I'm Not A Fascist, But

 

... would we even recognise it for what it is, these days? 

I like Eco's thinking, and have followed it through the Rose, the Pendulum, and Numero and have sort of nibbled at the other four books and I'm aware he has some 20-30 nonfiction works at least, (Actually, here's a biblio of Eco.) I remember reading The Name Of The Rose after whetting my appetite with Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code (And here are his books) had my interest all piqued, and my father suggested I might like to read a "better class of fiction" as he called it. It was, I found and read Foucault's Pendulum and then started opportunistically picking up Eco books in libraries whenever I lived near one.

Now there's a piece on OpenCulture about Eco's experiences with fascism and I've extracted the fourteen features of fascism according to Eco:

1. The cult of tradition. “One 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.”
2. 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. 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.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “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.”
5. 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. Appeal to social frustration. “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. The obsession with a plot. “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.”
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
13. Selective populism. “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.”

This abridged list (available in full at The New York Review of Books) comes to us from Kottke, by way of blogger Paul Bausch, who writes “we have a strong history of opposing authoritarianism. I’d like to believe that opposition is like an immune system response that kicks in.” -- 

https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html 

And the article is right - we've satirised Fascism so much in the last decades that it's no longer clear what Fascism is - so how can we even guard against it? It's a hot button topic for me, not because I have a history of bad experiences with Fascism but because I (and you and a large chunk of the world) are dealing with Fascist governments and treatment right now. Pick any of the 14 points above and then compare it with your government and politicians - and then get ready for that cold shiver . . .

Because no one of those points comes into our lives alone, but seeing just one of them should be enough to get your Spidey senses tingling. VERY tingly. Not a single one of those listed signs is good for society, for wellbeing, or for peaceful living. 

Tradition.
I can't even count how often right wing politicians bring out tradition as a reason for a particular action, a certain Law they want passed, or as a defence against some imagined evil about to pounce and destroy society. Their idea of a society, at any rate. Ironically enough, our RW party is opposing the indigenous population's having a voice in Parliament to allow their traditions to continue. "It's a disaster! We'll all be back to living in caves and throwing boomerangs if they have their way!" seems to be about as good as it gets.

BTW I've made and thrown boomerangs after listening to and practising with my indigenous schoolmates way back last century, I know how to fend for myself if I have to - and I then spent a good life getting into technology, electronics, communications, IT, newspaper publishing, community radio, and everything I'm doing nowadays. And I can still make a spear or boomerang and probably use it... 

But of course OUR tradition is far more traditional than any tradition THEY could have. Mum, beer, and meat pies, mate - 'Straya was founded on those!

Rejection of Modernism
Oh wow have I ever landed on the wrong side of the Fascists there, hey? I live for tech and tech solutions. I think science on the whole makes life much much better, I think people are coping better with the technology to manage their lives and environments, and - eventually - figure out how to manage their lives with it.

"If only we could go back to the good old days!" is their plaint, but take away: the guns and the medicine - oh and the safe water and food, the housing that wasn't freezing and damp in winter and hot and filled with wildlife in summer - and you'll have a riot on your hands.

Interestingly enough this is also A Thing with some non-Fascist people now too - I'm working on an article about AI, GPT, AGI, the Arts, and the future of work in general. Because this new advance is the work of the devil. Or Fascists. No not those Fascists, these fascists. No, not like that. Nazis. Or something.

But let's have mining and factories and land clearing because we want to have money to buy the latest technology. But then let's not get that latest technology - because who knows where that'll end? Look at how destructive disastrous and polluting mining and power generation are - this new tech stuff may end up being wayyyyy woooorrrrse! Augh!

Action, Not Thinking
This is pretty self-evident. And stupid. If we'd thought more about (for the sake of being current, let's use the example of) AI, and GPT in particular before acting to make money off it hand over fist but before we've even thought about how that was going to affect us, maybe we wouldn't be in this situation where no-one really knows anything, no-one knows what's next, and no-one thought about consequences.

But the same applied to DNA, GM, encryption, surveillance, and a host of other technologies where the most Left-wing of inventors and scientists started getting dollar signs in their eyes and said "you know what? Fuck it, we'll make a few bucks and then a few more cleaning up the mess!" and with that they slipped silently across the Divide... 

It's the Geeks/Jocks situation, just with more grown-up names . 

The next two are related -
Disagreement is treason, especially when it's
Us and Them and They're different. 
This is what every cult, every religion, and every ruling class has relied on, it's us and our way or them and treason, where do you stand? Boomerangs or submarines? Come on, you have to decide if we keep you or kill you!

And that's the other aspect of Fascism - there's really no "us" or "them." Everyone else is a "them." In the end I'll kill everyone in town, then in my church group, then my family - before they get me. Because that's another aspect of Fascismo - it's very insecure and afraid. 

Social Frustration
Why do some of the girls prefer smart geeks to me? I'm a great physical specimen, I can (or already have) father lots of kids and not sick around for any of them - hey! - I'm a gift to the planet's gene pool! Whaddya mean what's the square root of nine? Are you having a shot at me, other person? One a these days, mate. I promise ya a knuckle sammich. 

Also, I am a goddamn bonafide HERO. That's what it means to be a Fascists RW guy. So that includes the Everybody is educated to become a hero part of the signs, too.

And it also explains the obsession with a plot part.
Life's tough, it's way tougher if you're stupid. Therefore, it's hard to work out if someone's on your side or not - better to assume that everyone including your family might just be against you. Including you, other person... I got my eye on you...

The enemy is both strong and weak.
And you never know just how good the other person is. You ridicule them for being weak but at the same time if you're bullying them then they're a "worthy and skillful opponent" so that you can't be seen as a bully. 

Don't ever give an inch, stay strong!
The next plank. You can't make peace, you just have to keep on punchin' on. That's the next thing. Don't stop being against that other, because if you stop, you might have to talk, and if you talk, there's a chance that this clever and powerful enemy will gain the upper hand over you or at least point out to you how stupid and pitiful you actually are. And yeah - they'd totally do that, totally. They're other, ya know?

Of course, at the same time as drumming up protection against that enemy that's both to be pitied and yet is stronger than you are and might bully you if you let them, don't ever cut any slack for the weaker people in your camp. Contempt for the weak. But not us - no, we're not weak, just that the other might be stronger than us and they'd surely show us no mercy so we need to weed out the weeds. Hehehe - geddit? Geddit? 

Machismo and weaponry.
Yes, Fascism seems also to be ideally suited to males. Funny thing that, seeing as how males have since almost forever been the ones that take charge and denigrate and depersonalise all others. Yes there've been matriarchal societies but we're not living in a time like that. Also - weapons are the only real way to generate money and progress in other technologies, and money is important in the current time because we haven't yet managed to get back to intrinsic values yet. 

Selective populism. 
Vox pops are a fairly recent thing (TV as a concept has only been around for a century and a half, and has only had wide reach for maybe the last sixty or seventy years) and purport to represent the Vox Populi but through exerting control over the media you can control just which vox pops hit the airwaves. As has been demonstrated over and over, how you present a scene affects how the audience perceives it, so you have in effect an always-on propaganda publishing facility. 

Ur-Fascist Newspeak. 
And with this, that explains commercials and news and most sitcoms and soaps perfectly does it not? "This is how WE live, this is what we consider NORMAL, and this is how we expect YOU to behave too. Or become the other."

That's a wrap?

I don't know. There's such a lot tied up in this - it's how our governments keep acting even as they condemn Fascists in other countries - and that right there should already be a warning sign flashing on the page. (Oh how I miss the blink attribute...😹)

The thing with AI, AGI, GPT, Art, Work.

We don't learn. A few smart people realise there's an issue and try to raise awareness, but it gets swallowed up in opposing propaganda. Then when it's obvious there are gonna be some changes due to the new issue, everyone loses their minds, but by then the genie's out the bottle the cat's out the bag and the horse has bolted. 

So now the thing with AI, AGI, GPT, Art, and Work.

People who weren't in the know on the progress being made in AI (which includes almost everyone except the people doing AI and a few diehard geeks) can't have foreseen the schemozzle that it's causing. And some of the people involved probably had good intentions and high morals. But it only takes a firing, or a very aggressive boss pulling you aside and laying down the law, to make things spin out of control. 

Those of us watching it happen - I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally found it to be a Good Thing. But I'm an idealist, a peace-mongering hippie, and I tend to believe that people are smart enough to manage. 

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