Eternal Fascism (1995) | Hacker News Reader

Eternal Fascism (1995)

interglacial.com

35 pointspje28 comments

It is worth reading this article. There are few as authoritative treatises of fascism. The author is Umberto Eco, an Italian semiotician who lived in Moussolini's Italy as a young boy. He is also a renowned author, particularly well known for The name of the rose and Foucault's Pendulum.

But regardless of who it was who wrote this essay- it is an essay that is really, really worth reading if one is interested in the least in understanding the rise of fascism in Europe, historically and in modern times.

To the final point of the essay, "Newspeak", I find it extremely discomforting at the many words in recent public discourse which surface frequently and whose meanings have been stretched beyond all recognition. Words such as "racism/racist" on the one side, or "anti-semitism" on the other, have taken on new meanings so thoroughly divorced from their textbook denotation and common sense that it's become impossible to have any dialogue around related topics that doesn't end in indignation and frustration. (For more examples of hot newspeak, look to Twitter.)

The effect is, of course, that the national conversation is split into two groups that now fail to have meaningful communication with one another. Whether you attribute this to the intentions of any particular group is up to you, but make no mistake, great resources and coordinated effort have been expended to bring us to where we are.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of all of it is that for all the ideologues (of all persuasions) trumpeting on social media, not one seems to ever address essential definitions. Day in and day out, the words are mis-used and no one asks what is meant by the words, each of us feeling that our individual conception is the intended one.

Flagged? Sorry?

As soon as I saw it, I wondered how long hackernews could tolerate having Umberto Eco's guide to spotting fascism up on the front page.

Is a touchy subject on here, for some peculiar reason.

Now I wonder what that could possibly be.

You can't talk about fascism on hackernews.

Please don't post shallow dismissals here. That's in the site guidelines too: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Had you taken a few seconds to check it before posting a glib swipe, you'd have seen that it's obviously untrue: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story.... This very essay has had multiple discussions on HN in the past:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173823

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17413908

And that was the full original essay, not the Utne Reader's digest version. The issue here is not "you can't talk about fascism". It's that the talk going around at the moment is predictable partisan flamewar and name-calling, with the F-word being the biggest tomato thrown. It's that which we don't want on HN. When thoughtfulness returns to the discussion, I'm sure users will stop flagging submissions like this.

That is a smear of the community which counts as a shallow dismissal in the sense the site guidelines ask you not to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. By insinuating that "hackernews" can't "tolerate" Umberto Eco because people here are fascist, you're trivializing the word and contributing to degrading the discussion.

Under present circumstances there is little chance that a thread like this will be motivated by intellectual curiosity rather than partisan passion. Users who attempt to do the former get piled on with heapings of the latter. This very essay has been discussed with curiosity in the past (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173823), but I don't think that's why it's showing up now.

It's 100% pure politics, without any sort of connection to science or technology or startups or anything else that Hacker News is oriented towards. Worse yet, right in the opening section (just above the line) there is an inappropriate reference to current US politics. That's just throwing gasoline on the fire.

HN isn't oriented just to technology or startups. That's at the beginning of the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

What it is oriented around is intellectual curiosity. There's little of that in current discourse about the word "fascism", and a lot of flame-throwing. It's the partisan frenzy of the moment. I imagine that's why users flagged this submission, despite Umberto Eco being perennially interesting and welcome here.

Having only read the subtitles for each section, it is interesting to me to see how this could easily be understood by either political party to vilify their opponents and find things that they do that fall under each. Some categories seem to apply more to the current-day left, others the current-day right. Maybe it means they're both screwed up and we're on the path to disaster. Maybe it means neither is really all that fascist and we're kind of okay for now.

Early on the essay makes clear distinctions that not all moves toward fascism are necessarily fascist, in the very first bullet calling out “traditionalism” as being very distinct from “fascism.”

I myself find solace in some of the points of fascism- that part of the meaning of life is struggle, and the cult of heroism (are the Marvel movies fascist?). I certainly don't believe that qualifies me as a fascist, especially because I also strongly believe that tolerance of others is one of core principals of political morality.

Isn't the cult of heroism a rejection of civilization?

For instance, Tony Stark is a murderer, a sociopathic one at that. The whole Marvel Cinematic Universe practically kicks off with him doing revenge killings, almost killing a government pilot and chuckling about it with his pal.

Of course, the trope of the righteous individual is heavily leaned on in movies.

I think it depends on how you view it. I am not well studied in this area so my terms may be inaccurate, but to me a "heroic" ideal of self sacrifice for the benefit of others or some ideal is not anti-civilization. It may in fact be the basis of civilization- that there is something larger than ourselves or our immediate family to work toward.

Leftist culture can also traditionalist about different things. Nature. Organics. Natural birth and parenting. Unions. Public schools. Native languages.

> I also strongly believe that tolerance of others is one of core principals of political morality.

Maybe not you, but there is definitely a strain of the "anti-fascist" culture that is pretty fascist. In the name of diversity and tolerance no less. Including firings, blackballing, and public beatings in extreme cases.

Of course there are fascists that appeal back to an idyllic monoculture that never really existed, but they get enough press that it's already well covered.

> Leftist culture can also traditionalist about different things.

From a US perspective, I would add "we are a nation of immigrants (therefore immigration should continue)" to that list.

Umberto Eco is generally considered to be one of the best analysts regarding the politics of fascism. For those who find this essay to be discomforting reading in light of our contemporary political movements, perhaps it is not the words of Umberto that are in need of critique.

The full Umberto Eco essay: https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

Another 14 point list by Dr. Lawrence Britt that is also relevant: https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html

A Scholar of Fascism Sees a Lot That’s Familiar with Trump https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-scholar-of-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com