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Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]

theanarchistlibrary.org

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Re: Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]

#41

Post by ceilingcorner »

frenchy wrote: post #38
ceilingcorner wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of the people throwing around the word fascist today have little to no understanding of what that political ideology means. The exact same situation happens with the word communist , excerpt with the roles reversed. Both are symptoms of falling educational levels, lack of historical knowledge, and an increasing drive to dehumanize and polarize the opposition.

If 99.9% of people missunderstand what a word means, then maybe it doesn't really mean what you think it does, or has no clear meaning at all. Webster didn't get his dictionary from a discrete meeting with some cave spirit.

Considering that the label of fascism is usually being used with reference the the Nazis (ironically almost never to the actual Italian fascists themselves - a symptom of the historical ignorance I mentioned), I’m gonna say yes, the word has a specific meaning.

Re: Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]

#42

Post by macintux »

kencausey wrote: post #6
airstrike wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. Do you just recall these off the top of your head or do you generally check each post that makes it to the front page, either manually or with a script?

Perhaps you haven't noticed the search field at the bottom of the page? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

The “past” link at the top is more convenient for this specific use case.

Re: Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]

#43

Post by dashwav »

api wrote: post #21

Something that for many years I've seen as "Ur-Fascist" in our culture is the popularity and continuous production of relatively vapid superhero movies. The majority of these are power fantasy porn, and like porn the only focus is really on the fetish and the orgasm. There's little characterization and little plot, and the villains are always cast as either pure evil or as a straw man representation of some other poi…

There was a really interesting paper [1] being circulated a bit last week in the circles I frequent on a few sites that dug a bit deeper into this. The villains are often very superficial and the consequences of the ensuing fight is very rarely shown in the movie itself, and if it is mentioned only in passing. There is this 'cleansliness' to the fight scenes that give you all of the enjoyment while removing any of the dirty human tragedies from the context.

Really interesting read, and something that I have thought about quite a few times while seeing how popular these movies are nowadays

[1] https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4...

Re: Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]

#44

Post by nytgop77 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #26
nebolo wrote: post #19

I returned to this essay when I saw the photo of the Jake Angeli in the Capitol - a Q-supporter wearing an Indian buffalo mask and a tattoo of Odin, storming the capitol alongside evangelical Christians. Relevant quote: 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. Ea…

Every religion is syncretic at some level. And being inspired by various incarnations of human religion is hardly a symptom of fascism. What an inane comment from an apparently well-educated writer.

There is a trend, where persons religion is treated as evidence of stupidity and root of evil. If it would have a name it would be called ultra-atheist.

Re: Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]

#45

Post by heavyset_go »

api wrote: post #34
thenewwazoo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many Americans view our federal government poorly, on both sides of the aisle One side believes that government can be, and should be, improved by collective effort. The other side believes government cannot be improved because government itself is per se bad. There is zero equivalence between the two.

The right is absolutely not anti-government. They're just against the use of government to disrupt existing hierarchies or interfere with tradition. For concrete proof look at Federal deficits and spending under right and left wing administrations, or the corresponding growth in the size and scope of government. There is at best no difference, and in a few cases government actually shrank in nominal terms under more…

> (This is why libertarians are neither left nor right.)

I'd have to say that the Americans that adopted the libertarian label are on the right, but the original anarchists for whom the term 'libertarian' was coined were on the left. That dichotomy is where the labels right-libertarian[1] and left-libertarian[2] were derived.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-libertarianism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism

Re: Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]

#46

Post by ahepp »

potta_coffee wrote: post #37
ceilingcorner wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of the people throwing around the word fascist today have little to no understanding of what that political ideology means. The exact same situation happens with the word communist , excerpt with the roles reversed. Both are symptoms of falling educational levels, lack of historical knowledge, and an increasing drive to dehumanize and polarize the opposition.

I don't understand what's controversial about your statement or why it's being downvoted.

Well, in the case of this particular piece, the very first lines are the author explaining that he was a member of the youth wing of the Italian fascist party. So it seems to me a strange context to complain about people who talk about fascism without knowing what it is.

Re: Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]

#47

Post by BEEdwards »

Brendinooo wrote: post #33

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…

>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.

It's not the amalgamations, it's that that is the end of it.

To create an illustrator straw man

They say: All knowledge is already written and we just need to recombine it in new ways.

You say: Ah but here is a criticism of that, using new or different sources

They say: Those don't count we know all we need to know, everything know is already written.

Re: Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]

#48

Post by RIMR »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #36
Brendinooo wrote: post #33

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…

99.9% of the people throwing around the word fascist today have little to no understanding of what that political ideology means. The exact same situation happens with the word communist , excerpt with the roles reversed. Both are symptoms of falling educational levels, lack of historical knowledge, and an increasing drive to dehumanize and polarize the opposition.

If only 0.1% of people agree with your definition of fascism, maybe you're the one with the incorrect definition.

Re: Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]

#49

Post by RIMR »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #41
frenchy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 99.9% of people missunderstand what a word means, then maybe it doesn't really mean what you think it does, or has no clear meaning at all. Webster didn't get his dictionary from a discrete meeting with some cave spirit.

Considering that the label of fascism is usually being used with reference the the Nazis (ironically almost never to the actual Italian fascists themselves - a symptom of the historical ignorance I mentioned), I’m gonna say yes, the word has a specific meaning.

You say "actual Italian fascists" as if the Nazi party wasn't "actually fascist".

I would say it's pretty clear that you're the one with the poor understanding of fascism.

Re: Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]

#50

Post by trynumber9 »

api wrote: post #21

Something that for many years I've seen as "Ur-Fascist" in our culture is the popularity and continuous production of relatively vapid superhero movies. The majority of these are power fantasy porn, and like porn the only focus is really on the fetish and the orgasm. There's little characterization and little plot, and the villains are always cast as either pure evil or as a straw man representation of some other poi…

It's interesting you say that because 4chan is in general very critical of "capeshit" as they call it.

https://boards.4chan.org/search#/capeshit

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