Ur-Fascism

tags

Fascism

Notes

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freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.

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for the young Americans who were paying with their blood for our restored freedom it meant something to know that behind the firing lines there were Europeans paying their own debt in advance.

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We are here to remember what happened and solemnly say that "They" must not do it again. But who are They?

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fighting against Hitler in the Forties was a moral duty for every good American, but fighting against Franco too early, in the Thirties, smelled sour because it was mainly done by Communists and other leftists.

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The national poet was D'Annunzio, a dandy who in Germany or in Russia would have been sent to the firing squad.

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It was not that the men of the party were tolerant of radical thinking, but few of them had the intellectual equipment to control it.

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Fascism was philosophically out of joint, but emotionally it was firmly fastened to some archetypal foundations.

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outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism.

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

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2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.

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The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

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3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.

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Thinking is a form of emasculation.

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4. […] For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

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5. […] Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference.

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6. 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,

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7. […] obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.

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8. […] 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.

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9. 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.

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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. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism.

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there cannot be patricians without plebeians.

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11. 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.

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

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

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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.

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Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction.

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14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

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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.

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Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

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