Two articles...six days apart

[Dill]

(06-19-2017, 04:25 PM)GMDino Wrote: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/donald_trump_is_a_fascist_it_is_the_political_label_that_best_describes.html

Both articles are a pretty good description of Trump politics.

I should add that the second article is based on Umberto Eco's 1995 essay on "Ur-Fascism," which is worth reading in itself. http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

"Ur-fascism" is what Eco terms those features of fascism that, in combination, distinguish all fascisms from other kinds of authoritarian/totalitarian rule; and he lists 14 such features, though all not necessarily found in every fascism. Ur-fascism is not identified with any specific fascist regime; it is the set of recurring features that make it recognizable as such.

To pique people's interest, I quote 5-7 below.


5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for 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 U.S., 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.