Umberto Eco on Eternal Fascism, or Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt (1995)
In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.
1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition
Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not
only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French
revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to
classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different
religions (most of the faiths 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.
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
although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are
nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.
As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been 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 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.
2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of
modernism
Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped 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. The Enlightenment,
the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense
Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.
3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action
for action's sake
Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before,
or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture
is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the
intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann
Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the
word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such
expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads,"
"effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The
official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture
and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
4. 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.
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 or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders.
Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.
6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social
frustration
That is why one of the most typical features of the historical
fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class
suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and
frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old
"proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are
largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find
its audience in this new majority.
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
This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones
who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of
the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot,
possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest
way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come
from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the
advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the United States, a
prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat
Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen,
there are many others.
8. The followers must feel humiliated by the
ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies
When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the
five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians.
Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance.
However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can
overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the
enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are
condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of
objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but,
rather, life is lived for struggle.
Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It
is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings
about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a
final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such
"final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which
contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever
succeeded in solving this predicament.
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 among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of
the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the
Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was
conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the
masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.
11. In such a perspective everybody is educated
to become a hero
In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in
Ur-Fascist ideology heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly
linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Spanish
Falangists was Viva la Muerte ("Long Live Death!").
In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but
must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach
a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death,
advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is
impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to
death.
12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult
games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual
matters.
This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain
for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity
to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist
hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.
13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism,
a qualitative populism, one might say
In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the
citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative
point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism,
however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived
as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large
quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be
their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act;
they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only
a theatrical fiction. 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.
Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must
be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. 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. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak
Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as
the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements
of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or
Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary
syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.
But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the
apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.
* * *
Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It
would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody
saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade
again in the Italian squares." Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can
come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and
to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of
the world. Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling:
"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." Freedom and liberation are an unending
task.
Umberto Eco (c) 1995
New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp.12-15. Excerpted in Utne Reader, November-December 1995, pp. 57-59. The very personal essay that this is an excerpt of is "Ur-Fascism", and it is very much worth the read. You can drop a penny in the jar at that web site to see the whole article (or it might show it to you for free), or you can read it in his book Five Moral Pieces. You might also enjoy reading this February 2016 article: "Umberto Eco on Donald Trump: 14 Ways of Looking at a Fascist- The Leading Republican Presidential Candidate is More Mussolini Than Hitler".
https://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fascism.html
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