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It is a feature, not a bug, of fascism that it tolerates contradiction and does not care about constructing a coherent picture of the world. Truth is irrelevant

It is a feature, not a bug, of fascism that it tolerates contradiction and does not care about constructing a coherent picture of the world. Truth is irrelevant and aesthetics are fungible. Fascism is unlike more sophisticated totalitarian ideologies like Marxism-Leninism. Umberto Eco's points are a summary of nucleation points for fascism: tendencies in society that can be the starting point for the process of fascist development. I think this is the best you can do in such a short essay. Eco's comparison to Wittgenstein's game is apt. "You know it when you see it". If I were to try to grasp fascism from a different angle and how it relates to other totalitarian tendencies I would characterize it by the social class that puts it into power. The middle class has been the historical base of power for fascism. The points Eco makes are quite resonant amongst middle class people in many countries in particular the downwardly mobile middle class who feel like they are being cheated out of something they are entitled to. That is the mechanism by which fascism takes hold. In contrast, Marxism-Leninism is primarily concerned with the proletariat and intelligentsia. Maoism is primarily concerned with the peasantry. Really, you can identify a political ideology without looking too closely at its details by examining how it goes about class struggle: its implementation as an actual political movement and not an abstract set of ideas.

snrplfth 10y ago
Well, I take issue with the "know it when you see it" characteristic of the piece. Eco accuses fascists, rightly I think, of making no clear distinctions, of thinking in impressions. That's why I'm annoyed that he seems to give up on distinctions himself in characterizing fascism. I find the "social class" analysis just as unsatisfactory. You might usefully characterze these different tendencies by their rhetoric, but if you insist on looking at them as an "actual implementation", I tend to find that they're just the same side of the same coin - a small state political class enormously empowered, and all other "classes" being simply categories measuring the loyalty and proximity to the state class.

snrplfth 10y ago

Well, I take issue with the "know it when you see it" characteristic of the piece. Eco accuses fascists, rightly I think, of making no clear distinctions, of thinking in impressions. That's why I'm annoyed that he seems to give up on distinctions himself in characterizing fascism. I find the "social class" analysis just as unsatisfactory. You might usefully characterze these different tendencies by their rhetoric, but if you insist on looking at them as an "actual implementation", I tend to find that they're just the same side of the same coin - a small state political class enormously empowered, and all other "classes" being simply categories measuring the loyalty and proximity to the state class.