Hello to you all
Just finished reading Hobsbawm's Ages series and in the "Age of Extremes" he mentions that while Leftist ideas still dominated the Arts and the cultural scenes in Europe (unlike the US where leftists were still a minority until after WWII) after WWI a strong fascist undercurrent was growing steadily across the continents and even all over the world. I already knew about Heidegger but that was it (20th century philosophy is not my strongest field). Can some one list other prominent artists and authors who were strongly or moderately pro-fascist in Europe and in the US?
Intellectuals of Fascism
Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
Well, Henry Ford for one 
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Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
Ford was hardly an artist or (creative) author.
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Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
Ezra Pound.
Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
Only seven years older than Ezra - Hanns Johst.
Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Futurism that was both an artistic-cultural movement and initially a political movement in Italy led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti who founded the Futurist Manifesto (1908), that championed the causes of modernism, action, and political violence as necessary elements of politics while denouncing liberalism and parliamentary politics. Marinetti rejected conventional democracy based on majority rule and egalitarianism, for a new form of democracy, promoting what he described in his work "The Futurist Conception of Democracy" as the following: "We are therefore able to give the directions to create and to dismantle to numbers, to quantity, to the mass, for with us number, quantity and mass will never be—as they are in Germany and Russia—the number, quantity and mass of mediocre men, incapable and indecisive".
Futurism influenced fascism in its emphasis on recognizing the virile nature of violent action and war as being necessities of modern civilization.Marinetti promoted the need of physical training of young men, saying that in male education, gymnastics should take precedence over books, and he advocated segregation of the genders on this matter, in that womanly sensibility must not enter men's education whom Marinetti claimed must be "lively, bellicose, muscular and violently dynamic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
In early 1918 he founded the Partito Politico Futurista or Futurist Political Party, which only a year later merged with Benito Mussolini's Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. Marinetti was one of the first affiliates of the Italian Fascist Party. In 1919 he co-wrote with Alceste De Ambris the Fascist Manifesto, the original manifesto of Italian Fascism. He opposed Fascism's later exaltation of existing institutions, terming them "reactionary," and, after walking out of the 1920 Fascist party congress in disgust, withdrew from politics for three years. However, he remained a notable force in developing the party philosophy throughout the regime's existence. For example, at the end of the Congress of Fascist Culture that was held in Bologna on 30 March 1925, Giovanni Gentile addressed Sergio Panunzio on the need to define Fascism more purposefully by way of Marinetti's opinion, stating, "Great spiritual movements make recourse to precision when their primitive inspirations—what F. T. Marinetti identified this morning as artistic, that is to say, the creative and truly innovative ideas, from which the movement derived its first and most potent impulse—have lost their force. We today find ourselves at the very beginning of a new life and we experience with joy this obscure need that fills our hearts—this need that is our inspiration, the genius that governs us and carries us with it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Tommaso_Marinetti
Futurism that was both an artistic-cultural movement and initially a political movement in Italy led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti who founded the Futurist Manifesto (1908), that championed the causes of modernism, action, and political violence as necessary elements of politics while denouncing liberalism and parliamentary politics. Marinetti rejected conventional democracy based on majority rule and egalitarianism, for a new form of democracy, promoting what he described in his work "The Futurist Conception of Democracy" as the following: "We are therefore able to give the directions to create and to dismantle to numbers, to quantity, to the mass, for with us number, quantity and mass will never be—as they are in Germany and Russia—the number, quantity and mass of mediocre men, incapable and indecisive".
Futurism influenced fascism in its emphasis on recognizing the virile nature of violent action and war as being necessities of modern civilization.Marinetti promoted the need of physical training of young men, saying that in male education, gymnastics should take precedence over books, and he advocated segregation of the genders on this matter, in that womanly sensibility must not enter men's education whom Marinetti claimed must be "lively, bellicose, muscular and violently dynamic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
In early 1918 he founded the Partito Politico Futurista or Futurist Political Party, which only a year later merged with Benito Mussolini's Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. Marinetti was one of the first affiliates of the Italian Fascist Party. In 1919 he co-wrote with Alceste De Ambris the Fascist Manifesto, the original manifesto of Italian Fascism. He opposed Fascism's later exaltation of existing institutions, terming them "reactionary," and, after walking out of the 1920 Fascist party congress in disgust, withdrew from politics for three years. However, he remained a notable force in developing the party philosophy throughout the regime's existence. For example, at the end of the Congress of Fascist Culture that was held in Bologna on 30 March 1925, Giovanni Gentile addressed Sergio Panunzio on the need to define Fascism more purposefully by way of Marinetti's opinion, stating, "Great spiritual movements make recourse to precision when their primitive inspirations—what F. T. Marinetti identified this morning as artistic, that is to say, the creative and truly innovative ideas, from which the movement derived its first and most potent impulse—have lost their force. We today find ourselves at the very beginning of a new life and we experience with joy this obscure need that fills our hearts—this need that is our inspiration, the genius that governs us and carries us with it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Tommaso_Marinetti
Greetings from the Wide Brown.
Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
I have posted this before, elsewhere on the forum, but I think it is timely to do so again.
Umberto Eco was not active in the early 20th century, but his thoughts give some direction to any discussion on fascism.
Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt
By Umberto Eco
Writing in New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp.12-15. Excerpted in Utne Reader, November-December 1995, pp. 57-59.
The following version follows the text and formatting of the Utne Reader article, and in addition, makes the first sentence of each numbered point a statement in bold type. Italics are in the original.
For the full article, consult the New York Review of Books, purchase the full article online; or purchase Eco's new collection of essays: Five Moral Pieces.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
* * *
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
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, 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, 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 (c) 1995
http://umbertoecoreaders.blogspot.com.a ... ys-of.html
Umberto Eco was not active in the early 20th century, but his thoughts give some direction to any discussion on fascism.
Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt
By Umberto Eco
Writing in New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp.12-15. Excerpted in Utne Reader, November-December 1995, pp. 57-59.
The following version follows the text and formatting of the Utne Reader article, and in addition, makes the first sentence of each numbered point a statement in bold type. Italics are in the original.
For the full article, consult the New York Review of Books, purchase the full article online; or purchase Eco's new collection of essays: Five Moral Pieces.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
* * *
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
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, 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, 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 (c) 1995
http://umbertoecoreaders.blogspot.com.a ... ys-of.html
Greetings from the Wide Brown.
-
British Sapper
- Member
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Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
Mascagni was a follower of Mussolinis movement IIRC. His 'Cavalleria rusticana' is divine in my opinion.AJFFM wrote:Hello to you all
Can some one list other prominent artists and authors who were strongly or moderately pro-fascist in Europe and in the US?
Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
Interesting article although I think Mr. Eco goes dangerously too far in his analysis.
It seems that the Futurist movement of all modern literary movements has the lion's share of fascists in its ranks which is odd for a movement that looks positively at innovation and destruction of traditional ways to be associated with a movement that bases its legitimacy on the "old ways".
It seems that the Futurist movement of all modern literary movements has the lion's share of fascists in its ranks which is odd for a movement that looks positively at innovation and destruction of traditional ways to be associated with a movement that bases its legitimacy on the "old ways".
Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
Eco does admit that his list of attributes is often contradictory. This of course is because of the nature of fascism rather than any fault in his analysis.AJFFM wrote:
It seems that the Futurist movement of all modern literary movements has the lion's share of fascists in its ranks which is odd for a movement that looks positively at innovation and destruction of traditional ways to be associated with a movement that bases its legitimacy on the "old ways".
"dangerously" ?Interesting article although I think Mr. Eco goes dangerously too far in his analysis.
Perhaps you might illustrate your meaning.
Cheers
Max
Greetings from the Wide Brown.
Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
What I meant by that is that while his analysis does cover all aspects of fascist though one might get the impression that if a different ideology shares those aspects with fascism Mr. Eco labels those ideologies as fascist. Not that Mr. Eco himself labels those different ideologies as fascist.
Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals [Italian]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto ... ellectuals
French Fascist Intellectuals
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2 ... 7536&uid=4
Alain de Benoist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_Benoist
Fascism - miscellaneous
http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/view ... p?t=130230
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto ... ellectuals
French Fascist Intellectuals
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2 ... 7536&uid=4
Alain de Benoist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_Benoist
Fascism - miscellaneous
http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/view ... p?t=130230
Greetings from the Wide Brown.
-
Alixanther
- Member
- Posts: 411
- Joined: 04 Oct 2003, 05:26
- Location: Romania
Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
I agree with AJFFM, Umberto Eco - in the article above - is simply "transferring" everything he sees as a "bad image" to a "fascist prototype". As if, "everything bad is fascist and everything fascist is bad."AJFFM wrote:What I meant by that is that while his analysis does cover all aspects of fascist though one might get the impression that if a different ideology shares those aspects with fascism Mr. Eco labels those ideologies as fascist. Not that Mr. Eco himself labels those different ideologies as fascist.
If I'd be to criticize his manner of analyzing, I'd dangle a bit on the irrationalist "bad liaison" with fascism. Just because most fascist propaganda used this "irrationalism" as a method to keep people in check (credo quia absurdum), that doesnt' means fascism IS irrationalism. There's no irrationalism in the propaganda tool of a fascist state: it's rationalism by the book, same as any other leftist ideology. If fascism "depends on the cult of action for action's sake", so does any other leftist group. Ideological infaillibility is not exclusive to fascism: socialism, national-socialism, communism, they all rely on "DO NOT QUESTION THE STATE".
Umberto Eco simply mistook the propaganda methods for ideological reasons. They were not one and the same.
Thinking was perceived as an appanage of the elites. Because these doctrines were populist in appearance, they were required to show an amount of disdain against the "Old World values". However, there's a particular spot where he completely misses the point: such ideologies do not reject intellectual work in all forms, they reject high culture. Because of different reasons, of course, but they praise instead the popular culture, the "unwritten knowledge" of the folk. Now, don't tell me that popular culture is fascist?
Distrust of the intellectual world is everywhere around the common man - especially throughout peasantry. The peasants, because of their status, think of intelectuals as "degenerate" (because they do not follow Church regulations anymore) and "cowards" (because their job is not trading blows with the enemy). The "official Fascist intellectuals" were not intellectuals. "Official" means ideologically aligned and that alone means intelectual neutrality cannot function (because of political belief and / or self censorship). And even when they were seasoned intellectuals, they did not employ arguments from the intellectual world, because they tried to conquer the minds of the common people. Same as all other ideologies bent on destroying the Old World principles of ruling elites. Fascist ideologues tried to differentiate themselves from the usual leftist stock - so they opportunisticaly embraced the "traditional values" even when their political action was directly opposed to same said "traditional values".
Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
You make a good point, but I do not believe that Eco is actually saying that they are the same either.Alixanther wrote:
Umberto Eco simply mistook the propaganda methods for ideological reasons. They were not one and the same.
I interpreted his list as the intended effects of fascist ideology on the masses rather than the underlying motivation of the ruling elite who were/are cynical manipulators.
You can see this at work in Orwell's novel 1984, in the character O'Brien, who explains to Winston Smith, the Inner Party's motivation: complete and absolute power.
Fascist ideology is a means to an end; complete and absolute power.
Now, don't tell me that popular culture is fascist?
No, popular culture itself is not Fascist , but It's manipulation to maintain power is a hallmark of Fascism.
Eco says that some items in his list are not exclusive to Fascism .
As you pointed out other ideologies have used similar methods.
Eco states that many attributes are contradictory and cannot all coexist in any one manifestation of Fascism.
It would be interesting to know what the various Fascist/Nazi leaders actually believed themselves.
I have met priests for instance, who seem to be atheist in their personal belief, but continue to work within the church.
Has anyone else thought that Eco's list could easily be applied to the various groups of Islamic extremists?
A very close fit I would have thought.
Are they fascist?
Cheers
Max
Greetings from the Wide Brown.
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Alixanther
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Re: Intellectuals of Fascism
Max wrote:Fascist ideology is a means to an end; complete and absolute power.Alixanther wrote:
Umberto Eco simply mistook the propaganda methods for ideological reasons. They were not one and the same.
Max
Every leftist ideology is a means to an end. They're not supposed to empower and / or emancipate the poor and the vulnerable, quite the opposite. They're supposed to keep them exactly where they are, in order to justify their existence, over and over.
I'd dare say that ideologies appear when the Right / Left gap appear. Until then it is philosophy or sociology. Then everything turns into ideology. So-called "rightist ideologies" are a byproduct of the leftist trap: you cannot exit this poisonous political dualism ("you're either with us or against us") unless you quit thinking in terms of "left" or "right".
You personally say that there are items not exclusive to Fascism. Is it maybe too convenient to label everything out of the ordinary as "fascism"? Just because there have been lumped together, as a hodge-podge of contradictory, paradoxic items, doesn't justify "bam, since you cannot be reasonably alloted to any pre-constructed category, then you're probably a fascist".Max wrote:Alixanther wrote: Now, don't tell me that popular culture is fascist?
No, popular culture itself is not Fascist , but It's manipulation to maintain power is a hallmark of Fascism.
Eco says that some items in his list are not exclusive to Fascism .
As you pointed out other ideologies have used similar methods.
Has anyone else thought that Eco's list could easily be applied to the various groups of Islamic extremists?
A very close fit I would have thought.
Are they fascist?
Cheers
Max
I don't agree that popular culture can be, at any time, a "manipulation" or any other empowering item, to any ideology, not only Fascism. If you can blame a particular type of culture of being biased and cynical, that's high culture, not popular culture. That's why they used the pretense, in order to hide behind the "popular culture" myth.
Putting the blame on popular culture instead of the individuals hiding behind such pretense is effectively doing them favour: it shows they were justified when they believed that high culture proponents are deluded individuals.
Popular culture cannot ever be an enemy. Thinking in such terms shows sufficiency and obtuseness. You cannot stand surrounded by heaps of books and show a moral finger to an illiterate shepherd. It's YOUR duty to come to terms, not his. And if he finds reasons not to, he's probably right.