The other day Bill Kristol tweeted something that I found fascinating. Someone had tweeted a picture of "manly man" Seb Gorka holding a rifle. Kristol responded with this:
Other than recognizing the name, I didn't know anything about Umberto Eco. I was curious what he meant by "Ur-Fascist," so I googled and found the article Eco had written about it. He was born in 1932 and grew up under Italy's Mussolini. Most of the article contains references to various forms of fascism with specifics that - not being a historian - I am not acquainted with. But eventually it comes down to this central point he was making (emphasis mine):"Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters...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."
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) December 12, 2022
--Umberto Eco https://t.co/ljlN1D0Lgc
The contradictory picture I describe was not the result of tolerance but of political and ideological discombobulation. But it was a rigid discombobulation, a structured confusion. Fascism was philosophically out of joint, but emotionally it was firmly fastened to some archetypal foundations...Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist.
So Eco invented the word Ur-Fascist.
[I]n spite of this fuzziness, 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.
He goes on to list 14 features of Ur-Fascism, one of which is quoted by Bill Kristol in the tweet up above. Here they are:
1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition...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.2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism...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, any previous 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...
4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism...For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. 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. 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...
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...
8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies...However, the followers must 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...
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...
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 of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party...
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...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...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...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.
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak...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.
According to Eco, those are the 14 features of Ur-Fascism. Please note what he said: "it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it." I was struck by the fact that every one of them could be applied to MAGA Republicans - some more obviously than others.
We are witnessing one of the two major political parties in this country coalesce around what Eco described as Ur-Fascism. I am not someone who is given to fiery rhetoric, so that isn't a fear-mongering statement. It is simply a fact. In other words, President Biden was right.
Wow, thanks. That's telling. Yet it also, I fear, throws a sad light on Nancy's recent post about the doomed GOP.
ReplyDeleteSure, it's policies have not been popular for a long time, although it can still somehow claim to be the party that cares about the economy, in the face of those tax and spend Democrats ruining it all for everyone. But then it's appeal isn't policy, apart from its appeal to those who do benefit from deregulation and from tax cuts narrowly targeted to some -- or to those who benefit emotionally from taking it all out on those further down the food chain. More important, it has the appeal of those 14 points to an awful lot of people. It will take better voices and more time than we've had thus far to judge better why this right-wing, authoritarian populism has taken hold in so much of the world at just this time, but it's a tough obstacle all the same.
What is different in America -- and this may have saved us -- is that we have multiple traditions involving our model minorities: Jews, middle-class Hispanics, the Talented Tenth among blacks, Arab-Americans, LGBT people, and several different Asian groups. These people seem united in accepting the Enlightenment as a valid tradition and a defense against the depravity that is fascism. In 2020 we know well about chattel slavery and the Holocaust, and that most of us (even if white) abhor anything that reeks of the Klan or Nazis. Most of us, that is.
ReplyDeleteThe American Right has its own split between the racist populists, the religious fundamentalists, and the mirror-image Marxists Racists want a white, straight, Christian America (tough luck -- your predecessors brought the African slaves, slave-masters you bred enough of them that you can't deport or kill them all, and you can't stop them from seducing white people; you found cheap Hispanic farm labor attractive for working in the fields and sweat-shop factories and their grandchildren can assimilate your grandchildren; Jews have made indelible contributions to American culture, and we would live in a fossilized culture like most of post-Holocaust Europe without them; nobody knows what causes homosexuality, and LGBT people aren't going back into the closet; and don't let me even start on the incredibly-diverse Asian and Muslim groups. The ethnic and religious equivalent of Pandora's box is open, and the results are anything but ill.
Another part of the Right is the anti-modern Right that dreads modernity, not only cultural but also moral. Well, technology from motion pictures, the telephone, the phonograph, the automobile, and radio from just over a century ago (and yes, radio is a century old now) reshaped American life over a century ago, and the full effects are yet to be known. Computers are everywhere, and the same technology that can feed us Q-Anon craziness and Trumpism can also give us the antitheses. Even e-mail is a super-cheap version of telegraphy that is now nearly two centuries old. These people distrust science whether in the form of evolution as an explanation or inoculation as a solution to COVID-19.
The other part of the Right is the Corporate Right, which includes a disproportionate part of those Americans who believe that no human suffering can ever be in excess in the name of their power, indulgence, and gain. These people believe that those who own the gold rightly make the rules, which is little different from what the Junkers (who funded Hitler because he would smash labor unions and destroy the competition and cultural challenges from Germany's one [Jewish] Model Minority). These people use the racists and the anti-modern types against liberals who have mixed feelings about capitalism.
We are not Weimar Germany on the brink of a fascist take-over, but if we feel comfortable we are fools.
Terrific comment. For all the books on the theme of, as in one title, How Democracies Die, I don't think the real and present danger is our having a fascist government. There do seem enough official and, as you describe, constituent protections, just as there were enough, even such reactionaries as the VP, refusing to do Trump's bidding regarding dismissing the election. It's more that we've a huge base with a fascist mindset, contributing to the GOP's power to block progress of any kind, to further racism and sexism, and to sustain the corporate right's agenda. But, as you say, that shouldn't make us complacent either.
DeleteOne could see another part of the right in the headline in the Times just yesterday, about the GOP's silence in the face of Santos and his lies. And that's behavior we've seen before. Sure, too many candidates and politicals have latched onto election denialism, but plenty just refused to answer when asked about it. It's less fascism or even opportunism than the behavior of little children caught with their pants down, refusing to speak or look their parents in the eye.
Last, worth bearing in mind, too, that Eco himself wasn't necessarily focused on the a past time of Italy on the brink of fascism. It's patent in his speaking of "eternal fascism": it's not that Italy would always be on the brink, but that the mindset among ordinary voters and nonvoters endures and creates other dangers in itself.