Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco (1995)
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Being written in 1995, the training set is independent of the test set, and one is thus free to find parallels in the current moment:
"Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation."
"Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for 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."
"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."
Its not particularly long, but is one of the more eye opening things I ever read on the subject
>"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."
Yep, the birth of fascism, ie. Italian fascism, was a final act of the Italian national independence process which started in the first half of 19th century. The independence from Austrian empire and from Catholic Church - Mussolini in particular finalized the relationships with papal states/Vatican.
Interesting that Mussolini started as Socialist and split with them on very similar grounds as the "bolsheviks"/Lenin split from Socialists in Russia around the same time - push for more forceful action, for unchecked power (dictatorship) - the difference being that in Russia Lenin was pushing for dictatorship of the working class while Mussolini was for dictatorship of the national state. While one may say that whose ideologies are of different colors, structurally they are the same and thus produced similar results - totalitarian states.
As an example, just replace national dimension with the "aristocracy - capitalists - worker class/peasants" dimension in the 2 quotes above and you'll get the socialist/communist principle of the "class war" and that idea that just by being of "working class" makes people intrinsically good and thus gives them moral power and entitles them to [dictatorially] rule and decide the fate of others.
Is this something like Barack Obama carrying out drone strikes? Or Madeleine Albright approving the starving of 500,000 Iraqi children? Or Hilary Clinton getting a knife stuck up Gaddafi's rectum? Or the invasion of Iran on a pretext?
Or does it have to be something in dim and distant past which we can tut about as it was done by "those other ones"?
That's easy to say, it's proven by putting a whole lot of war criminals at least on trial. By actually having done that.
> The fact that you can mention them in public without fear of being whisked away tonight by secret police illustrates this.
How so? This just illustrates that you can say this because nobody cares all that much, because it will not do anything. It doesn't put power in check, it's just someone saying something on HN. Power remains unchecked, and the hundreds of thousands or even millions of people who got murdered and the families they left behind continue to get no justice.
Back in the day when there were powerful alternative fractions for the power (e.g. socialists, communists in Europe etc), mentioning such staff in public against the established powers brought support to them, and advanced their cause.
Now people know all about them and still elect e.g. Bush Jr. a second term, Obama 2 terms, now Trump etc. It's not like there's any credible threat to anything.
And when there's not, freedom of speech is free, because it's almost worthless.
TL;DR; Modern-day unchecked power can permit criticism just fine: when the waters due to media pollution are so muddle that the signal is lost in the noise, and/or when few people care about it anyway.
edit: - unnecessary 2nd sentence
The reason I was able to correctly infer he is a socialist is he was following a familiar socialist-marxist position. This is that democracy in capitalist countries is a shame, everything that happens is decided in secret by the rich people, who control the media to trick the population to go along. According to this view, true freedom of speech and democracy are possible only under socialism.
That's so whether those movements are against some right wing regime or some left wing regime (or generally left/right government establishment).
That said, I do believe that socialism is better than liberalism.
At least the former is an actual form of government, with a legacy and original thinkers going back to centuries, and practiced e.g. in Sweden, Denmark, Switcherland, Canada etc. for half a century or so (and with policies adopted all over the world in some form or another).
The latter is just some abstract doctrines based on protestant ideas that time after time lead to bad results (corporatism, every man for himself, broken social contracts, etc.) where it's overly practiced. Even U.S. itself in fact has been much more socialist than liberal for the most part.
Except if you mean "really existing socialism" a la Eastern Bloc, which where mostly post-war "colonies" of USSR.
First, the idea that freedom of speech is completely suppressed whenever it has a chance to stir up a popular movement, that is simply nonsense. For instance, the UK Labour party was voted into power after WWII and nationalized much of the economy. You seem to be taking the Marxist position that real change is possible only through the violent overthrow of the government.
Secondly, you seem to be for social democracy, a political philosophy for which I have some positive feelings, and which I wish Americans knew more about. But I think you can be more effective in arguing for it if you avoid labelng it as "socialism." That is because the term has no standard meaning, and different groups have different meanings for it.
In fact, even self-identified socialists can't agree. Social democrats call themselves socialists, but orthodox marxists say it is not socialism, but a form of capitalism. And Soviet communists called themselves socialists, but many social democrats said it wasn't socialism because it wasn't democratic and was for the benefit of a small, powerful elite.
I think it is much better as a persuasion technique to stick with the term social democracy, because everyone agrees on it, and focus on describing how it works, what are its benefits, and so on.
Boy, I have never heard the US described as more socialist than liberal. Normally it is taken as the model of a liberal country. Could you describe any nation in the world today that is mainly liberal, as you are using the term?
PS: No WMDs? Yeah, well, that's what the News said. However, Rummsfeld has the receipts.
This is plain wrong historically. The nazists, fascists and the stasi all used more manipulative and less blatant methods than dragging away every dissenter.
All of these actions were subject to all the constitutional checks and balances of the US system. Obama's drone strikes is an election issue. Albright's actions were overseen directly and indirectly by Congress. Same with Clinton (or did you not notice the amount of time Congress spent on Benghazi). There's also been judicial review of many of these elements.
There is no real method of international check on power other than a threat of power in return. The UN, NATO, and international diplomacy tries to forge a method to ensure that war is less commonly used, but ultimately, as the invasion in Iraq showed, if the US wants to do something it can do it. Same with Russia choosing to take a chunk of the Ukraine.
Lenin was pushing for a dictatorship of the Bolshevik vanguard, notionally on behalf of the working class -- Leninist vanguardism features what might more accurately be called a dictatorship for the proletariat as opposed to the earlier Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat.
Lenin was born into a "totalitarian" state - Czarist Russia. The czarist government murdered his brother, which probably was an impetus for him into anti-czarist politics.
On related note, Soviet Communists on a good day murdered more civilians than Czarist Russia did in a decade.
How does one convince a society, especially a very xenophobic society, to abandon characteristics that make it unusually vulnerable to fascism?
You allow for differences, as well. Cultural differences such as a rural/urban divide should not be exacerbated by smarmy elitism in either direction. You do this not by highlighting differences (extreme PCism or racism/bigotry) but by fostering an attitude among our peoples of love towards their fellow person. That our differences are there, but that they don't ultimately matter.
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Obviously our country (and others) have a long way to go with a lot of hard work ahead of us.
(Possibly because the US is less peaceful and secure... but part of that is perception, and/or a product of people expecting it to be.)
1. Action for action's sake - Black Lives Matter protests to block highways.
2. Exploit the fear of difference - Those horrible racist uneducated people are nothing like us, we can't let them take the country! This is basic tribalism and it applies to every major social movement.
3. Rewritten: "To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Anti-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be good, moral egalitarians. This is the origin of anti-fascism."
Here I've applied them to Western progressivism, but if you deny the basic assumptions of any collectivist social movement you could apply them. Scientology, communism, socialism, fascism. Switch a few unimportant words and there you are with the same meaningless parallels.
The human mind is a great pattern matching machine but has a problem with false positives.
EDIT: It's important to remember when comparing Trump to old fascists that the people who defeated those fascists enacted Trump's policies. For example, in 1945, immigration policy in all western countries was effectively, "whites only".
So if you're gonna notice parallels between Trump and Hitler, you have to notice even closer parallels between Trump and the people who defeated Hitler. You should also notice the differences: Trump is an isolationist who wants to start wars less than Hillary - a lot like pre-WW2 America.
But, I think you have stripped the context from the quotes you offer, and in so doing, made them applicable to anything.
For instance, regarding point (1), you're stereotyping the BLM protests. Read their website and it's all about intersectionality and inclusion and a bunch of other academic buzzwords. It's not really about protest for protest's sake: specific demands have been given. And it's not anti-intellectual, which is the context you removed from point 1.
You have done a similar thing with the next point. The original point is about fear of intruders from outside the nation
I would agree that there are parallels of certain parts of, say, the anti-globalization protests of the late 1990s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests) with this synopsis of fascism. A lot of that was action for action's sake: dress up in black and break store windows.
But take, on the other hand, the OWS protests. It was partly because of the authoritarian tendencies of other protest movements that OWS adopted various egalitarian habits - not addressing crowds with bullhorns, the consensus process, etc. (For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street#Main_organi...).
In sum, I think you're not being careful about your reasoning, and you are reasoning backward from the answer you want ("a pox on both their houses"). We're not talking about mere groupthink, smug activists, or misguided protesters. We're talking about actual fascism.
It doesn't have to mean physical intruders though, that certainly wasn't what the Nazis were mainly concerned about.
> We're talking about actual fascism.
Which is, I would argue, on a spectrum. Groupthink isn't really benign IMHO.
But that isn't "action for action's sake," it's action that is derived from one particular theory of change. BLM blocks highways because they believe that by doing so they can effectively draw attention to both their issues and their movement. The action is deliberately chosen to advance decided-upon strategic goals, not simply a reflexive flexing of muscle.
Eco also highlights part of "action for action's sake" as a deliberate repudiation of intellectualism, which is an odd thing to say about a movement like BLM which emerged in large part from universities. Intellectuals can find a role to play in BLM that they could never find in a fascist movement.
1. I won't speak for BLM, but protesting in a visible way is not action for action's sake.
2. this is just an old joke. No, those who oppose racism don't think racists are an inferior race. Also, they oppose racism, not racists.
3. Anti-fascists lacked many things, but identity was rarely one of them. Anti-fascists were communists, anarchists, catholics, jews, monarchists... I don't think that there ever was such a thing as an "anti-fascist identity" during the relevant years, and even now, I don't know of anybody who identifies themselves purely as anti-fascist without other connotations.
as for trump being a facist, i think the primary reason he wouldnt be a facist is he doesnt really seem to have any strong interest in athoratarian centralized power... in fact if anything unless kaisich is actually just flat out lying, he is pretty open about wanting to minimize his day to day control and be more of a symbol for the movement... thats extremely un-facist
Like historical fascists, he doesn't care what policies get him that power and adoration. He'd be happy running an isolationist government, but just as happy militantly dropping nuclear bombs in the Middle East.
The one consistent in Trump's political "career" is a worship of power. He's obsessed with winners and losers, and if you're winning he likes you. If you criticize him, he hates you and will try to destroy you, whether it's legal or not. I don't think he could, as president, tolerate a free press.
It's certainly trivial when you cherry-pick three phrases out of a 5000+ word essay.
Every political party and movement has supporters who feel this way. The problem is when they control the party.
BLM certainly emphasizes action for its own sake, but they don't run the Democratic party. Likewise, individual liberals might speak to a fear of "horrible racist uneducated people are nothing like us," but if you watched the DNC the message is one of unity: reach out to those people, don't drive them away.
You can dispute and justify all you want, but there's a reason that apolitical historians are coming out to point out current fascist threat.
In particular, I've observed that one hallmark of fascistic movements is an obsession with "emasculation" and condemnation of any society or part of society deemed "effeminate".
You can see it in the writings of Julius Evola. While Evola never described himself as a "fascist", it was only because he felt that Mussolini and the Fascist Party didn't go far enough. He was an extreme right-wing nationalist, and it's not uncommon for modern Neo-Nazi groups to quote his writing as if it were scripture. Evola was obsessed with the idea that healthy societies are masculine and degenerate societies are effeminate, and he wrote at length about how he felt that Jewish culture is both degenerate and effeminate.
It's also common in modern far-right white nationalist groups. You'll notice that many such communities describe men they don't like as "betas" and "cucks", and they blame society's problems on women becoming more and more prominent in society (and on feminist men, too, for letting women in; they especially get called "cucks").
And it's not just the white supremacists; I've observed the same obsession with "emasculation" in extremist Asian identity groups, which are typically dominated by unsuccessful Asian men blaming the fact that they can't get laid on a conspiracy of Asian women and white men to emasculate Asian men.
To put it bluntly: They feel like losers, and they think it's their right to feel like winners.
And to bring it back to amyjess's point: An environment that values thinking seems to make them feel like losers.
There is an important bias effect in play. OF the books written in the past about the rise of tyranny, not all are brought up equally in discussions. It is easy to observe that people upvote articles that support their ideology and flag articles (concrete example: the recent terror attacks were flagkilled off the front page) that go against it.
The articles that make it though this filter are not independent of the test set.
But not necessarily a big worry with this particular article - Eco's fame as a novelist and the sheer strength of his prose will tend to bust through filters regardless.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/going-there-with...
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/being-honest-abo...
This in particular echoes Eco:
The arguments about whether [Trump] meets every point in some static fascism matrix show a misunderstanding of what that ideology involves. It is the essence of fascism to have no single fixed form—an attenuated form of nationalism in its basic nature, it naturally takes on the colors and practices of each nation it infects. In Italy, it is bombastic and neoclassical in form; in Spain, Catholic and religious; in Germany, violent and romantic. It took forms still crazier and more feverishly sinister, if one can imagine, in Romania, whereas under Oswald Mosley, in England, its manner was predictably paternalistic and aristocratic. It is no surprise that the American face of fascism would take on the forms of celebrity television and the casino greeter’s come-on, since that is as much our symbolic scene as nostalgic re-creations of Roman splendors once were Italy’s.
What all forms of fascism have in common is the glorification of the nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with violence promised to its enemies, at home and abroad; the worship of power wherever it appears and whoever holds it; contempt for the rule of law and for reason; unashamed employment of repeated lies as a rhetorical strategy; and a promise of vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history.
What is the difference between this, and North Korean or Soviet Communism? Is there a difference?
North Korea is so far out that it's hard to compare it to anything else.
not really. Whenever i read/see things about NK it is just like a trip back up the memory lane to my childhood in USSR in the 197x/198x.
Though intellectually inhumanity is inhumanity whatever the form it takes.
It did. Crushing pre-existing Russian national pride was central to Soviet dogma, they called it "великодержавный шовинизм".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiya#Against_Great-Ru...
Dogma and reality often differed quite a bit in the Soviet Union; I would say that the evidence is that the USSR did not actually crush pre-existing Russian national pride, although they managed to temporarily transfer the outward expression of that pride into what was, at least superficially, expression of pride in the Soviet State rather than the Russian nation. This still, though -- despite the internationalist orientation of the Leninist ideology -- retained a substantial nationalist tinge, even if oriented around a new and somewhat broader national identity.
It is a noble flaw in every intellectual to categorize, dissect and flay their prey. Then produce a general theory from the evidence scattered before him. Hayek used to bitch about it.
However another view could be the gaps that exist between Fascism and Communism are to be explained by historical circumstances, geography and the prevailing orthodoxies of the day rather than a grand theory of Anarchism, Capitalism, Communism or any other -ism.
Those could just be the retroactively generated cover stories. We like coherent stories to hang our ideas on. Notice for instance how World War II has gradually resolved in the public's mind as something like a historical fiction, involving 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. I am not a relativist but I find it frightening that 'good guys' has a flexible enough range to include Joesph Stalin.
Apart from the problem of treating a World War like a Cowboy Western, much less attention is paid today to the interaction between the extreme leftists (Bolsheviks and anarchists) and the extreme right (Nazis) in the lead up to World War II.
For instance I was very surprised to understand in the BBC documentary "The Nazis, a warning from history" (an excellent documentary) the degree to which the activities of the Bolsheviks influenced the rise of the Nazis. The hate directed towards the Jews is incomprehensible unless you grasp the fact that nearly every Bolshevik bomber was Jewish. My school textbook neglected to mention this and popular culture also uses racial hate as a deus ex machina of a backstory. It is a given, but never elaborated on.
This only finally clicked with me when I saw interviews with German POWs who were constantly harping on protecting civilization from the Bolsheviks. To them everything they did was justified in light of that. They weren't Nazis and they didn't appear to especially hate Jews. Still, they were part of the machine.
This means to me, that hate is a short term impulse and the actual destruction of minorities within Germany was in fact a clinical decision, fully rationalized and accepted by the public. The newspapers might have ranted but the public weren't composed mostly of bigots. They were composed of people who eventually just stopped caring because their way of life was under threat. The threat to a minority isn't necessarily hate, but a kind of widely shared exhaustion and apathy.
I fear those who complain we've forgotten our history, have actually forgotten our history for an absurd simplification about irrational hate. I feel like the mainstream interpretation of history is actually now the politically incorrect one.
Soviet ideology tended not to glorify the nation as such but rather a class; tended to glorify underdogs as long as they were fighting capitalists; and tended to be very ashamed of lies and very insistent on the internal consistency and intellectual credibility of its propaganda. "Promise of vengeance", I agree, is pretty generically associated with any revolutionary movement.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy1iudsIKa8; the book is quite good.
As an American, however, I can't help but think that the increasingly bold steps that our government is taking towards authoritarianism is making this piece all the more relevant: both parties are guilty of increasing the strength and powers of the government, as well as unnecessarily using the might of the military for nebulous gains. No longer do political candidates debate individual issues; instead, they appeal to a persona that the populous wants to see. Some might simply call it "entertainment", not "politics." This is an unnerving trend.
Were our federal government less powerful overall: financially, legally, etc., pieces like this would be less pertinent due to the "spreading out" of power that Italy nor Germany never had.
I think most readers subconsciously eliminated the nonsense interpretation.
I would say those actions were 'half-hearted' due to the risk of angering the public.
But if we're going to use the military, I would like it to be in a decisive and overwhelming manner with a well defined objective.
To do that, we must be willing to accept casualty.
If we aren't willing to commit to our goal, whatever that may be, with all the necessary resources, why are we fighting there?
Let just stay home.
The Roman Empire had a solution to this. If a province became too rebellious, they went in with the legions and killed everybody. Today this is considered overkill.
Eco points out that the resistance movement was more of a political exercise in keeping opposition alive than a military success. That was also true of the French Resistance. The efforts of the French Resistance before D-Day didn't accomplish much. They were supported by the Allies primarily so that they could do some key attacks on D-Day to confuse the situation and maintain the deception that the attack was at Calais. The most important function of the Resistance was that they provided the core of the French government once it was back in power. "The Third Republic has never ceased to exist" - de Gaulle.
The answer is still the same, have clear objectives, devote the necessary resource and expertise, and accept casualty in the pursuit of those goal.
If we are unwilling to do those kind of things, then we have no business in waging a counterinsurgency.
[1] http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/is...
on a related note, that's a huge factor in why I'd vote Hillary over Trump. I don't think Hillary is a perfect person or candidate, but when I compare to Trump, well, the latter pushes too many of my "disaster-in-the-making" buttons. I increasingly try to think of the next 5 years, the next 20, the kind of world that's better for children, grandchildren, etc. And a big factor in informing that, for me, is to look back on history, whether recent or ancient.
Bingo. Then they mustered out the veteran legionaries there on the now-mostly-depopulated land, simultaneously exporting their own restive, landless population, and installing both a colony of Roman culture, and a permanent garrison.
Today politics are global, requiring constant control and supervision. From East Chinese Sea, to the Baltic Sea, each side is constantly probing the boundaries. Once a weakness in the global enforcement is spotted, another Crimea or Burma or North Korea or Syria flares up.
Global military policy fights fires at the source, when still small, not waiting for the fire to become an inferno, letting itself in into backyard without knocking.
Those fires have become an inferno for the western world in ISIS (recently) and Al Qaeda (the last 20-30 years) precisely because of the way that a large portion of the world's population has been disenfranchised and discarded by the West.
I don't advocate the nonsense that we should all stay at home and do nothing. That's not my position.
But if the American people are unwilling to live with the idea of servicemen dying in some foreign war in the East China Sea or the Baltic, maybe we should take a good look at ourselves and decide how much agony we should endure.
At least some of the points Eco mentioned do not require an authoritarian government to implement. For example, selective populism and racism were alive and well in the South prior to the 60's, and happily administered in a democratic system. It took, yes, a powerful government to break it up.
Removing all power from the government transforms a nation into a state of nature that empowers such fascist and elitist groups to suppress marginalized groups in the same way an authoritarian government would. This is why many neo-fascists and alt-righters pay lip-service to libertarian (or classically liberal) ideals and the two groups often overlap in practice, because a truly stateless nation would allow the "weak" to be dominated by the "naturally strong", ie., this or that better poised group.
Counter-intuitively, a state is required to maintain individual liberty, I think.
PS: To be fair, I think most people who are libertarian do not want the state of nature. For example, libertarians, AFAIK, want a government that protects property rights for example. Yes, I think if one considers Snowden's revelations, these developments don't enable the state's protection of individual liberty arguably. As we've seen, they haven't been very effective while instead are very compromising of individuals' rights.
It comes down to details, but blanket removal of all power the state just places power in the hands of the de-facto elites. It's a delicate balance we have to strike and yes debate.
The "tyranny of the majority" can be as harsh as the tyranny of any single strongman, but it's important to note how closely that process is tied to systematically de-legitimizing other voices and perspectives.
Why is this counterintuitive to so many people? This was one of the prime reasonings by almost all Enlightenment-era thinkers for the reason for a government, including it being beautifully laid out in the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
The key line is "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men".
In my experience, they don't. They viciously mock libertarians as pathetic effeminate cucks who insincerely argue for classic liberal values because they lack the spine to stand up for what they truly believe in.
I think this is mostly projection, because they are mostly former libertarians.
This is not a coincidence! The more social hierarchy you wish to maintain with your state, the more violence your state must wield. When you want to eliminate systematized violence, on the other hand, you come to understand that you need to actively combat social hierarchies and inequality.
Worse: Increasing the strength and powers of the chief executive, at the expense of Congress.
I wonder if this is just coincidence, or if the recent explosion of Islamic extremism is a new variation on Fascism.
To be clear, I don't think how you deal with ISIS is the same as Nazi Germany because they are also quite different in practical and ideological terms.
It's worth considering that ISIS is at least nominally a globalist, not nationalist movement– they have a vision of umma/Islamic community that means to include all races. This is not true of the Third Reich.
Though, as a nation-state ISIS is rather weak; most of its perceived strength comes from the global terrorist attacks. I wonder what would have become of the Nazis if they hadn't taken control of Germany, or if they failed to amass enough military power to invade other nations. Perhaps they would have switched to guerrilla-style tactics and terrorist attacks?
I think they're more imperialist than globalist: they must cast their reach wide to liberate the oppressed Muslims of other nations.
Several authors have studied the connection and found that the earliest Islamists (as we currently know them) actually cited the European fascists openly and approvingly, being contemporaries!
Of course, Trump isn't likely to murder dissidents, and he has no desire for us-against-the-world unwinnable wars of conquest; likewise, I don't see a timeline in which Marine Le Pen revives Napoleon's ambitions, so the current alt-right moment has its advantages over historical fascism. (Alt-right-ness in general seems to be about staying home and hating/expelling foreigners, rather than looking for glory outside one's borders.) But these are unsettled times, all the same, and if you'd told me in the 1990s what I'd be seeing in the 2010s, I would never have believed you...
If there's one bright side to Western Europe's 30+ years of low military spending, they don't have many tanks to send. Of course that's easily fixed as well.
He has expressed great enthusiasm for locking up dissident journalists and committing war crimes against those he considers enemies, and boasted he could murder someone in the street and remain incredibly popular.
So, no, he hasn't quite outright expressed a willingness to murder dissidents, but seems to get a little closer to this line every day.
Also, not specifically Trump, but alt-righters tend to use these words a lot:
* cuck
* cultural marxism
* cultural enrichment (sarcastically)
* religion of peace (sarcastically)
* traitor/treason
* rapefugee
* SJW (social justice warrior)
It just dawned on me that every single word I associate with the far right are used by them to describe their enemies.
Now it is becoming more and more relevant to the rest of the world.
Russia: pioneering the world's social change since 1917.
There is minority, but growing "cultural Catholics" that don't particulary care about the dekalog, anticonception and all that, but will leash on you for "LGBT propaganda", demand that Catholic symbols are prominent everywhere, and Islam/whatever other symbols are removed.
They consider the current pope "too leftist" because he quotes Jesus on refuges. They "are not antisemitist, but these damn Jews control Poland". It's connected with Polish nationalism, EU-scepticism, and outright racism sometimes, and for a few years already it's "cool" to be a nationalist in 15-25 age group.
They are also persuaded nationalism is the default state, in each country, and it's only the leftist media conspiracy that covers that up.
And these people are actively encouraged by current conservative government (probably with their noses held, but what that changes?) because they are the obvious demographics that can help them against the main centro-liberal opposition parties.
Their propaganda is anti-intellectual, refers to "common sense" against scientific theories, ignores all subtle distinctions and paints very "we vs them" world, calls everybody disagreeing with them "traitors", and sees a conspiracy of Soros and leftist behind everything.
It's very sad to see how bad political luck and cynism can undo so much progress in so short time.
EDIT: not in the sense that B. was an evil fascist, but in the more important sense of "Freedom and liberation are an unending task"
The experience of living my formative years under Berlusconi makes me optimistic on Trump. "The Donald" does not control the media landscape to the degree that Berlusconi did (or could have done); his conflicts of interest are minor; his platform is much more confusing and badly put together; and even most of his own footsoldiers don't take him too seriously, which is why he had to get a fundie for VP. Silvio was in a much better position, with more fanatical followers and widespread support from the establishment, and stil achieved very little, because the country stubbornly refused to bow to his demands. I expect Americans will similarly drag their feet. You can't dig a moat if people won't pick up their shovels.
In the final analysis, if he were to be elected, I think he would be a fairly typical Republican president, and one that seriously toned down the GOP's cultural conservatism.
From looking at his history and my take on his personality, if he were to take office he would want to 'win' at the job.
I think that for him 'winning' at president would be measured by economic metrics and his approval numbers.
I went into the cycle outraged at the fascistic overtones of his campaign, and fearful. Now I think it was mostly showmanship and an effort to win the votes of the rubes in the GOP base.
I think he would approach the job as being CEO of America, and focus on economic growth and negotiating better 'deals' for the country.
He will quickly find that the ISIS problem is intractable, and that he has seriously overpromised on that front. The situation is going to escalate no matter who takes office. There is no sizable cohort in America working on de-escalating tensions with the Islamic world, no peace movement to be found.
The West has a serious empathy deficit in regards to the Middle East. It just can't see past the religious identity of the terrorists, and see it as essentially a desperate and weak revenge effort by people that feel transgressed against and humiliated. This blind spot means more aerial killer robots, and more pissed off people on the other end of those hellfires.
Both Trump and Hillary will inevitably play right into the hands of the extremists, and the diabolical ISIS plan of eliminating the grey zone will no doubt work, as Europe's social cohesion is on the brink and repression against the Muslim population will no doubt increase due to these grotesque asymmetric terror attacks. This is a very sad state of affairs for liberalism, and the chance for peace in our time.
Tragically, it's going to be counterproductive military action from the West, and insane, lunatic barbarism from the Islamic side in response.
The current phase of this conflict really kicked off when I was just 17, on 9/11/2001, it heated up during my 20's and got seriously out of control around when I turned 30.
Lately I've been pondering the fact that I've never been the victim of a terror attack, and I've never fought in a conflict overseas. My entire interface with the horror show has strictly been through the media, and just the images and knowledge has effected me very negatively. I could have just avoided the news and lived in safe and tranquil ignorance. Instead I've endured this impotent worry, a feeling of something terrible happening to people all around the world that I could do nothing to save.
I'm now resigned to this stupid conflict continuing for my entire life.
But I am appalled by your blithe assessment of Trump's possible first term. I think you are failing to appreciate how easy it is for the right person to whip up resentment. It has happened elsewhere. We are not immune. The downside could be huge.
From an Adam Gopnik piece, referred to upthread:
"Those who think that the underlying institutions of American government are immunized against it fail to understand history. In every historical situation where a leader of Trump’s kind comes to power, normal safeguards collapse. Ours are older and therefore stronger? Watching the rapid collapse of the Republican Party is not an encouraging rehearsal. Donald Trump has a chance to seize power."
By far the biggest problem is that his personality cannot tolerate losing or insult. I don't think he would accept "losing" to ISIS and would possibly escalate things to obscene levels—he seems to be a big fan of nuclear weapons.
Domestically, he is entirely intolerant of criticism. He's made it abundantly clear that he would like to make criticizing him illegal and openly encourages his supporters to beat up protestors. Keeping free speech alive will require a vigorous defense of separation of powers, and even then I'd be concerned about his supporters taking things into their own hands.
That's not going to happen. The GOP's 2016 platform is its most anti-LGBT platform ever, and it's going to gain traction because a GOP president isn't going to do anything to block the GOP's legislative agenda. Even if Trump doesn't personally do anything to advance the GOP's anti-LGBT agenda, the fact that he won't even try to stop it will cause untold damage to our rights. He's not going to veto his own party's bills.
Also, remember that some of the most important advances to LGBT rights in the last few years have been the result of Obama using Title IX and the EEOC to fight discrimination. Trump isn't going to continue that.
My take from watching the RNC was what seemed to me to be a new found inclusiveness of the GOP, with Peter Thiel's prominent speaking spot, and several speakers including Trump himself vowing to include and defend LGBTQ Americans.
I took it as the strength of the civil rights movement and it's victories over the last eight years. Just from watching the convention I took away that the LGBTQ movement has won, and even the historically adversarial GOP seemed to have to concede.
It seemed that the GOP had changed, but from the party platform it seems that the producers of the RNC and the rank and file power base of the GOP are at odds.
1. Cult of tradition. This, I think, has the weakest link to Trump; obviously the "Make America Great Again" slogan speaks to nostalgia, but I do think Eco here is talking about a particular kind of primordial, ancient tradition that is present in European fascism. America doesn't really have the sense of a people dating back thousands of years, so we avoid it.
2. Rejection of modernism. Again, Eco is speaking here to some specific aspects of the Enlightenment vs pre-modern ways of thought, but I do think there is a connection here to Trump's focus on a manufacturing/manual labor-based middle class vs. a service sector, educated economy. He "loves the uneducated" and "wonders why we don't make anything anymore"; the modern world is too abstract and irrelevant a place.
3. Cult of action. Uh, absolutely. It's honestly hard to find a place in Trump's rhetoric where this doesn't appear. Universities are filled with effete snobs, and thinking is a form of emasculation; Trump will take action, won't listen to the so-called experts, will consult his gut, etc.
4. Disagreement is treason. Again, definitely. Trump's said repeatedly that he attacks anyone who attacks him ten times over, be they other politicians or members of the media, and promises to inflict harsh penalties on members of the press who criticize him.
5. Fear of difference. America is under attack by Muslims, Mexicans, and China, all of whom are broad categories to be feared and met with strength.
6. Appeal to a frustrated middle class. Trump's base of support are those who have seen other groups make greater strides in recent years, the white, largely (at least nominally) Christian, less-educated manufacturing class. They're definitely suffering feelings of humiliation, in part warranted, that Trump's tapping in to; he is against the free trade agreements blamed for their job loss and the social mores that have propped up other races, genders, and identities.
7. Obsession with plot. At its most obvious, there's Trump's famous view of global warming as a Chinese conspiracy to hurt manufacturing, and his perception that Obama is not born in America, and may be cooperating with terrorists ("if he's so smart, something else is happening.") Still, I'd call this debatable; Trump certainly doesn't have the obsession with conspiracy of the Nazis (although who did?) and the particular place of the Jews is different in a modern American cultural context. Not that people who are obsessed with Jewish plots aren't big Trump supporters, of course.
8. Shifting rhetoric; opponents are both humiliatingly strong and too weak. I think this is again reflected in his rhetoric on Obama; he's a weak President who isn't respected, but also a dictator trying to control your lives. This also isn't as strong, though.
9. Life is struggle. Not always a big theme in the campaign so far, but lots of Trump statements from books and interviews say, pretty directly, that he believes life is a constant struggle and you always need to be the strongest and the best. He hasn't taken this to the warmongering lengths that traditional fascists do, though; it's more of a philosophical theme than a declaration of actual war. Again, we're in a very different geopolitical context to that of early fascists, and all-out war is harder to sell.
10. Popular elitism. Hard to say. A component of fascist societies, rather than a particular trait of the leader, and we don't know what Trump's America will look like, and how much of that will have to do with Trump.
11. Cult of heroism and death. Not really. We're going to win and keep on winning. (A boot against a human face--forever!)
12. Machismo. Yup. Disdain for women and need for strength and dominance. Well-attested.
13. Selective populism. Absolutely. Trump is the voice of the people, in his own words, and derives his legitimacy from having been elected through a pretty bizarre process. Trump supporters are the real Americans, his enemies are not a part of the populace he wants to lead. "The emotional response of a small group of people" has been selected. "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. Newspeak. Debatable, as fun as it is to link Trump's simple vocabulary to simple ideas. I'm less in the Sapir-Whorf camp than Orwell; I think Trump's use of simple sentences is more a reflection of a simple worldview than cause. But, I suppose it is hard to debate him when he has such vague positions, and those vague positions are established with the use of basic language. We're going to win. How? We're going to do it right, that's how!
I'm at work right now (oops) so this is poorly sourced and mainly based on memory. I definitely think you can apply these categories in lots of ways, depending on your political bias, and as much as I adore Eco, he shouldn't be taken as the final word on fascism and politics in general. That said... there's a lot of fascism in Trump.
I disagree. As other posters pointed out Fascism infects with it's own unique flavor of the host country. In the US, post ww2 was an idilic time (not really, but there's so much rockwell imagery). It's post slavery and genocide. It ends with landing on the moon.
The mythic version of the post war boom is appealing. High paying jobs. A house with a white picket fence. A new car every few years. Everyone lives in a small town and knows their neighbors. Kids go fishing with grandpa. it's a fantasy, it avoids so many deep problems, but it's easy to see the appeal.
I would expect trump to knock off "morning in america" [1] for his positive ads. (if he winds up having positive ads).
I agree with the rest of your post, but the feel of "Morning in America" doesn't jibe with Trump's "Make America Great Again" spiel. "Morning in America" was Reagan's re-election campaign ad. It was saying "see what Reagan did for America in his first term; let's vote for four more years of it!". In other words, it's a form of "America is Already Great, Let's Keep It That Way".
...can you tell us a little bit more about how you see the fantasy part? Is that something you think is unobtainable for most people? And the reason is automation, or globalism, or climate change, or X. (I'm just curious to get another/urban/foreign perspective, since my kids just got back from two weeks of fishing with Grandpa, but we don't have a picket fence).
The post ww2 boom had some wonderful effects. There were, and still are some ugly aspects to that time that are easy to gloss over. IIRC, it wasn't legally possible to rape a spouse. The Cuyahoga River was so polluted it would catch on fire, the largest in 1952.
There were some very ugly parts to that time. if you weren't a white man with a good job, i think it was pretty rough. The nostalgic view tends to wash away those ugly parts.
edit
This is probably a harsher reply than was warrented by your question, but... it's easy to be misty eyed about that time. I wasn't around, but i think it sucked for a lot of people.
Doesn't this tie directly into his obsession with "winning"?
Also, an entire article on this topic:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/2016-donald-t...
If I say the stock market is a game, I have some hope people will understand I'm saying there are winners or losers. If I say commenting on HN is a game I have some hope people will understand I'm saying it's more for amusement than for any other purpose.
With the term "fascism" I have no such hope. Nobody understands if I say "Trump is fascist" or "Hillary is fascist" unless we're already thinking along the same lines, in which case I'm not communicating anything new.
My conclusion is that "fascism" is not a useful term for discussion.
I think you're right when it comes to Internet commenting, but it's possible.
I've personally convinced a few people to support Johnson instead of Trump by pointing out the distinctively fascist elements of his campaign. Thinking people are entirely polarized and unwilling to listen to respectful points just enhances polarization.
http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents...
http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-real-umberto-ec...
I wonder why it does not include 'readiness to suppress your political opponent', i would have thought that this is the defining feature of fascism; you can be all of the fourteen features, but as long as you don't smack your political opponents you are not a real fascist.
Interesting that Clinton is stumping with the Bushes (the previous boogeymen) now: https://www.yahoo.com/news/hillary-clinton-invokes-unlikely-...
She's not stumping with the Bushes, and that article doesn't indicate that she is.
http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.asp
https://archive.org/details/MyAutobiography
Primary sources are important, they give you details and textures that are smoothed over in a retelling or distillation.
My personal opinion, since this story has basically become about whether or not Trump represents an American Fascist movement, is that crying fascism all the time is very much a 'boy who cried wolf' scenario. I don't think Trump is a fascist per se. Moreover, considering that fascism was a term adopted by the left to describe the heretical forms of syndicalism, socialism, etc that split from Leninism in the early to mid 20th century and was used for the POUM[1] as readily as Hitler's SS[2] I submit that the term in fact means nothing. Fascism has no central character because it's a bogeyman of self described antifas who want to import European style street brawl politics[3] into the United States.
Instead of trying to conceptualize and denounce Trump in terms of the past, I think it would be more effective to point out the concrete dangers he represents to domestic and foreign policy with his actual stated politics, or his hypocrisy, or any of the other many traits you can go after with him.[4]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_catalonia
[2]: They are after all the National Socialists. Though by the time Hitler was appointed Chancellor the actual 'socialist' wing of the party had been purged to win over the minds of wealthy donors.
[3]: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-neo-nazi-event-s...
[4]: For example, compare this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOJrYxHQO-E&nohtml5=False) Ted Cruz ad to John Kaisch's invoking Godwin. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_isVZN65Ss&nohtml5=False)
EDIT: Make my point clearer.
His point is that a future rise of fascism might not look like the path from the Pan-German League to the Nazis, but it will have some ideological hallmarks that we can detect.
I have no love for people who identify as fascists, as to me they are just morbid personalities fixated on a nostalgia for ugliness. Same type of people who like slasher/torture films.
But, some alt-right'ists (trigger warning) have put some recent thought into the topic: http://www.jack-donovan.com/axis/2013/03/anarcho-fascism/
It is fairly well considered. These days, Eco is an old hack doomed to the museum/prison of being a national treasure. He has become too precious to edit, and his books are mainly didactic posturing for middle brow book clubs. His criticisms provide a kind of hall of mirrors for people who already believe in them, and don't provide actual illumination.
Umberto Eco knows nothing of Trump's campaign as he writes, so he cannot be cherry picking his facts out of the current affairs. That is why I consider it important to know this was written in 1995.
Calls for caution in the face of the madness of our current immigration and essentially open borders, and for taking radical Islamism seriously, don't amount to anything like fascism.
“a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism”
"[F]ascism and democracy are two aspects of a single reality, two different forms of a single activity: the activity which the bourgeois class carries out to halt the proletarian class on its path[.]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci#Imprisonment_a...
I wonder what people's thoughts are about a "crying wolf" type of phenomena developing? What if people just started shrugging their shoulders, and saying if I support Trump and that's fascist, then I'm a fascist, oh well? Kind of like "racism" as a term is starting to lose its sting. People just say, "I thought everyone was racist", and "I thought there is no such thing as race (so therefore you can't be a racist)".
I definitely believe this is happening. The Left is overplaying their hand because their targeted adversary is doing reasonably (and unexpectedly) well. So they are deploying out the big words like "racist" and "sexist" and now, "fascist".
And lots of American voters are reading his platform and policies and thinking, "hmm, that policy seems like common sense - does that mean that (1) the Left is in error in labeling Trump a fascist or (2) I, myself, am a fascist and maybe fascism is not really that bad?"
Ultimately, a single word is too reductive to apply to a candidate and his policies. But lots of voters are too lazy to read or listen to full sentences and paragraphs, so we are locked into these simplifications.
I would say you could take it for granted that a large majority of people are like that most of the time. And I think it's very likely that this phenomenon was consciously and cynically exploited, and therefore facilitated the lowering of standards and the rise of bullshit in American politics in the last 20 years or so.