanish Falangists wasViva la Muerte ("Long Live
Death!"). In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that
death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are
told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By
contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the
best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to
die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to
death.
12.
Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the
Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.
This
is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and
intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from
chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to
play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so
becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.
13.
Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a
qualitative populism, one might say.
In
a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in
their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point
of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism,
however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is
conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common
Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will,
the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power
of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play
the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction.
There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the
emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented
and accepted as the Voice of the People.
Because
of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against
"rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a
politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it
no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell
Ur-Fascism.
14. Ur-Fascism
speaks Newspeak.
Newspeak
was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the official
language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of
Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the
Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary,
and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for
complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify
other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent
form of a popular talk show.
* * *
Ur-Fascism
is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much
easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying,
"I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade
again in the Italian squares." Life is not that simple.
Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our
duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new
instances — every day, in every part of the world. Franklin
Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: "If
American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking
day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens,
fascism will grow in strength in our land." Freedom and
liberation are an unending task.
Umberto
Eco (c) 1995
Yes
Umberto Eco it is all around us..this Ur-Fascism, It exists in the
political sphere in which we live, work and have our being. We hear
it spoken at Trump rallies and all over social media. Some twenty
five years ago I read the memoirs of an elderly Fascist from the 40s
. In his memoir he described all of Umberto Ecos points and described
the modern political discourse we live and have our being
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