Umberto Eco: Eternal Fascism

[Marcus Marulus]

Gonzalvus:

Umberto Eco: The eternal fascism

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 non-fascist 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.

source

Marulus:

Much of what he said can be seen as characteristical traits of modern Western Liberal Democracies as well.

Errigal:

I read this article and noticed it was written in 1995. My first thought is how useless Umberto Eco's advice would have been over the the last twelve years of world politics. It has been the neo-Trotskyism of the American foreign policy establishment we have had to worry about, not "Ur-Fascism".

Faustas:

The first point is the most interesting one, even though he does not reach the one conclusion that I would like to read. I am no expert on these theories, but lunulae introduced me to idea that by reviving dead traditions or even by canonizing aspects of culture, it would become a recycled product and thus kitsch. Let's see if he can explain it better than I can.

lunulae:

seen in the light of 'the cult of tradition', canonizing culture is a ludicrous idea. i can comprehend the idea of conserving it, though conserving it in the sense of storing it, not in the sense of keeping the tradition alive. i read an article by the swedish ethnologist jonas frykman (please note that most ethnologists have a reputation for being cultural relativists) called 'belonging in europe - modern identites in minds and places' which definitely would be to the interest of the conglomerate of people on stirpes. he draws on a quote by marx ("history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce") and states that whenever traditions, things, symbols, semiophors and whatever is worth conserving (and ultimately worth apotheosising as national culture), they will eventually end up being kitsch, as you point out. to me this makes pretty good sense, though i need to reread the article to wholly embrace the content.

Errigal:

I highlighted two point where Umberto Eco makes a leap I cannot follow:

"As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning."
It would seem to me that "thesis+antithesis=synthesis" would be more accurate.

"But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism."
No, that is a symptom of civilization.

Part of what is "kitsch" to me is when someone demands reverence or respect or solemnity from others when they perform some clearly ridiculous act. A recently invented tradition, such as giving an oath to the National Socialist "blood flag" is kitsch. It is the self-consciousness of such things which ruin them and make them seem false.

I disagree strongly with this. I can almost see a professor dressed in a silly white outfit in a scene from H.G. Well's The Shape of Things to Come, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We or Huxley's Brave New World saying that. "Students, can you imagine our ancestors worshipped such primitive objects?"

No, I really dislike the idea that a person should claim to have risen above his own civilization. That is the relativism which got us into our current mess.

Marulus:

I have the impression that Eco in this short essay (that is how it could be called?) by Traditionalism did not mean national traditions in the sense lunulae implied, that is, some aspect of the canonized culture, but he rather meant Evolian-Guenonian Traditionalism, or Perennial Philosophy.

To say that this form of Traditionalism occurred in the late Hellenistic age is, first of all, historically inaccurate. Some seeds of Traditionalism (in this sense!) are present in Christianity itself, as well as in many philosophical systems (Christian and not). The explicit Traditionalism started with the renaissance and Marsilio Ficino. Another thing, to say that this Traditionalism is inherently connected with Fascism, is a gross stupidity. Evola was only initially delighted with fascists, later he scorned them (because of being, for his taste, too "democratic", and he cherished some "aristocratic" ideals, whatever that means). In one word, typical Umberto Eco-esque shallowness.

Breogan:

Fascism can't be traditionalist because it worships the (postrevolutionary) State, as Marxism does, by the way.

Gonzalvus:

To me, this essay could be labeled as vaccine-article. He lists some ideas that he deems dangerous (cult of tradition, rejection of technology, heroism, etc), he distorts and derides these ideas, and the he cries that anyone who upholds them is an evil fascist and thus must be silenced. He vaccinates us against the aforementioned ideas.

To point just one of his deliberate distortions, traditionalists do not favour action for action's sake. Guenon in his Crisis of the modern world points out the superiority of contemplation over action.

I think Eco takes this as something personal. He represents everything the traditionalists reject: a best-seller intellectual, liberal, atheist, fat, weak and tolerant. He feels insulted.

Marulus:

Several months ago (or is it a year since that?), he visited some book fair in Pula, Croatia, and held some speech there about the future of Europe. There he expressed his enthusiasm for the new Bologna system of high education in Europe, the two main characteristcs of which are greatly simplified programmes and enlarged possibility of students to go for exchange to universities of other countries (whether for partial study or for the entire period of study). Then he went on saying that those exchange students are the biggest asset for the future of Europe because they will copulate (yes, he used a mildly vulgar word, either that or "have sex", I am not sure any more) with students of other nations, eventually get married and their children will be true Europeans, a new European elite.

So he delights in a perspective of a future in which Europe will be infested with many, to paraphrase Gonzalvus, "fat, clownish, conceited, superficial, (pseudo)-intellectuals", all clones of the wonderful Eco.

He is selling some cheap Freemasonic catch-phrases, adapted for a larger audience.

Errigal:

A very good point, and one of the reasons the term "Islamofascist" can be dismissed as a mindless propaganda term.

Yes, this short essay is similar to others I have read by Umberto Eco which seem to be written with the New York publishing world in mind. He seems so often to be singing for his supper as an "acceptable" European.

Savorgnan:

I remember once Eco, while giving an interview on who-knows-wich beach of the Adriatic, desperately trying to convince the journalist that he (Eco) hasn't a big belly, ah ah... This guy is a joke.

[Marcus Marulus]

My deepest apologies. Somehow it happened that I accidentally deleted (hard-deleted) the thread "Umberto Eco: The eternal fascism", started by Gonzalvus. Fortunately, I was able to view again the deleted thread, pressing the "back" key, so I was able to copy-paste your posts. I put them all into one common post. I did that because there were some good comments in them and it was pity for them to be lost forever.

Very much sorry.