16 ms·

Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]

238 points by asterialite 6y ago

dang 6y ago
If curious see also 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17413908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17413908 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173823
- airstrike 6y ago
  Thank you. Do you just recall these off the top of your head or do you generally check each post that makes it to the front page, either manually or with a script?
  - kencausey 6y ago
    Perhaps you haven't noticed the search field at the bottom of the page? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Ur-fascism&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
    - macintux 6y ago
      The “past” link at the top is more convenient for this specific use case.
      - dang 6y ago
        (Edit: never mind I forgot how this works.) That shows past HN front pages (in sort of a weird time-lapsed version that never actually existed) for particular days. How would you use that to get to past threads about a topic?
        macintux 6y ago
        Sorry, I meant the _other_ past link at the top, the one associated with the article, between "hide" and "favorite". https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Umberto%20Eco%3A%20Ur-Fascism&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Umberto%20Eco%3A%20Ur-Fascism&... I'd somehow never looked at the very top past link.
        dang 6y ago
        Doh! I don't think I ever noticed that we'd overloaded that word that way. Damn it. Of course you're right. I just never use that link because of the keyboard shortcuts I mentioned upthread.
        macintux 6y ago
        I think it's (perversely?) a credit to HN's design that so many people never discover all of its features. The core functionality is front and center, easy to find and use, so the extras don't get in the way. (Having said that, the difficulty of tapping the correct up/down arrow for upvoting and downvoting on tiny phone screens continues to be a real sore spot.)
  - dang 6y ago
    I use HN Search manually but support that in a browser extension that I use for HN moderation. For example, I have keyboard shortcuts to open an HN search tab for the URL or title of a selected post, another to restrict the search to threads that got comments, another to convert search results into a list on HN itself, another to copy the title/URL of a selected post to the clipboard, and so on. (One of these years I will find a way to share this software with HN users, since it's kind of an HN power-reader, besides the mod functions.) That lets me find and scan past threads fairly quickly to find the interesting ones. It's still too manual, though; I need to make more steps towards automation. I'm not sure it can be fully automated because you have to do human interventions to either track down relevant past threads or exclude boring ones. The endgame is probably not to fully automate these lists but to have software generate a starter version and then give the community ways to edit it. The only place that recalling things off the top of my head (or somewhere in the poorly-lit middle of it) plays a role is that often I vaguely remember that there existed a discussion about $X in past years and then tweak the searches till I find it.
danans 6y ago
For an entertaining take inspired by the Eco essay, I recommend this recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M6CXhUS-x8&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M6CXhUS-x8&t=1s
- tptacek 6y ago
  This is "Checkmate, atheists"-grade rhetoric.
  - danans 6y ago
    Hence why I called it "entertaining".
    - tptacek 6y ago
      In a sort of dad-joke way, sure.
- Florin_Andrei 6y ago
  I got the gist of that whole thing after two seconds of looking at the image.
  - danbolt 6y ago
    I haven't watched the video, but just in case you weren't aware, Beau of the Fifth Column's whole deal is that he subverts the themes associated with his image.
adolph 6y ago
I remember reading this in the Utne Reader in the 90's. 4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. 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.
calvinmorrison 6y ago
Well met > Franklin Roosevelt’s words of November 4,1938, are worth recalling:I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move for-ward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot ofour citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land. A very interesting quote that should be taken seriously today. Many Americans view our federal government poorly, on both sides of the aisle, and in the last 20 years 'working' across the aisle has become a meme rather than a reality. We just impeached the same president twice, and congress has a what, single digit approval rating? Earlier in this essay the author states that a disaffected middle class can lead to fascism but I don't think he nailed why. I think it is this: When people stop believing democracy can function, they readily look for alternatives.
- Florin_Andrei 6y ago
  > Many Americans view our federal government poorly, on both sides of the aisle Maybe the current instance of the government. But as for the idea of government in general, the opinions are sharply different across the aisle.
  - calvinmorrison 6y ago
    The less effective the status quo is, the more willing people are to try radical approaches, be it technology, politics, dieting, etc. In my own small world of political banter, the number of people who have floated, or not disagreed with the concept of balkanizing the U.S.A is astounding. When I grew up, America was the greatest country in the world, and now my friends say - well we tried. Maybe balkanization would be easier since nobody can seem to agree on a damn thing, not even the budget! The farther apart the two sides of the political sphere, the less the work together to actually produce tangible results for the average American, the less happy and healthy the average American - the more likely we as Americans are to support a scrapping of it all and supporting Communism, Anarchism, Direct Democracy, Fascism, Theocracy, or other ideologies, and not Republicanism (that is, being a republic).
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    No, I think both sides have an idea of the perfect government. It's just that the ideas differ radically (in fact, they are mutually incompatible). So we get the current situation, where neither side is satisfied with what they have. And I fear the degree to which both sides think they have to destroy the other side in order to get what they want...
pmoriarty 6y ago
Also see Eco's "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt".[1] I'd also recommend reading David Neiwert's essays on his blog Orcinus[2], who (more than 15 years ago, long before the rise of Trump, Proud Boys, the alt-right, QAnon, etc) was already extensively discussing Eco's essays and related analysis of fascism and proto-fascism as it manifested in "patriot", militia, and "white nationalist" movements in the US, who Neiwert did extensive investigative reporting on (and published books on this as well). His "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism"[3] and "Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism"[4] are good summaries of his work. Also related are Sinclair Lewis' 1935 "It Can't Happen Here"[5] and Jack London's 1908 "The Iron Heel"[6]. [1] - https://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fascism.html https://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fasc... [2] - http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/ http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/ [3] - https://dneiwert.blogspot.com/The%20Rise%20Of%20Pseudo%20Fascism.pdf https://dneiwert.blogspot.com/The%20Rise%20Of%20Pseudo%20Fas... [4] - http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/Rush%20Newspeak%20%20Fascism.pdf http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/Rush%20Newspeak%20%20Fascism.pd... [5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here [6] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel
nebolo 6y ago
I returned to this essay when I saw the photo of the Jake Angeli in the Capitol - a Q-supporter wearing an Indian buffalo mask and a tattoo of Odin, storming the capitol alongside evangelical Christians. Relevant quote: 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 whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already 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 as 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.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Every religion is syncretic at some level. And being inspired by various incarnations of human religion is hardly a symptom of fascism. What an inane comment from an apparently well-educated writer.
  - jknoepfler 6y ago
    The fascist bit (in Ur-Fascism) is the resistance to reconciliation. Bits are taken on piecemeal due to historical accident or on a whim. There is no notion of consistency or inconsistency - no notion of tolerating inconsistency for a reason, even. There's just "our way" with no room for reason. (The essay is taking the concept of syncresis to an extreme to make a polemical point)
    - kergonath 6y ago
      Syncretism is part of what makes these movements appealing, though. Same as for conspiracy theories: it gives a broad appeal because everyone can come with their pet theory which will find a neat niche within the arch-conspiracy framework. There needs to be some flexibility otherwise everything crumbles under the weight of the contradictions and cognitive dissonance.
api 6y ago
Something that for many years I've seen as "Ur-Fascist" in our culture is the popularity and continuous production of relatively vapid superhero movies. The majority of these are power fantasy porn, and like porn the only focus is really on the fetish and the orgasm. There's little characterization and little plot, and the villains are always cast as either pure evil or as a straw man representation of some other point of view. The rough cop and action movies of the 1980s and 1990s are far more subtile and intelligent than most superhero flicks. Watch Die Hard for example. It has actual characterization. You get at least a bit of a sense for who the characters are, their motives, and their flaws. I'm not saying it's high art but compared to the average comic book flick it's quite deep. The hero is a divorced cop who has obviously thrown himself into his work to numb his emotional pain. The villain comes off like a narcissist whose crimes are motivated by a burning desire to become the moneyed aristocrat he believes himself entitled to be. Throughout the film you can see the hero at least indirectly confront some of his personal demons while the villain's narcissism drives him further into depravity and in the end is his ruin. I wonder if the rise of fascist thinking of the 4chan /pol variety among younger people can in part be explained by their entire generation having been raised on a steady diet of comic book flicks and of course similar "fanservice" Anime.
- rexpop 6y ago
  I agree with this deeply. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, and its ilk, are propaganda projects designed to push manipulative falsehoods into the public's understanding of reality. I am not talking about Dr. Strange's magic, or Superman's laser vision; those fantastical elements are such pure fiction that they stand in contrast to the allegedly "realistic" elements on which the world rests. This contrast has always been a mechanism of science fiction[0], but in these super hero movies, what's left to be assumed as "reality" against which fantasy contrasts? Fascist tropes, such as: - the patronizing Übermensch (literally "Superman") on whom "the weak" must rely - moral nihilism of the "good" guys winning by force - patriarchal masculinity left and right - the untarnished benevolence of the Pentagon Their entire purpose is to help American audiences perform the mental gymnastics (pun intended) of differentiating "good" Populist Nationalism from "bad" Populist Nationalism. 0. (e.g. the replicator is entirely fantastical, but allows Starfleet to make allegedly realistic points about the politics of abundance and deprivation)
Brendinooo 6y ago
This has been making the rounds lately, and the use of it hasn't sat well with me. I've struggled to articulate why; gonna try to do so here. The analysis is good, and finally getting to see the original source is better, because what tends to get circulated is way more reductive than this. But it seems like the list gets wielded in a way to stick the 'fascist' label on someone, and not much else. If someone hits 12 of the 14 markers, does that make him a fascist? What about six, or three, or one? Am I 1/14 fascist because I critique various aspects of modernism? To the extent they someone does match the list, all that really does is note that he'd match the characteristics of a few governments in the early 20th century. But that's only one kind of totalitarianism, and obsessive focus on it allows other kinds to slip through the cracks. > 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 contra- dictions. Each of the original messages contains a silver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. > As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message. This is a bit ironic, no? He's amalgamating aspects of different cultures into a generalized descriptor of a culture that's still being referenced decades later.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  99.9% of the people throwing around the word fascist today have little to no understanding of what that political ideology means. The exact same situation happens with the word communist, excerpt with the roles reversed. Both are symptoms of falling educational levels, lack of historical knowledge, and an increasing drive to dehumanize and polarize the opposition.
  - potta_coffee 6y ago
    I don't understand what's controversial about your statement or why it's being downvoted.
    - 6y ago
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hansjorg 6y ago
The Behind The Bastards podcast has just finished a special run called Behind The Insurrections where they examine how various fascist movements came to power. They briefly discuss Eco's essay before delving into quite detailed accounts of various insurrections. The series has episodes on The Beer Hall Putsch, The March on Rome, The Spanish Civil War (with the usual caveats about Franco being a fascist or not) and the assault on the French national assembly in 1934. The historical parallels, while perhaps a tad exaggerated by the hosts, are quite interesting. https://youtu.be/erbyCO6QcX8 https://youtu.be/erbyCO6QcX8
- DenisM 6y ago
  And that is what I came here for! Thank you. In case you are not aware of it, the podcast Revolutions by Mike Dunkan is a great way to learn about, well, revolutions.
  - Balgair 6y ago
    Duncan also did 'The History of Rome' podcast. Which was amazing. I'm still grinding through 'Revolutions' and am only on the Haitian revolution still. But, this early on, one thing I've noticed is that the cycle of revolutions is, well, pretty easy to predict. Brett Deveraux of the ACOUP blog has a good few on the greek idea of stasis. https://acoup.blog/tag/stasis/ https://acoup.blog/tag/stasis/ . It's application to Duncan's 'Revolutions' is perfectly fitting. One other thing I've noticed is that in a Revolution, unless you are very wealthy or very lucky or very cunning, the best way to get through a revolution is to get out of it. Go somewhere else, be an expat, write some essays, just don't be anywhere near the mobs or the soldiers.
wisty 6y ago
It seems overly broad, but written in a really snarly way. I think the main popularity of this is how easy it is to apply to anyone who disagree with - just match the overly broad descriptors with your opponents (it will fit on almost any populist movement - i.e. any group that has protests) and you just need to snarl and line up why they fit the prerogative descriptions of populist movements. Let's just look at the first bit: > The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Notice how snarly "cult" is. If you think people who eat pineapple on pizza are wrong (and a bit crazy) it's a "cult". > Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counter-revolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but it was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of them 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. So we've already admitted that "cult of tradition" is pretty meaningless, every group will have someone who traces elements of their "traditions" back to a previous group. > 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 silver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. But surely EVERY group has syncretic traditions. This is almost like saying "Fascists drink milk, not just milk but milk from mammals". I suppose you could argue that fascists drink milk (and combine elements from a variety of traditions) in an obnoxious, stupid and irrational way, so why not just say the three big warning signs of fascism are that they're obnoxious, stupid, and irrational? > As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message. You'd be hard pressed to find a bigger syncretistic traditionalist than Isaac Newton. You'd also be hard pressed to find someone who create a more important advancement in learning. > One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements. The most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, merged the Holy Grail with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. The very fact that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently broadened its syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism. If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as 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. We've now gone from "talks about traditional" to outright occultism. I think it's probably better to chalk this up to the totalising nature of fascism (as well as other totalising political movements like Marxism, and maybe even religious-political movements). It's not the tradition (and certainly not the syncretism) that really matters here, what I think is a warning sign would be the totalising nature of fascism (and other dangerous movements) as it seeks to establish control over all aspects of life.
deleted 6y ago
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eznzt 6y ago
>Jews are rich and help each other through a secretweb of mutual assistance. They don't? Have you guys seen Hollywood or finance or mass media or...? Or is the mistake in that line that the web is not really that secret?
amadeuspagel 6y ago
> The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. The word "cult" in the phrase "cult of tradition" serves as a synonym for "too much" in an attempt to avoid the question: How much is too much? Celebrating christmas? Easter? And: Is too little also possible? A too radical rejection of tradition, such as the ten day week in the french revolution? > This new culture had to be syncretistic. So, muslims celebrating christmas, for example? Are those ur-fascists? > Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshiped 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, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course) One almost gets the impression that Eco imagines Hitler and Goebbels as anxious to avoid being judged as fascist according to Eco's list, and therefore cleverly disguising their true traditionalism with a modernist facade. > Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) That would be a very strange statement to make for someone who looted two hundred million dollars worth of art[1] and indeed google returns only Eco's essay when searching for this quote. But maybe, whenever he heard talk of culture he reached for his gun to steal some of it? [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-revelations-of-a-nazi-art-catalogue https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-revelations-...
darkwater 6y ago
Does anybody happen to know if there is an Italian version (by Eco himself) of this essay? I cannot find one searching and being written for The New York Review maybe there is not but...
- leonardo_p 6y ago
  There is the Italian translation by Eco himself, it's titled: "Il fascismo eterno".
- 2dvisio 6y ago
  Check this out: https://malacoda3.webnode.it/_files/200000986-03da704d28/ECO%20U.%20IL%20FASCISMO%20ETERNO.pdf https://malacoda3.webnode.it/_files/200000986-03da704d28/ECO...
  - darkwater 6y ago
    Thank you very much!
tropdrop 6y ago
> 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. A nice prediction – note the frequency with which news organizations list quotes from Twitter in this capacity.

238 points by asterialite 6y ago

dang 6y ago

If curious see also 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17413908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17413908 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173823

airstrike 6y ago
Thank you. Do you just recall these off the top of your head or do you generally check each post that makes it to the front page, either manually or with a script?
- kencausey 6y ago
  Perhaps you haven't noticed the search field at the bottom of the page? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Ur-fascism&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
  - macintux 6y ago
    The “past” link at the top is more convenient for this specific use case.
    - dang 6y ago
      (Edit: never mind I forgot how this works.) That shows past HN front pages (in sort of a weird time-lapsed version that never actually existed) for particular days. How would you use that to get to past threads about a topic?
      - macintux 6y ago
        Sorry, I meant the _other_ past link at the top, the one associated with the article, between "hide" and "favorite". https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Umberto%20Eco%3A%20Ur-Fascism&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Umberto%20Eco%3A%20Ur-Fascism&... I'd somehow never looked at the very top past link.
        dang 6y ago
        Doh! I don't think I ever noticed that we'd overloaded that word that way. Damn it. Of course you're right. I just never use that link because of the keyboard shortcuts I mentioned upthread.
        macintux 6y ago
        I think it's (perversely?) a credit to HN's design that so many people never discover all of its features. The core functionality is front and center, easy to find and use, so the extras don't get in the way. (Having said that, the difficulty of tapping the correct up/down arrow for upvoting and downvoting on tiny phone screens continues to be a real sore spot.)
- dang 6y ago
  I use HN Search manually but support that in a browser extension that I use for HN moderation. For example, I have keyboard shortcuts to open an HN search tab for the URL or title of a selected post, another to restrict the search to threads that got comments, another to convert search results into a list on HN itself, another to copy the title/URL of a selected post to the clipboard, and so on. (One of these years I will find a way to share this software with HN users, since it's kind of an HN power-reader, besides the mod functions.) That lets me find and scan past threads fairly quickly to find the interesting ones. It's still too manual, though; I need to make more steps towards automation. I'm not sure it can be fully automated because you have to do human interventions to either track down relevant past threads or exclude boring ones. The endgame is probably not to fully automate these lists but to have software generate a starter version and then give the community ways to edit it. The only place that recalling things off the top of my head (or somewhere in the poorly-lit middle of it) plays a role is that often I vaguely remember that there existed a discussion about $X in past years and then tweak the searches till I find it.

danans 6y ago

For an entertaining take inspired by the Eco essay, I recommend this recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M6CXhUS-x8&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M6CXhUS-x8&t=1s

tptacek 6y ago
This is "Checkmate, atheists"-grade rhetoric.
- danans 6y ago
  Hence why I called it "entertaining".
  - tptacek 6y ago
    In a sort of dad-joke way, sure.
Florin_Andrei 6y ago
I got the gist of that whole thing after two seconds of looking at the image.
- danbolt 6y ago
  I haven't watched the video, but just in case you weren't aware, Beau of the Fifth Column's whole deal is that he subverts the themes associated with his image.

adolph 6y ago

I remember reading this in the Utne Reader in the 90's. 4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. 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.

calvinmorrison 6y ago

Well met > Franklin Roosevelt’s words of November 4,1938, are worth recalling:I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move for-ward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot ofour citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land. A very interesting quote that should be taken seriously today. Many Americans view our federal government poorly, on both sides of the aisle, and in the last 20 years 'working' across the aisle has become a meme rather than a reality. We just impeached the same president twice, and congress has a what, single digit approval rating? Earlier in this essay the author states that a disaffected middle class can lead to fascism but I don't think he nailed why. I think it is this: When people stop believing democracy can function, they readily look for alternatives.

Florin_Andrei 6y ago
> Many Americans view our federal government poorly, on both sides of the aisle Maybe the current instance of the government. But as for the idea of government in general, the opinions are sharply different across the aisle.
- calvinmorrison 6y ago
  The less effective the status quo is, the more willing people are to try radical approaches, be it technology, politics, dieting, etc. In my own small world of political banter, the number of people who have floated, or not disagreed with the concept of balkanizing the U.S.A is astounding. When I grew up, America was the greatest country in the world, and now my friends say - well we tried. Maybe balkanization would be easier since nobody can seem to agree on a damn thing, not even the budget! The farther apart the two sides of the political sphere, the less the work together to actually produce tangible results for the average American, the less happy and healthy the average American - the more likely we as Americans are to support a scrapping of it all and supporting Communism, Anarchism, Direct Democracy, Fascism, Theocracy, or other ideologies, and not Republicanism (that is, being a republic).
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  No, I think both sides have an idea of the perfect government. It's just that the ideas differ radically (in fact, they are mutually incompatible). So we get the current situation, where neither side is satisfied with what they have. And I fear the degree to which both sides think they have to destroy the other side in order to get what they want...

pmoriarty 6y ago

Also see Eco's "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt".[1] I'd also recommend reading David Neiwert's essays on his blog Orcinus[2], who (more than 15 years ago, long before the rise of Trump, Proud Boys, the alt-right, QAnon, etc) was already extensively discussing Eco's essays and related analysis of fascism and proto-fascism as it manifested in "patriot", militia, and "white nationalist" movements in the US, who Neiwert did extensive investigative reporting on (and published books on this as well). His "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism"[3] and "Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism"[4] are good summaries of his work. Also related are Sinclair Lewis' 1935 "It Can't Happen Here"[5] and Jack London's 1908 "The Iron Heel"[6]. [1] - https://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fascism.html https://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fasc... [2] - http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/ http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/ [3] - https://dneiwert.blogspot.com/The%20Rise%20Of%20Pseudo%20Fascism.pdf https://dneiwert.blogspot.com/The%20Rise%20Of%20Pseudo%20Fas... [4] - http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/Rush%20Newspeak%20%20Fascism.pdf http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/Rush%20Newspeak%20%20Fascism.pd... [5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here [6] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel

nebolo 6y ago

I returned to this essay when I saw the photo of the Jake Angeli in the Capitol - a Q-supporter wearing an Indian buffalo mask and a tattoo of Odin, storming the capitol alongside evangelical Christians. Relevant quote: 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 whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already 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 as 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.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
Every religion is syncretic at some level. And being inspired by various incarnations of human religion is hardly a symptom of fascism. What an inane comment from an apparently well-educated writer.
- jknoepfler 6y ago
  The fascist bit (in Ur-Fascism) is the resistance to reconciliation. Bits are taken on piecemeal due to historical accident or on a whim. There is no notion of consistency or inconsistency - no notion of tolerating inconsistency for a reason, even. There's just "our way" with no room for reason. (The essay is taking the concept of syncresis to an extreme to make a polemical point)
  - kergonath 6y ago
    Syncretism is part of what makes these movements appealing, though. Same as for conspiracy theories: it gives a broad appeal because everyone can come with their pet theory which will find a neat niche within the arch-conspiracy framework. There needs to be some flexibility otherwise everything crumbles under the weight of the contradictions and cognitive dissonance.

api 6y ago

Something that for many years I've seen as "Ur-Fascist" in our culture is the popularity and continuous production of relatively vapid superhero movies. The majority of these are power fantasy porn, and like porn the only focus is really on the fetish and the orgasm. There's little characterization and little plot, and the villains are always cast as either pure evil or as a straw man representation of some other point of view. The rough cop and action movies of the 1980s and 1990s are far more subtile and intelligent than most superhero flicks. Watch Die Hard for example. It has actual characterization. You get at least a bit of a sense for who the characters are, their motives, and their flaws. I'm not saying it's high art but compared to the average comic book flick it's quite deep. The hero is a divorced cop who has obviously thrown himself into his work to numb his emotional pain. The villain comes off like a narcissist whose crimes are motivated by a burning desire to become the moneyed aristocrat he believes himself entitled to be. Throughout the film you can see the hero at least indirectly confront some of his personal demons while the villain's narcissism drives him further into depravity and in the end is his ruin. I wonder if the rise of fascist thinking of the 4chan /pol variety among younger people can in part be explained by their entire generation having been raised on a steady diet of comic book flicks and of course similar "fanservice" Anime.

rexpop 6y ago
I agree with this deeply. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, and its ilk, are propaganda projects designed to push manipulative falsehoods into the public's understanding of reality. I am not talking about Dr. Strange's magic, or Superman's laser vision; those fantastical elements are such pure fiction that they stand in contrast to the allegedly "realistic" elements on which the world rests. This contrast has always been a mechanism of science fiction[0], but in these super hero movies, what's left to be assumed as "reality" against which fantasy contrasts? Fascist tropes, such as: - the patronizing Übermensch (literally "Superman") on whom "the weak" must rely - moral nihilism of the "good" guys winning by force - patriarchal masculinity left and right - the untarnished benevolence of the Pentagon Their entire purpose is to help American audiences perform the mental gymnastics (pun intended) of differentiating "good" Populist Nationalism from "bad" Populist Nationalism. 0. (e.g. the replicator is entirely fantastical, but allows Starfleet to make allegedly realistic points about the politics of abundance and deprivation)

Brendinooo 6y ago

This has been making the rounds lately, and the use of it hasn't sat well with me. I've struggled to articulate why; gonna try to do so here. The analysis is good, and finally getting to see the original source is better, because what tends to get circulated is way more reductive than this. But it seems like the list gets wielded in a way to stick the 'fascist' label on someone, and not much else. If someone hits 12 of the 14 markers, does that make him a fascist? What about six, or three, or one? Am I 1/14 fascist because I critique various aspects of modernism? To the extent they someone does match the list, all that really does is note that he'd match the characteristics of a few governments in the early 20th century. But that's only one kind of totalitarianism, and obsessive focus on it allows other kinds to slip through the cracks. > 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 contra- dictions. Each of the original messages contains a silver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. > As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message. This is a bit ironic, no? He's amalgamating aspects of different cultures into a generalized descriptor of a culture that's still being referenced decades later.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
99.9% of the people throwing around the word fascist today have little to no understanding of what that political ideology means. The exact same situation happens with the word communist, excerpt with the roles reversed. Both are symptoms of falling educational levels, lack of historical knowledge, and an increasing drive to dehumanize and polarize the opposition.
- potta_coffee 6y ago
  I don't understand what's controversial about your statement or why it's being downvoted.
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hansjorg 6y ago

The Behind The Bastards podcast has just finished a special run called Behind The Insurrections where they examine how various fascist movements came to power. They briefly discuss Eco's essay before delving into quite detailed accounts of various insurrections. The series has episodes on The Beer Hall Putsch, The March on Rome, The Spanish Civil War (with the usual caveats about Franco being a fascist or not) and the assault on the French national assembly in 1934. The historical parallels, while perhaps a tad exaggerated by the hosts, are quite interesting. https://youtu.be/erbyCO6QcX8 https://youtu.be/erbyCO6QcX8

DenisM 6y ago
And that is what I came here for! Thank you. In case you are not aware of it, the podcast Revolutions by Mike Dunkan is a great way to learn about, well, revolutions.
- Balgair 6y ago
  Duncan also did 'The History of Rome' podcast. Which was amazing. I'm still grinding through 'Revolutions' and am only on the Haitian revolution still. But, this early on, one thing I've noticed is that the cycle of revolutions is, well, pretty easy to predict. Brett Deveraux of the ACOUP blog has a good few on the greek idea of stasis. https://acoup.blog/tag/stasis/ https://acoup.blog/tag/stasis/ . It's application to Duncan's 'Revolutions' is perfectly fitting. One other thing I've noticed is that in a Revolution, unless you are very wealthy or very lucky or very cunning, the best way to get through a revolution is to get out of it. Go somewhere else, be an expat, write some essays, just don't be anywhere near the mobs or the soldiers.

wisty 6y ago

It seems overly broad, but written in a really snarly way. I think the main popularity of this is how easy it is to apply to anyone who disagree with - just match the overly broad descriptors with your opponents (it will fit on almost any populist movement - i.e. any group that has protests) and you just need to snarl and line up why they fit the prerogative descriptions of populist movements. Let's just look at the first bit: > The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Notice how snarly "cult" is. If you think people who eat pineapple on pizza are wrong (and a bit crazy) it's a "cult". > Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counter-revolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but it was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of them 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. So we've already admitted that "cult of tradition" is pretty meaningless, every group will have someone who traces elements of their "traditions" back to a previous group. > 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 silver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. But surely EVERY group has syncretic traditions. This is almost like saying "Fascists drink milk, not just milk but milk from mammals". I suppose you could argue that fascists drink milk (and combine elements from a variety of traditions) in an obnoxious, stupid and irrational way, so why not just say the three big warning signs of fascism are that they're obnoxious, stupid, and irrational? > As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message. You'd be hard pressed to find a bigger syncretistic traditionalist than Isaac Newton. You'd also be hard pressed to find someone who create a more important advancement in learning. > One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements. The most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, merged the Holy Grail with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. The very fact that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently broadened its syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism. If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as 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. We've now gone from "talks about traditional" to outright occultism. I think it's probably better to chalk this up to the totalising nature of fascism (as well as other totalising political movements like Marxism, and maybe even religious-political movements). It's not the tradition (and certainly not the syncretism) that really matters here, what I think is a warning sign would be the totalising nature of fascism (and other dangerous movements) as it seeks to establish control over all aspects of life.

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eznzt 6y ago

>Jews are rich and help each other through a secretweb of mutual assistance. They don't? Have you guys seen Hollywood or finance or mass media or...? Or is the mistake in that line that the web is not really that secret?

amadeuspagel 6y ago

> The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. The word "cult" in the phrase "cult of tradition" serves as a synonym for "too much" in an attempt to avoid the question: How much is too much? Celebrating christmas? Easter? And: Is too little also possible? A too radical rejection of tradition, such as the ten day week in the french revolution? > This new culture had to be syncretistic. So, muslims celebrating christmas, for example? Are those ur-fascists? > Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshiped 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, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course) One almost gets the impression that Eco imagines Hitler and Goebbels as anxious to avoid being judged as fascist according to Eco's list, and therefore cleverly disguising their true traditionalism with a modernist facade. > Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) That would be a very strange statement to make for someone who looted two hundred million dollars worth of art[1] and indeed google returns only Eco's essay when searching for this quote. But maybe, whenever he heard talk of culture he reached for his gun to steal some of it? [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-revelations-of-a-nazi-art-catalogue https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-revelations-...

darkwater 6y ago

Does anybody happen to know if there is an Italian version (by Eco himself) of this essay? I cannot find one searching and being written for The New York Review maybe there is not but...

leonardo_p 6y ago
There is the Italian translation by Eco himself, it's titled: "Il fascismo eterno".
2dvisio 6y ago
Check this out: https://malacoda3.webnode.it/_files/200000986-03da704d28/ECO%20U.%20IL%20FASCISMO%20ETERNO.pdf https://malacoda3.webnode.it/_files/200000986-03da704d28/ECO...
- darkwater 6y ago
  Thank you very much!

tropdrop 6y ago

> 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. A nice prediction – note the frequency with which news organizations list quotes from Twitter in this capacity.