Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]
This has been making the rounds lately, and the use of it hasn't sat well with me. I've struggled to articulate why; gonna try to do so here.The analysis is good, and finally getting to see the original source is better, because what tends to get circulated is way more reductive than this. But it seems like the list gets wielded in a way to stick the 'fascist' label on someone, and not much else.If someone hits 12 of the 14 markers, does that make him a fascist? What about six, or three, or one? Am I 1/14 fascist because I critique various aspects of modernism?To the extent they someone does match the list, all that really does is note that he'd match the characteristics of a few governments in the early 20th century. But that's only one kind of totalitarianism, and obsessive focus on it allows other kinds to slip through the cracks.> 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 contra-
dictions. 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.This is a bit ironic, no? He's amalgamating aspects of different cultures into a generalized descriptor of a culture that's still being referenced decades later.