{"id":276,"date":"2017-02-04T21:01:07","date_gmt":"2017-02-05T05:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/?p=276"},"modified":"2023-02-10T14:51:21","modified_gmt":"2023-02-10T22:51:21","slug":"ur-fascism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/?p=276","title":{"rendered":"Ur-Fascism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Italian author Umberto Eco defined \u201cUr-Fascism\u201d in an article in the New York Review of Books<\/em> in June, 1995<\/a>. It can be distilled into fourteen points.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth taking a look at these to see just what our society is dealing with when it comes to \u201calt-right\u201d Neo-Nazis and the ideology they promote.<\/p>\n

Thanks to forums poster Improbable Lobster<\/em> for the succinct write-up that I reproduce here.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The cult of tradition.<\/b> \u201cOne has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.\u201d <\/li>\n
  2. The rejection of modernism.<\/b> \u201cThe Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.\u201d <\/li>\n
  3. The cult of action for action\u2019s sake.<\/b> \u201cAction being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.\u201d <\/li>\n
  4. Disagreement is treason.<\/b> \u201cThe 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.\u201d <\/li>\n
  5. Fear of difference.<\/b> \u201cThe first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.\u201d <\/li>\n
  6. Appeal to social frustration.<\/b> \u201cOne 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.\u201d <\/li>\n
  7. The obsession with a plot.<\/b> \u201cThe followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.\u201d <\/li>\n
  8. The enemy is both strong and weak.<\/b> \u201cBy a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.\u201d <\/li>\n
  9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.<\/b> \u201cFor Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.\u201d <\/li>\n
  10. Contempt for the weak.<\/b> \u201cElitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.\u201d <\/li>\n
  11. Everybody is educated to become a hero.<\/b> \u201cIn Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.\u201d <\/li>\n
  12. Machismo and weaponry.<\/b> \u201cMachismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.\u201d <\/li>\n
  13. Selective populism.<\/b> \u201cThere 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.\u201d <\/li>\n
  14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.<\/b> \u201cAll 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.\u201d <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The very straightforward application of this to today\u2019s political landscape in the United States and elsewhere should terrify everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Italian author Umberto Eco defined \u201cUr-Fascism\u201d in an article in the New York Review of Books in June, 1995. It can be distilled into fourteen points. It\u2019s worth taking a look at these to see just what our society is dealing with when it comes to \u201calt-right\u201d Neo-Nazis and the ideology they promote. Thanks to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[151],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p74loH-4s","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":352,"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions\/352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eschatologist.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}