(urth) Definitions of 'Fascism'

maru marudubshinki at gmail.com
Fri Apr 1 19:08:13 PST 2005


That was great!

I'd have to say, I think that whatever is in Dune, it ain't fascism, since
Dune fails some of the traits mentioned. 'Elitist', 'oppressive' 
'contemptous of the masses
and averages' maybe. But not 'fascist'.
By my count, Dune fails 1, 5, 7, 14, 11 and probably 3 tho' that one is 
more debatable.

~Maru

Jason Willard wrote:

> Hope this isn't too long!
> Robert O. Paxton in his book The Anatomy of Fascism says: "Fascism may 
> be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive 
> preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and 
> by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a 
> mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy 
> but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons 
> democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without 
> ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external 
> expansion."
> Roger Griffin defines fascism as "a genus of political ideology whose 
> mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of 
> populist ultranationalism."
>
> Umberto Eco lists the following 14 traits of 'ur-fascism':
> "...But in spite of this fuzziness, 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 counter-revolutionary Catholic thought after the French 
> revolution, but it was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction 
> to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of 
> different religions (most of them 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 silver of wisdom, and whenever they 
> seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all 
> are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.
>
> As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has 
> been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep 
> interpreting its obscure message.
>
> 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. The most influential 
> theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius 
> Evola, merged the Holy Grail with /The Protocols of the Elders of 
> Zion/, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. The very fact 
> that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently 
> broadened its syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and 
> Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism.
>
> If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled 
> as 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 worshiped 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, but it mainly 
> concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of 
> course). 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, 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.
>
> 4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. 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 for 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 US, 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 must 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 a "final solution" 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 
> of the world, the members of 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. Since the group is hierarchically organized (according to a 
> military model), every subordinate leader despises his own underlings, 
> and each of them despises his inferiors. This reinforces the sense of 
> mass elitism.
>
> 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 
> Falangists was /Viva la Muerte/ (in English it should be translated as 
> "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. To have a good instance of 
> qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or 
> the Nuremberg Stadium. 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/. One of the first sentences 
> uttered by Mussolini in the Italian parliament was "I could have 
> transformed this deaf and gloomy place into a bivouac for my 
> maniples"—"maniples" being a subdivision of the traditional Roman 
> legion. As a matter of fact, he immediately found better housing for 
> his maniples, but a little later he liquidated the parliament. 
> 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 
> /1984/, as the official language of 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..."
>
> So, I don't know if this particular word, 'fascism', is the one we 
> want to be using so frequently... or we should at least be more aware 
> of its subtleties.
>




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