In reading Charlie Stross' great post on transhumanism and the dangers of fascist influence, he linked to this Umberto Eco essay from 1995 warning of the rise of modern day fascism. I see a lot of overlap between Eco's warning and today's politics of power. How much of the current push from the right wing can be attributed to Ur-Fascism, and how do we push back?
I've included a few quotes from the essay, but it really is worth going to read on your own.
The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.
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.
Eco uses the above to rail against New Agism. But I see the current outcry against showing President Obama's talk to school children in actual schools. Heaven's forbid that children actually learn something while in school or be challenged to.
There is certainly quite a bit of contradictory messages in the right wing's shrill cries against health care reform. But they only need to keep shouting out and drowning out reasonable debate in order to push their fascist agenda.
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.
I'm immediately brought back to Kos' weekly posting of the hate mail he receives. Those letters contain the exact same expressions as Eco lists. Today's right wing is at war against culture. Not just left wing culture, but anything that's seen as intellectual or technological progress.
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.
This should be a huge warning sign to the White House. Buy not addressing the frustrations and concerns of the middle class during this economic crisis they're creating a new core of members for the right wing. Read Robert Reich here. Reich understands the causes behind the widening gap between the rich and the poor (and formerly middle class). It's stagnant wages, rising cost of health care, unbalanced tax loads, etc. We need answers to all these sooner rather than later for every day another couple hundred families falls through the safety net and into the welcoming arguments of the Ur-Facsists.
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. ... 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.
I think it's pretty clear this is happening today. Look at Bachmanm and Palin (to name a few) and the way they imply that our current form of government doesn't represent the people. Look at the recent video of Al Franken confronting people who are delusional about the opinions of the people who elected Franken and urge him to not use reason, but rather, follow their jackbooted thoughts.
This ties into Newspeak, as well.
For those who wonder, I'm not taking use of the word Fascist lightly. I don't see groups of brownshirts hanging on corners and I don't even think Bush's illegal war and torture policies rise to the level of fascism. But there does need to be a groundwork laid for fascists to take power and I do see the outline of that highway going down right now.
So I urge you to keep an eye out for those who would like us to bend to their will, whose philosophy is my way or the highway, and who fit into Umberto Eco's outlines of Ur-Fascism. We have to continue to shine a light on their methods and the truth behind their actions. We can't afford to travel much farther down the path that they want us to be on.