F is for Fascist

Umberto Eco’s political development was shaped by his experiences during World War II. He grew up under Italy’s fascist regime, and his early life reflected that environment. However, his perspective shifted dramatically after the Allied liberation, when exposure to American culture—through things like chewing gum and comic books brought by a GI—sparked a lifelong commitment to democracy, liberal pluralism, and left-leaning politics. This commitment became central to his work as a writer.

Eco’s early life, however, reveals a different picture. He recalled writing an award-winning essay at the age of ten, answering the prompt: “Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?” Naturally, living under fascist rule, he answered affirmatively. As he acknowledged in “Ur-Fascism,” the first essay in his 1997 collection, How to Spot a Fascist, he “was a smart kid.” But, as he implied, this “smartness” in praising a leader whose ideology was “only rhetoric” was less about genuine belief and more about survival.

Sixty-five years after writing his pro-Mussolini essay, Eco reflected on the core tenets of Italian fascism. He identified key elements of Mussolini’s regime, including a reliance on a charismatic leader, corporatism, the utopian vision of a revived Roman Empire, imperialist expansionism, fervent nationalism, the ideal of a rigidly controlled nation of Blackshirts, the rejection of parliamentary democracy, and anti-Semitism. The “military liturgy” of Italian fascism, Eco also notes, created “a style of dress — which enjoyed greater success abroad than Armani, Bennetton, or Versace today.”

Layer on those characteristics to what’s happening in the United States, it’s clear that some of what Eco sketches can be applied to the (now) current administration and its elected president. It may seem obvious to those paying attention that spotting a fascist isn’t difficult because the characteristics they exhibit have a kind of eternal quality to them – hence the term Ur-Fascism. For example, the fascist devotion to traditionalism (or, in the legal sphere, “Originalism”) isn’t so much about the wisdom of the past, but more like that “there can be no more advancement of learning. The truth has been announced once and for all, all we can do is continue interpreting its obscure message.” Such a devotion to the past is, in Eco’s telling, a kind of irrationalism that uses action (“fight, fight, fight”) to reinforce traditionalism (Make American Great Again) and quash any talk of culture that threatens tradition (mostly by Liberal-Elite-Communists-Postmodern-Professors).

Critique, dissent, diversity…these are signs of a betrayal of tradition. To gather support (and later devotion) to fascism, grievance politics of the middle class — which is affected by an economic crisis or other sense of loss — is reinforced by the noise of conspiracies (QAnon anyone?). Feeling humiliated by those who “get ahead” through secret networks” (a not-so-thinly-veiled reference to Jews) or programs designed to advantage some at the expense of others (DEI anyone?). The fight is always against an enemy in a permanent war, and to be truly heroic is to be willing to die the greatness of the leader. That’s why Ur-Fascism is against liberal democracy and its protection of individual rights. All that matters is the “people.” And any state action that tramples norms and laws of a parliamentary government is okay as long as it’s done by a leader who was elected by the people to do its will — however illegal it may be.

The other two essays that comprise this slim book of sorts concern itself with the information overload of living with the Internet, and an intolerance for racism (“We Are European”).

In “Censorship and Silence.” Eco notes that as humans get flooded with information, it becomes difficult for us (who aren’t elites who “know how to deal with such information”) to discern what’s accurate or truthful. The “noise” of the information (aka “flooding the zone with shit”) can lead to censorship and self-censorship — especially now when very few people read newspapers, often get what they consider news from social media, and wall themselves off from the world with headphones or earbuds. This prevalence of noise can be fertile ground for fascists to get their message out since a kind of fear of missing out makes us always connected to the very thing that hijacks our attention to the exclusion of critical thought. Critical thought, according to Eco, takes a certain amount of silence to “hear what other people are saying” and not, it seems, what propagandists want you to think and feel.

What to think of this warning from 27 years ago? Well, it’s not like the warning against the horrors of fascism hasn’t part of the post-World War II order. So when fascist moments get wrapped up in flags of liberty, equality, and human rights, and win power in liberal-democratic regimes they seek to dismantle, critical thought, silent spaces where dialogue can happen, and being intolerant of racism go underground. Action may be a defining part of fascism, but it’s not fascist to take action to defend what we value in this world. Short essays like the ones that comprise How To Spot A Fascist are important reminders that even the eternal fascism of the warped mind can be minimized and rendered powerless through a concerted effort to improve our lives — and rejecting the nihilism of despair.