[yiyus]

1. The cult of tradition.

2. The rejection of modernism.

3. The cult of action for action’s sake.

4. Disagreement is treason.

5. Fear of difference.

6. Appeal to social frustration.

7. The obsession with a plot.

8. The enemy is both strong and weak.

9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.

10. Contempt for the weak.

11. Everybody is educated to become a hero.

12. Machismo and weaponry.

13. Selective populism.

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

[ufmace]

It strikes me as being kind of like a horoscope - you can apply some bits of it to almost any political movement, but it doesn't really fit anything 100%. Which means it's therefore useless.

[alehlopeh]

I’ll contend your shallow dismissal. This is not a list of all possible sociopolitical properties a political movement may have, which is what you seem to be describing. It’s a list of the ones that, found together, characterize a particular political movement as being Ur-Facist.

[ineedasername]

Consider things further. As with any other data or observation you're correct in that any one single point isn't useful to declare a trend. This list isn't an "or" conditional. Eco doesn't mean that meeting any single point is sufficient. It's when you can go through the list and check a bunch of these boxes, or at least a couple that are much stronger indicators than some others, like "disagreement is treason". And of course it's a spectrum, not a binary yes/no.

You're not going to get a formulaic assessment that is a perfect indicator of any major social or political trend of this sort. To go back to horoscopes, they are successful because they throw a bunch of things at the wall but get people to focus on only the one piece that's correct. In the case of this list, you need multiple hits, and

[FooBarBizBazz]

Ok, I'll flip everything:

1. The superstitions of the savages must be replaced by modern, scientific progress.

2. Primitive technologies and social arrangements should be replaced with civilized government.

3. Political action should be moderated, and conducted after slow deliberation.

4. Freedom of speech, within reason, has always been a superior characteristic of our civilization.

5. Certain territories are benighted by backwardness and xenophobia, as is demonstrated by their treatment of our visitors.

6. The social order may not always be perfect, but our institutions are essentially just.

7. The world is not shaped by conspiracies of elites, but by inevitable economic forces. You will sooner alter the seasons.

8. No power can seriously threaten our Empire, on which the sun never sets. At most there will be little peacekeeping actions -- the savage wars of peace.

9. Pacifism is the way forward, just like Oswald Mosley said.

10. We are all lambs, who are protected by our Good Shepherd, the Crown.

11. A proper education teaches each of us to do our own small duty within our rightful place.

12. We are not brutes but gentle-men.

13. The masses require guidance from the better sort.

14. The English language was perfected in Shakespeare's time, and it is for us simply to speak it correctly.

[KarlKemp]

Sounds like a civilized country, with maybe a Mosley-shaped exception. And your method does a far better job to show how harebrained all these sounds-like-everything-comments are. (Which I am having considerable trouble believing, but maybe it's a language thing)

[FooBarBizBazz]

To give away the joke, my post should be read in the stereotyped voice of a British conservative with a mustache and harrumphing. Maybe not a full-on "fascist" (the Mosley sympathies I have projected onto him notwithstanding), but also very much not the person that Eco, or the people who want to use this ammunition, would want to lionize.

Also, some of the statements in my post, like (6), are at direct odds with what's currently trendy to say.

The main point, though, is that although I like Umberto Eco, this article has still never made a lot of sense to me.

[sazz]

In Germany you can currently study how Newspeak is introduced. It started with Corona with "Corona Leugner" (denying the existance of Corona) and now with "Putinversteher" (that Putin strategy is actually reasonable and not based on insanity).

The solely purpose of both words is to state that there is only one valid position and people having different opinions either shouldn't be taken serious or being treated as enemies to democracy as they are basically extremist or spreading misinformation.

Especially "Corona Leugner" is in line with "Holocaust Leugner" and intends to label every person criticizing Corona to be put in the Nazi camp. And Nazis of course you do not discuss but fight them.

And this is actually taking place. People protesting against government laws are now being labeled as right wing or Nazis. Even "Corona Leugner" is already recognized by judges being a defamation but it is still used in discussions on public broadcaster.

For me this is actually Newspeak and a step further towards Facisms. To promote that there is only one valid political position and different views should not be seriously discussed.

[ogogmad]

It's interesting how similar this is to many of the Twitter accounts I've followed. Some even claim to be libertarian.

Also:

3. The cult of action for action’s sake.

What does this mean?

[echoradio]

Isn’t this when the leader (or group) demands “we must do something!” against something, anything they dislike, even if it’s not wise?

What’s happening in Florida is a good example. The state, which is dominated by the right, called a special legislative session to dissolve a management district overseen by Disney because the company spoke up against the state’s “don’t say gay” bill.

From the state’s standpoint, it doesn’t make sense, though; this action wiped out a tax revenue stream of hundreds of millions and dropped $1B to $2B in debt on the counties Disney property straddles.

Disney has been “punished” in the eyes of the far-right, but residents now have concerns about the long-term impacts of what this decision has wrought.

[brnaftr361]

I haven't actually kept up with that. What is the "Don't say gay bill" about?

[echoradio]

Short version: Florida’s legislature passed a bill (later signed into law by its governor) which prohibits discussion of “sexual orientation and gender identity” in (presumably only) public school classrooms.

More details: Disney is one of the largest employers in the state and big contributor in taxes to it’s tourism-driven economy. Disney also oversaw its own land management district (the 27k acres which make up Walt Disney World property was, in essence, its own city with a tiny government to boot).

When the bill passed, Disney didn’t speak up. It was criticized by gay employees and fans (of which there are many!). Disney eventually expressed its opposition to the law.

Florida’s state government has a significant GOP majority and didn’t like this. A special session was called by the legislature to eliminate the laws which gave Disney ability to oversee its land management district. (Other districts were caught up in this as well.)

The problem is, this district has $1B to $2B in bonds that Disney was responsible for. Florida law requires the bonds to be assumed by counties when special districts are disbanded. Unless something else changes, the two counties Disney properties straddles are on the hook for this. It’s estimated it would increase the tax burden to over $2,000 for every resident in those counties.

To give you a sense of how quickly this moved, Disney’s CEO publicly came out against the law on March 9. Florida eliminated Disney’s special district this past week.

[sofixa]

> When the bill passed, Disney didn’t speak up

Note: Disney is a major sponsor of politicians in Florida (duh), so they were seen as approving of the bill ( because they were continuing to pay Florida politicians while they had significant leverage over them).

[hansthehorse]

Both counties that this bill screws over are solid blue. Orange was Biden by 23% and Osceola by 13%. Desantis has very little to lose here.

[lofatdairy]

I'm going to echo another comment and recommend reading the whole essay if possible to get a full picture.

In my opinion, point 3 is closely related to points 2, 4, and 11. Point 3 specifically notes that in fascism, thinking itself is emasculation - hence action taken without thinking, for its own sake. At least in Germany, we can see this rejection of thinking as a rejection of the intelligentsia and a perceived "elite" (which feeds into point 6). We can get a more full picture looking at points 2 and 4, which discusses the rejection of modernity to see that this rejection of thinking also derives from a fear that thinking can lead to criticism, and that this rational process leads to modernity and away from the traditionalist values often espoused by fascist leaders. The idea here is that to think isn't to improve action, it is to undermine society itself, and to identify the inherent contradictions and pointlessness within fascism. In a different direction, point 3's identification that thinking is _emasculating_ links to point 11's identification of fascism's cult of heroism and machismo. The aesthetic judgment thus becomes that the citizens of fascism do not need to think, and that there is only beauty in rushing into struggle.

In short, the cult of action for action's sake expresses Eco's identification of fascism as necessarily irrational, and thinking before acting would undermine this. Fascism also turns action outwards, at its many perceived enemies, glorifying violence as a means of self-perpetuation, and creating both a cult of action, and the citizens who take action.

[crowbahr]

I recommend reading the article which has more detail on each point.

That said the point of #3 is to act without consideration. A call to immediate and decisive action with no consideration of consequence.

See also: January 6th, armed occupation of state capitols etc

[rzzzt]

Sounds similar to the Politician's syllogism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism

[ineedasername]

Bruce Schneier I think captured the sentiment (without linking it directly to fascism) when commenting on what he calls security theater, especially in the wake of 9/11.

To paraphrase my recollection: "This is horrible but we don't know what to do! But we have to do something, and $X is something, therefore we have to do $X!"

[throw0101a]

> 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, from Goering's alleged statement ("When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," "universities are a nest of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

* https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

* https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/

* https://archive.ph/BKXAX

> "The cult of action for action's sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism#Umberto...

As I understand it (AIUI), don't bother thinking of the consequences or long-term effects, just get shit done. If one thinks Trump was an Ur-Fascist, it would be him ordering the border wall built—which turned out to be fairly useless.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_wall

[TeeMassive]

Aa an example, "direct action" often promoted by antifa

[minkowski]

Direct action is an anarchist/autonomist idea of changing things directly rather than petitioning the government (see Graeber, Direct Action: an ethnography). It has literally nothing to do with fascist (particularly Nazi -- see Klemperer, Lingua Tertii Imperii) ideals of anti-intellectualism or action for action's sake beyond the word "action".

[TeeMassive]

The people all dressed in black engaged in "direct action" seemed very fascistic to me.

[sethrin]

That's nice. I don't think that has anything to do with the actual definition of fascism, but I'm sure you feel like you have made a good point, and that's really special.

[TeeMassive]

What were brown shirts if not sociopaths given a de facto political pass?

[thriftwy]

A lot of these will manifest in any large company's software development department.