7 ms·

Ur-Fascism (1995)

_bxg1 8y ago
The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism. Ironically, totalitarianism is itself a product of modernism: the idea that you can premeditate a "perfect" society and then bring it about at scale, by force. The theme of mastery over nature is extremely modernist, where nature in this case is humanity.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  Sort of having an esthetic and being willing threaten people, throw them in prison, to exile, or kill them over it.
  - chongli 8y ago
    Yes. This is the essential flaw in utopianism. Utopias always feature a foundational philosophy, an aesthetic as you describe it, and it has yet to be demonstrated that there exists any non-trivial example which everyone could agree is the "best."
    - natecham 8y ago
      To reach utopia the ends always justify the means, which in the past has resulted in trying to fit a population to an ideology. It's next to impossible to reverse the two, engineering an ideology that fits us, but very likely a target that we never stop working towards no matter the consequences along the way. We seem to believe that reaching utopia will satisfy some ultimate survival need or help us reach some higher unforeseen goal, otherwise why would we commit such damaging acts against our own species in pursuit of it?
      - Gibbon1 8y ago
        > ends always justify the means Read The Prince in high school. Took me 15 years to come up with a short appropriate response. In civil society the means are your ends. If the means you use to bring your utopia into the world are violent and ruthless then your utopia is also going to violent and ruthless. Not much of a utopia.
        natecham 8y ago
        Yes, I agree, this is the point I wanted to make, that trying to fit a population to an ideology will cause the means to be violent and ruthless because in the eyes of the ruling class it is justified. This brings us back to the parent comment where they mentioned this modern idea that mastery over human nature is possible. I think our understanding of human nature is still naive, especially in this relatively new environment with a global level of instant communication. We'll see more flawed aesthetics come into popularity based off a false sense of human nature.
- nwah1 8y ago
  True. He mentions throughout that fascism is littered with internal contradictions that it has no interest in reconciling rationally.
  - mercurysmessage 8y ago
    It most certainly is, how can a group they disparage simultaneously be weak and subhuman, while also having lots of power and "controlling the world"?
    - teachrdan 8y ago
      It's similar to how Redpillers would explain how women, who they believe to be less intelligent than men (among other deficiencies) are still able to dominate society: through lies and manipulation and controlling the media, etc. It's remarkable how much the narrative stays the same whether the enemy is women, or Jews, or people of color.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      One obvious answer (not ascribing to the theory, just playing devil's advocate) is through deception and manipulation. A group is weak, so it resorts to manipulation and deceiving , and thus gains power over stronger more "pure" groups don't stoop down to these tactics.
      - md_ 8y ago
        Oddly, this is a common trope in a lot of popular media, where heroes are often noble and strong, whereas their opponents are weak but cunning. (Various "Batman" movies have such plots, where Batman is almost brought low by the scheming of physically weak adversaries.)
        fsecond722 8y ago
        Hi @md_ Remeber 3 weeks ago I replied to you that you are a tech guru and I had like to be friends with you. I am a computer scientist too. My email address is email@hedtell.com Would you mind if I say hi to you from time to time?
- woodandsteel 8y ago
  >Ironically, totalitarianism is itself a product of modernism: the idea that you can premeditate a "perfect" society and then bring it about at scale, by force. That is quite true. However, in the modern era we also have more pragmatic, moderate forms of liberalism that recognize that striving for perfection actually makes things worse than settling for imperfect but workable solutions.
  - natecham 8y ago
    Or we have been willing to admit to ourselves that our view of perfection was flawed and that these forms of liberalism are a better step in the direction towards our ultimate goal, whatever that may be.
    - woodandsteel 8y ago
      No, leading liberal thinkers like Burke and Berlin have been perfectly clear that perfection is not possible. In fact, the whole US Constitution is a set of compromises based on the belief that human nature will always be imperfect. My impression is you don't know much about liberal political philosophy.
      - natecham 8y ago
        You're right, I haven't read much about liberal political philosophy, I was trying to reason this based on intuition and experience and I 100% agree that concessions about human nature need to be made. I shouldn't have used the term perfection, as I didn't mean it in the short-sighted, self-serving and ideological form, rather than in the sense of our ultimate goal of how to best organize the human race despite our imperfections. Is there a term for that objective, perhaps harmony? I'm going to do some reading of what "perfection" means from a political philosophical sense as the definition I came up with let me down in my response.
- rurban 8y ago
  Exactly. See also the Futurists, a strong influence to Fascism.
lou1306 8y ago
Foucault's Pendulum also contain a great (fictional, but clearly autobiographical somehow) account of life in rural Italy during the Resistance.
- justin66 8y ago
  Also an exemplar for a lot of more recent novels of... ahem... varying quality from people like Pérez-Reverte or Dan Brown.
beaconstudios 8y ago
it's odd that they characterise ur-fascism with irrationalism given the level of scientific innovation present in Nazi Germany (even though that innovation was entirely directed at more efficiently killing people). I'd more characterise it as anti-intellectual, as from reading this article the scorn seemed to be more directed at academics, bourgeois artists and armchair thinker types than science or rationality in general.
- nwah1 8y ago
  Irrational is accurate. The "syncretism" that is mentioned can only be achieved through ignoring contradictions. Science can be employed by irrational people, and scientists themselves can be irrational. There's been lots of people who note that engineers are disproportionately represented among terrorist groups. You have Nobel prize winners like Kary Mullis who take copious amounts of psychedelics and deny that HIV causes AIDS.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    There's nothing irrational per se in taking "copious amounts of psychedelics". It's no more rational that not taking them. Reason (ratio) itself, has no inherent values (as in "sober is better") -- it's all about deductive chains and what works. Denying that HIV causes AIDS can also be perfectly rational as long as he justifies it with certain arguments that are not crazy themselves. Merely straying off the established scientific view is not irrational -- else all kind of now established scientists should also be labelled as irrational, for that's what they did when they proposed and insisted on their theories before they ever got accepted (and some took decades or more to be accepted). In which case tons of now established theories would never have come to pass.
    - nwah1 8y ago
      I like the guy, but he does seem fairly irrational. He thinks astrology doesn't get a fair shake. And in any event, a scientist while under the influence of neuroactive substances could be said to be an example of a person who is both a scientist and irrational.
coldtea 8y ago
The perfect example of faux-deep, but ultimately shallow work Eco was made famous for.
woodandsteel 8y ago
This is a brilliant article. I would just like to add that it seems to me you can summarize what fascism is by saying it is the attempt to impose premodern, tribalistic social forms and ways of thinking on a modern, industrial society. This is not workable, and so I think it accounts for the many ideological contradictions that Eco points out.

Ur-Fascism (1995)

The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism. Ironically, totalitarianism is itself a product of modernism: the idea that you can premeditate a "perfect" society and then bring it about at scale, by force. The theme of mastery over nature is extremely modernist, where nature in this case is humanity.

Gibbon1 8y ago
Sort of having an esthetic and being willing threaten people, throw them in prison, to exile, or kill them over it.
- chongli 8y ago
  Yes. This is the essential flaw in utopianism. Utopias always feature a foundational philosophy, an aesthetic as you describe it, and it has yet to be demonstrated that there exists any non-trivial example which everyone could agree is the "best."
  - natecham 8y ago
    To reach utopia the ends always justify the means, which in the past has resulted in trying to fit a population to an ideology. It's next to impossible to reverse the two, engineering an ideology that fits us, but very likely a target that we never stop working towards no matter the consequences along the way. We seem to believe that reaching utopia will satisfy some ultimate survival need or help us reach some higher unforeseen goal, otherwise why would we commit such damaging acts against our own species in pursuit of it?
    - Gibbon1 8y ago
      > ends always justify the means Read The Prince in high school. Took me 15 years to come up with a short appropriate response. In civil society the means are your ends. If the means you use to bring your utopia into the world are violent and ruthless then your utopia is also going to violent and ruthless. Not much of a utopia.
      - natecham 8y ago
        Yes, I agree, this is the point I wanted to make, that trying to fit a population to an ideology will cause the means to be violent and ruthless because in the eyes of the ruling class it is justified. This brings us back to the parent comment where they mentioned this modern idea that mastery over human nature is possible. I think our understanding of human nature is still naive, especially in this relatively new environment with a global level of instant communication. We'll see more flawed aesthetics come into popularity based off a false sense of human nature.
nwah1 8y ago
True. He mentions throughout that fascism is littered with internal contradictions that it has no interest in reconciling rationally.
- mercurysmessage 8y ago
  It most certainly is, how can a group they disparage simultaneously be weak and subhuman, while also having lots of power and "controlling the world"?
  - teachrdan 8y ago
    It's similar to how Redpillers would explain how women, who they believe to be less intelligent than men (among other deficiencies) are still able to dominate society: through lies and manipulation and controlling the media, etc. It's remarkable how much the narrative stays the same whether the enemy is women, or Jews, or people of color.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    One obvious answer (not ascribing to the theory, just playing devil's advocate) is through deception and manipulation. A group is weak, so it resorts to manipulation and deceiving , and thus gains power over stronger more "pure" groups don't stoop down to these tactics.
    - md_ 8y ago
      Oddly, this is a common trope in a lot of popular media, where heroes are often noble and strong, whereas their opponents are weak but cunning. (Various "Batman" movies have such plots, where Batman is almost brought low by the scheming of physically weak adversaries.)
      - fsecond722 8y ago
        Hi @md_ Remeber 3 weeks ago I replied to you that you are a tech guru and I had like to be friends with you. I am a computer scientist too. My email address is email@hedtell.com Would you mind if I say hi to you from time to time?
woodandsteel 8y ago
>Ironically, totalitarianism is itself a product of modernism: the idea that you can premeditate a "perfect" society and then bring it about at scale, by force. That is quite true. However, in the modern era we also have more pragmatic, moderate forms of liberalism that recognize that striving for perfection actually makes things worse than settling for imperfect but workable solutions.
- natecham 8y ago
  Or we have been willing to admit to ourselves that our view of perfection was flawed and that these forms of liberalism are a better step in the direction towards our ultimate goal, whatever that may be.
  - woodandsteel 8y ago
    No, leading liberal thinkers like Burke and Berlin have been perfectly clear that perfection is not possible. In fact, the whole US Constitution is a set of compromises based on the belief that human nature will always be imperfect. My impression is you don't know much about liberal political philosophy.
    - natecham 8y ago
      You're right, I haven't read much about liberal political philosophy, I was trying to reason this based on intuition and experience and I 100% agree that concessions about human nature need to be made. I shouldn't have used the term perfection, as I didn't mean it in the short-sighted, self-serving and ideological form, rather than in the sense of our ultimate goal of how to best organize the human race despite our imperfections. Is there a term for that objective, perhaps harmony? I'm going to do some reading of what "perfection" means from a political philosophical sense as the definition I came up with let me down in my response.
rurban 8y ago
Exactly. See also the Futurists, a strong influence to Fascism.

lou1306 8y ago

Foucault's Pendulum also contain a great (fictional, but clearly autobiographical somehow) account of life in rural Italy during the Resistance.

justin66 8y ago
Also an exemplar for a lot of more recent novels of... ahem... varying quality from people like Pérez-Reverte or Dan Brown.

beaconstudios 8y ago

it's odd that they characterise ur-fascism with irrationalism given the level of scientific innovation present in Nazi Germany (even though that innovation was entirely directed at more efficiently killing people). I'd more characterise it as anti-intellectual, as from reading this article the scorn seemed to be more directed at academics, bourgeois artists and armchair thinker types than science or rationality in general.

nwah1 8y ago
Irrational is accurate. The "syncretism" that is mentioned can only be achieved through ignoring contradictions. Science can be employed by irrational people, and scientists themselves can be irrational. There's been lots of people who note that engineers are disproportionately represented among terrorist groups. You have Nobel prize winners like Kary Mullis who take copious amounts of psychedelics and deny that HIV causes AIDS.
- coldtea 8y ago
  There's nothing irrational per se in taking "copious amounts of psychedelics". It's no more rational that not taking them. Reason (ratio) itself, has no inherent values (as in "sober is better") -- it's all about deductive chains and what works. Denying that HIV causes AIDS can also be perfectly rational as long as he justifies it with certain arguments that are not crazy themselves. Merely straying off the established scientific view is not irrational -- else all kind of now established scientists should also be labelled as irrational, for that's what they did when they proposed and insisted on their theories before they ever got accepted (and some took decades or more to be accepted). In which case tons of now established theories would never have come to pass.
  - nwah1 8y ago
    I like the guy, but he does seem fairly irrational. He thinks astrology doesn't get a fair shake. And in any event, a scientist while under the influence of neuroactive substances could be said to be an example of a person who is both a scientist and irrational.

coldtea 8y ago

The perfect example of faux-deep, but ultimately shallow work Eco was made famous for.

woodandsteel 8y ago

This is a brilliant article. I would just like to add that it seems to me you can summarize what fascism is by saying it is the attempt to impose premodern, tribalistic social forms and ways of thinking on a modern, industrial society. This is not workable, and so I think it accounts for the many ideological contradictions that Eco points out.