Fascism is a fairly difficult concept to define, the more so since the word itself is so widely used to attack any idea. Orwell summed up the matter well as long ago as 1944:

It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.

Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.

But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.
["What is Fascism?" George Orwell]

Umberto Eco, however, has also published a list of 14 elements of [Ur-]fascism that are deductive. This is not automatically superior to Britt's inductive essay, of course, since one usually has to determine rules about categories before one can apply those rules to a category. However, I think that Britt's attributes are generally too vague and too similar to merely reactionary, dysfunctional political institutions to be very successful as a deductive analysis of fascist states. They may be the foundations of a follow-up, deductive work (in which, say, Britt speculates on the future of fascism). Eco's work is different in approach. Eco assumes readers are aware of the existence of a well-established body of literature on the workings of known fascist regimes. The nature of fascist regimes in power is well-known, even if not necessarily to the reader. Eco then analyzes the root of fascism, the Urspracht of fascism—hence, "Ur-fascism."

1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.

   The cult of tradition, in its nascent form, is a mystery cult such as those that flourished in the Mediterranian region after the decline of the Classical polities (e.g., Athens, Corinth, and Syracuse). These cults were highly similar, according to both the linked Wikipedia article and Eco.

   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.

   Interestingly enough, the anxiousness of the believers to recover this ancient religion led them to insist all the revelations contained a part of the truth—the whole truth, unto which nothing could be added. Eco uses this theme as the plot and rhetorical vehicle of his erudite thriller, The Name of the Rose (Wiki).
2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism
   

   Eco emphasizes the rejection of modern outlook of the fascists, even as they embraced modern technology:

   The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

   Modernism includes questioning view of common civil goals, either those generally nurturing (such as mass education) or those that are generally aggressive (such as militarism). This explains in part why even very kindhearted, motherly personalities can embrace Ur-fascism.
3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake
   

   Ur-fascism glories in action above all.

   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.

   Hence, Ur-fascism as a thought-impulse, despises the whole process of reason or acting on the basis of objective facts. Paradoxically, Ur-fascism declares itself hard-nosed and fact-oriented. It is, however, not the objective fact but the accomplished fact that Ur-fascism respects. Even outcomes of its own deeds are irrelevant, because it is at once in pursuit of another action to commit.
4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism
   

   Eco emphasizes the clash between Ur-fascism and science; Ur-fascism regards disagreement as treason, whereas disagreement (and falsification through discovery) are the engine of scientific progress. More cogently, the process of formulating an explanatory paradigm of any kind requires the dialectic method of drawing distinctions. For example, if one wishes to understand why some stars move with the earth's rotation, while others have far more complicated motions, it is necessary to make distinctions between the two types of stars (leading to some being known as "planets," or "wanderers," and others being known as the fixed stars. This is a crucial part of modernism.

5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity
   Eco:

   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.

   This is also a component of conventional conservative thought, but it is not the only one. Conservatives tend to believe in the importance of eternal verities that transcend differences; hence, the exasperation with efforts to alter basic sexual or social habits that are supposedly "timeless." Ur-fascism, on the other hand, sees the differences as so profound that the timeless verities apply only to the group of "truly human" people. The others, such as members of other "races," are truly alien.
6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration
   

   Eco says Ur-fascism appeals to "a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups." I'll discuss this in the next post.

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
   

   Eco then argues that this, an expression of nationalism, requires an external enemy. There must be an alien enemy, such as Soviet Communists for the USA, but also a fifth column, such as Communist infiltrators in the State Department. Ordinary conservatives are likely to admire other, more traditional societies, too much for this to describe them well.

8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies



Eco cites the examples of Italian pre-war resentment of the English, as pampered and soft. However, the English were imagined to control everything. Likewise, fascist ideologies include a conspiratorial backbone that allows them to impute infinite powers to their disciplined and well-endowed enemies.

9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle
   

   Another core idea of ur-fascism is that life is all about eternal warfare. However, war is about drama and victory. With victory, the fascist ideologue promises release from danger. But when victory comes, a new enemy needs to be identified. The final "victory" poses dangers to the fascist regime that are only resolved by turning inward on the population; total victory, otherwise, would mean an end to eternal warfare. Eco thinks this is a problem for fascist regimes.

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
    This intended to unite points 8 and 9 with 3: humiliation at being defeated and useless, the sense of redemption through the group, and the mania for the accomplished fact. One who is merely conservative will revere attributes like piety or wisdom, but Ur-fascism respects violent conquest, triumph, and the clear proof of superiority through victory. Hence, in 1984, absolutely everything is named "victory" despite the fact that there can never be such a thing. There might be some sense in this if war consisted of an endless set of arm-wrestling championships, but the cruel scorn for the defeated is no different for those whose nation conquers with massively superior firepower and size, and whose only role in the victory is to prefer the winner. This lack of any basis for pride in the nation's victories probably explains their lipsmacking bloodthirstiness.

11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero
    

    Eco mentions the Spanish falange praise of death (¡Viva la Muerte!); Ur-fascism, he argues, seeks to have heroism become commonplace. A twist to this is that the Ur-fascist, by embracing the death of a hero in battle, also embraces defeat (and therefore, scorn). So the Ur-fascist dreams of perishing in a huge mountain of enemy dead. The only survivors would be comrades, which is why comradeship is so extreme a theme in Nazi art as to be borderline homoerotic.

12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters
    

    In other words, the heroism and scorn for the weak is inflicted on women; women who embrace Ur-fascism may find being "conquered" sexy. Or they may find the consequences of not going along unbearable. Either way, this makes both sex and violence a game, a mock version of the other.

13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say
    

    Eco:

    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.

    This is the narrowly political manifestion of ur-fascism.
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak
    

    Newspeak is the language created in Orwell's 1984, although the phenomenon obviously antedates the novel (published 1949). It is a mutilation of language that eliminates most ideas and most words. With an extremely small, plaintive vocabulary, nuance between what the speaker wants and what the regime wants, is impossible.

As we'll see in my next post, there are some shortcomings to this list also.

(Part 2)

[Fascism] [Totalitarianism]

SEE ALSO: D. Neiwert (Orcinus), "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism, II" (HTML); download whole document in PDF. I just reread the article and was stunned at how excellent it was; I'd quite forgotten how good it was. Among other things, Niewert does an amazing job of tying together the various rival understandings of what fascism is and how it is differentiated from totalitarianism.

While reading Prof. Britt's article ("14 Attributes of Fascism"), I was a bit frustrated at the comparatively arbitrary choices of focus; Britt's points are well taken, but he could just have easily made the essay include twenty points or ten. Moreover, Britt lumps fascist regimes with general state dysfunction, particularly emphasizing dysfunction peculiar to the United States.

Lufe God abufe al and yi nychtbour as yi self

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God...Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
[Matthew 22:37ff]