|
|
"Eternal Fascism"
In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, 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.
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 counterrevolutionary
Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era,
as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. 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. 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.
If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled 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.
Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped 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. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism. 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. 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. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. 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. 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. 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 United States, 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. 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 of Ur-Fascism must also
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. 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
"final solutions" 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. 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 in the world, the members or 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. 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 Spanish Falangists was Viva la Muerte ("Long Live
Death!"). In nonfascist 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. 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. 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.
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.
Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984,
as the official language of what he called 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.
Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for
us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz,
I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares." Life is not that
simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to
uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances -- every day, in every part
of the world. Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling:
"If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and
night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength
in our land." Freedom and liberation are an unending task.
Umberto Eco is a wrtier and professor of linguistics at the University of Bologna. This article was originally published in New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995.