Umberto Eco’s Ur Fascism definition I think is pretty good. Often times, the “dictionary definition” isn’t the best definition to use, especially when it comes to topics like political ideologies, which tends to be a bit more complex and nuanced than what can be encompassed in a simple colloquial dictionary definition.
Imma post the ur fascism aspects here.
1.“The cult of tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.
2.“The rejection of modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.
3.“The cult of action for action’s sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
4.“Disagreement is treason” – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.
5.“Fear of difference”, which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
6.“Appeal to a frustrated middle class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
7.“Obsession with a plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson’s book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
8.Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak”. On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
9.“Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” because “life is permanent warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.
10.“Contempt for the weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
10.“Everybody is educated to become a hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”
11.“Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality”.
12.“Selective populism” – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people”.
13.“Newspeak” – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.
Which dictionary are you reading? A key component of fascism is a dictatorship. You can argue about controlling oppositional voices or segmentation of society in the US, but a dictatorship is pretty core to fascism in any definition I’ve seen. And yeah, our voting system sucks that still doesn’t make it a dictatorship.
I like Umberto Eco on this one. I’m in my 50s. We’ve checked many of these boxes throughout my life, and for some others you can point to various moments in our history, many but not all of them recent. Certainly enough to satisfy the meme.
Yeah, those are traits of fascism, not a definition of fascism. Anyway, yeah the US has met many of them throughout its history. So has almost every other nation. The term is useless if you just call everyone fascist. The US has not met most of them at any one particular time. You can’t just take that list and say some traits were met in this period, some others in this other period, etc. and then say they covered all the traits at some point in time so must be fascist. That’s not how that works.
dictatorship was happening outside their own borders for the longest time. kind of why you guys pay so much money to keep a military almost bigger than every other in the world combined.
inside the us the blacks have seen the boot way more. ask any awake black person if its been a democracy for them.
or ask central, south america, africa and east asia if the repeated coups over the decades are anything less than dictatorial.
Yeah, that’s grasping really hard. Even if we assume the it isn’t a democracy because voting was unfair, it still isn’t a dictatorship because power was being passed around to different people. Also, outside has nothing to do with the definition of a dictatorship.
its not. look up your own history of installing brutal dictatorships in the aforementioned places.
and of bullying the third world into neoliberal capitalism with very exploitative terms or else. it doesnt matter we have “elections” if the us is the one always calling the shots.
Dude, that is not fascism. That’s imperialism. Those are totally different things and Fascists are not the only imperialists, nor are Fascists imperialist by definition. Fascism is something specific, not just “evil” government.
So I’ve had this issue too, it’s because we can’t agree on the definition.
I use the definition in the dictionary and based on that, US could fall under it, kind of loosely but technically correct.
Umberto Eco’s Ur Fascism definition I think is pretty good. Often times, the “dictionary definition” isn’t the best definition to use, especially when it comes to topics like political ideologies, which tends to be a bit more complex and nuanced than what can be encompassed in a simple colloquial dictionary definition.
Imma post the ur fascism aspects here.
1.“The cult of tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.
2.“The rejection of modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.
3.“The cult of action for action’s sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
4.“Disagreement is treason” – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.
5.“Fear of difference”, which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
6.“Appeal to a frustrated middle class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
7.“Obsession with a plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson’s book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
8.Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak”. On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
9.“Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” because “life is permanent warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.
10.“Contempt for the weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
10.“Everybody is educated to become a hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”
11.“Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality”.
12.“Selective populism” – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people”.
13.“Newspeak” – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.
Edit: numbered
I should have scrolled further before replying. IMO you nailed it. Umberto Eco is my go-to whenever this comes up.
I go straight to the horse’s mouth and take Mussolini’s definition, which is basically corporate capture of governance.
Which dictionary are you reading? A key component of fascism is a dictatorship. You can argue about controlling oppositional voices or segmentation of society in the US, but a dictatorship is pretty core to fascism in any definition I’ve seen. And yeah, our voting system sucks that still doesn’t make it a dictatorship.
I like Umberto Eco on this one. I’m in my 50s. We’ve checked many of these boxes throughout my life, and for some others you can point to various moments in our history, many but not all of them recent. Certainly enough to satisfy the meme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism#Umberto_Eco
https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html
Yeah, those are traits of fascism, not a definition of fascism. Anyway, yeah the US has met many of them throughout its history. So has almost every other nation. The term is useless if you just call everyone fascist. The US has not met most of them at any one particular time. You can’t just take that list and say some traits were met in this period, some others in this other period, etc. and then say they covered all the traits at some point in time so must be fascist. That’s not how that works.
dictatorship was happening outside their own borders for the longest time. kind of why you guys pay so much money to keep a military almost bigger than every other in the world combined.
inside the us the blacks have seen the boot way more. ask any awake black person if its been a democracy for them.
or ask central, south america, africa and east asia if the repeated coups over the decades are anything less than dictatorial.
Yeah, that’s grasping really hard. Even if we assume the it isn’t a democracy because voting was unfair, it still isn’t a dictatorship because power was being passed around to different people. Also, outside has nothing to do with the definition of a dictatorship.
its not. look up your own history of installing brutal dictatorships in the aforementioned places.
and of bullying the third world into neoliberal capitalism with very exploitative terms or else. it doesnt matter we have “elections” if the us is the one always calling the shots.
Dude, that is not fascism. That’s imperialism. Those are totally different things and Fascists are not the only imperialists, nor are Fascists imperialist by definition. Fascism is something specific, not just “evil” government.
they do implement fascism out here. both sides of the same coin.
fascists are the only ones to practice imperialism to nearly this extent after the industrial revolution.
How did you come to this conclusion? This is absolutely made up to make your argument seem stronger than it is.
who else
I was talking about the forceful oppression of opposition. That is an element that has existed in the US for a long time.
US has had no dictator yet but a president has much more power than a prime minister.
If you consider fascism to be a spectrum, then US has always had these elements. Dictatorship is basically the end of said spectrum.