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

They seem to have an axe to grind against syncretic cultures like India’s “Ganga-Jamni tehzeeb” and Eco in particular is conflating it with behavior of people like Savitri Devi

Essentially, you have the answer already. Since actual Nazis are still very much a highly relevant cultural reference, there is not yet enough inertia for Nazi to become a generic term. Conversely, since few care about Italian fascism, the need is not felt.

The difference here is that this is not something that an intervention can fix, unless it could somehow compete with decades of cultural interactions and signifiers from billions of people. It's not a case of containing anything: that's essentially an anthropomorphization similar to seeing evolution as having intent. That is why the idea of wanting to educate people in the hopes of enforcing "correct" wording is fundamentally flawed because it has almost nothing to do with how words actually change or stay the same.

> The calls for revolution just seem like role-play to me. I just don't hear this sort of rhetoric being voiced by people actually doing the work of advancing progressive political causes.

That’s sort of how I felt as well before the BLM riots and various antifa violence (no, not all antifa or BLM protesters are violent). To be honest I think I’m more concerned about the people who implicitly or explicitly condoned the violence than the violence itself. Indeed, I think that suggested to the Capitol Hill rioters that political violence was no longer out-of-bounds; rather, it was legitimate and necessary.

> Maybe it's easier for me to dismiss the illiberalism on the left because I genuinely am not exposed to that much of it.

I am sympathetic to this. With cable news and now social media we’re all being “bubbled” according to what Twitter et al thinks will keep us most engaged, and it’s hard to know how skewed our information stream really is. I’m certainly concerned about my own bubble, and I try to limit the threat of bias by subscribing to a diverse stream of content rather than letting the likes of Twitter curate for me.

> I feel the same way about the behavior of the right in recent months.

I agree. I think the right followed the left’s lead after the media, the academy, silicon valley, Hollywood, and virtually every other prominent cultural institution either condoned or ignored the violence over the summer. It often feels like the left makes/changes the rules and the right reacts/follows suit—with respect to moral relativism, epistemological relativism, in civility, and most recently political violence. I think it’s this perception that the left “leads” the cycle (by way of dominance over the aforementioned influential institutions) that draws my criticism leftward (although I take care to avoid being unduly lenient to the right).

> Yeah pretty much. I believe fascism is gaining political traction. I'm concerned about the increasing militancy of white nationalist groups and the significant number of people in the US who think the election was stolen.

I sympathize and to an extent I agree. The critical difference I think is that I see the rise of the extreme right as a direct consequence of the rise of the extreme left. I don’t think we’ll have much success re-marginalizing the right so long as we continue to condone and tolerate bad behavior on the left. I think we need to reestablish non-partisan norms of honesty, civility, and non-violence and consistently enforce breaches of those ethics whether from the right or the left. I think our double-standard is a powerful driver of the radicalization of the right, and until we correct it, I fear socially censuring the right will only fuel their persecution narrative and bolster their ranks. This is a long-winded way of saying that reigning in the far left feels like a prerequisite to reigning in the far-right. Of course, I remain vigilant to the possibility that I’m wrong.

I think it was one of The Exiled writers -- John Dolan, Matt Tiabi, or Mark Ames -- who said something to the effect of:

"All nationalism is, by definition, wounded."

You're either avenging a real or perceived loss, humiliation, or simply taking umbrage at the fact the world isn't kneeling to you as deeply as it should; "Make America Great Again".

Oh I'm not backing BLM, or Antifa particularly, there are those among them who are very far beyond the pale. I'm not even particularly going to pick sides as to which is more violent. I think it's 9 people that have been killed in BLM protests, although several of them were BLM protesters themselves. There's blood on people's hands on all sides, and I don't think there are even just 2 sides here.

The question is really about objectives. The BLM movement isn't fundamentally anti-democratic or revolutionary, it's reformist. Whether Trump explicitly incited violence I think is questionable for example, his incitement was reckless but personally I don't think it was criminal (Giuliani on the other hand...).

The core issue IMHO is the democratic process. Trump launched a deliberate, pre-meditated all out attack on the democratic process in America, and overturning that process was the explicit goal of the Capitol attack. He has made zero credible effort at electoral reform, if he can't win democratically he is entirely comfortably with winning undemocratically and so are a very, very large swathe of his supporters. This is the fact that cannot be dismissed withwhataboutist finger pointing.