Monday, December 13, 2010

Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt

Buried in my storage unit is the Umberto Eco essay of this title. But ,thanks to Chris Hedges' "American Fascists:The Christian Right and the War on America"(Free Press 2006), we have access to Eco's view of Ur-Fascism. The essay closes with a quote from Franklin Roosevelt (November 4, 1938): "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." Eco concludes that freedom and liberation are an unending task.

The fourteen ways:
1. The first feature of Ur-fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course older than fascism. But there can be no advancement to learning. The truth has already been spelled out once and for all. All we can do is keep interpreting its obscure message.

2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Nazism was proud of its technology but its ideology was based on blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The Enlightenment--the Age of Reason--was seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In a sense this explains the extreme right's explanation of the origins of our constitution--the Enlightenment has to be erased. Ur-Fascism is irrationalism.

3. Irrationalism depends on the cult of action for action's sake. Thinking and culture is a form of emasculation. That's why we have the rhetoric of "degenerate intellectuals","eggheads", "effete snobs", "pointy headed liberals". Fascist intellectuals are mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal elites for betraying traditional values.

4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. The modern scientifc community praises disagreement as a way to imporve 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 is an appeal against intruders. Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustrations. One of the most typical features of historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle-class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation.

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. The only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. At the root of Ur-Fascist psychology is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one.

8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. This actually is tricky in Eco's typology because he notes that Ur-Fascists constantly shift in rhetoric between seeing the enemy as strong and then as weak.

9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but life is lived for struggle. Life is permanent war.

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 citizens.

11. Everybody is educated to be a hero. Heroism is the norm for Ur-Fascism and it's linked to the cult of death. In his impatience for a heroic death, the Ur-Fascist frequently sends others to death.

12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers the will to power to sexual matters. Hence the subjugation of women, the condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits and homophobia.

13. Ur-Fascism is based on selective populism, a qualitative populism. It is for the so-called Common Will but against "rotten", "corrupt" parliamentary democracy.

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. This is an impoverished vocabulary and an elementary syntax, all aimed at limitings the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.

Umberto Eco penned this essay in response to the rise of George W. Bush in the United States and Belasconi in Italy. Like Laurence Britts' essay yesterday, it is to remind people what the essence of fascism is and what signs to look for if it re-emerges. Remember when this essay was written, Benito Mussolini's granddaughter was accepted as a respectable politician, while spouting fascist thoughts. That and the rise of the New Right in Italy with its vast media empire caused immense concern among the more conscious of Italy's intellectuals.

1 comment:

  1. Actually, the essay was published in 1995, so when G.W.B. would still have been obscure to an unsuspecting world that didn't know that it was being scrutinised by that particular mind, but there certainly no shortage of others similarly small, hot, and unsympathetic....

    ReplyDelete