Umberto Eco Makes a List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Rob Bogaerts, via the Nation­al Archives in Hol­land

One of the key ques­tions fac­ing both jour­nal­ists and loy­al oppo­si­tions these days is how do we stay hon­est as euphemisms and triv­i­al­iza­tions take over the dis­course? Can we use words like “fas­cism,” for exam­ple, with fideli­ty to the mean­ing of that word in world his­to­ry? The term, after all, devolved decades after World War II into the trite expres­sion fas­cist pig, writes Umber­to Eco in his 1995 essay “Ur-Fas­cism,” “used by Amer­i­can rad­i­cals thir­ty years lat­er to refer to a cop who did not approve of their smok­ing habits.” In the for­ties, on the oth­er hand, the fight against fas­cism was a “moral duty for every good Amer­i­can.” (And every good Eng­lish­man and French par­ti­san, he might have added.)

Eco grew up under Mussolini’s fas­cist regime, which “was cer­tain­ly a dic­ta­tor­ship, but it was not total­ly total­i­tar­i­an, not because of its mild­ness but rather because of the philo­soph­i­cal weak­ness of its ide­ol­o­gy. Con­trary to com­mon opin­ion, fas­cism in Italy had no spe­cial phi­los­o­phy.” It did, how­ev­er, have style, “a way of dressing—far more influ­en­tial, with its black shirts, than Armani, Benet­ton, or Ver­sace would ever be.” The dark humor of the com­ment indi­cates a crit­i­cal con­sen­sus about fas­cism. As a form of extreme nation­al­ism, it ulti­mate­ly takes on the con­tours of what­ev­er nation­al cul­ture pro­duces it.

It may seem to tax one word to make it account for so many dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al man­i­fes­ta­tions of author­i­tar­i­an­ism, across Europe and even South Amer­i­ca. Italy may have been “the first right-wing dic­ta­tor­ship that took over a Euro­pean coun­try,” and got to name  the polit­i­cal sys­tem. But Eco is per­plexed “why the word fas­cism became a synec­doche, that is, a word that could be used for dif­fer­ent total­i­tar­i­an move­ments.” For one thing, he writes, fas­cism was a fuzzy total­i­tar­i­an­ism, a col­lage of dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal ideas, a bee­hive of con­tra­dic­tions.”

While Eco is firm in claim­ing “There was only one Nazism,” he says, “the fas­cist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change.” Eco reduces the qual­i­ties of what he calls “Ur-Fas­cism, or Eter­nal Fas­cism” down to 14 “typ­i­cal” fea­tures. “These fea­tures,” writes the nov­el­ist and semi­oti­cian, “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 cult of tra­di­tion. “One has only to look at the syl­labus of every fas­cist move­ment to find the major tra­di­tion­al­ist thinkers. The Nazi gno­sis was nour­ished by tra­di­tion­al­ist, syn­cretis­tic, occult ele­ments.”
  2. The rejec­tion of mod­ernism. “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. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beau­ti­ful in itself, it must be tak­en before, or with­out, any pre­vi­ous reflec­tion. Think­ing is a form of emas­cu­la­tion.”
  4. Dis­agree­ment is trea­son. “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.”
  5. 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. Appeal to social frus­tra­tion. “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.”
  7. The obses­sion with a plot. “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.”
  8. The ene­my is both strong and weak. “By a con­tin­u­ous shift­ing of rhetor­i­cal focus, the ene­mies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
  9. Paci­fism is traf­fick­ing with the ene­my. “For Ur-Fas­cism there is no strug­gle for life but, rather, life is lived for strug­gle.”
  10. Con­tempt for the weak. “Elit­ism is a typ­i­cal aspect of any reac­tionary ide­ol­o­gy.”
  11. Every­body is edu­cat­ed to become a hero. “In Ur-Fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy, hero­ism is the norm. This cult of hero­ism is strict­ly linked with the cult of death.”
  12. Machis­mo and weapon­ry. “Machis­mo implies both dis­dain for women and intol­er­ance and con­dem­na­tion of non­stan­dard sex­u­al habits, from chasti­ty to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.”
  13. Selec­tive pop­ulism. “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.”
  14. Ur-Fas­cism speaks Newspeak. “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.”

This abridged list (avail­able in full at The New York Review of Books) comes to us from Kot­tke, by way of blog­ger Paul Bausch, who writes “we have a strong his­to­ry of oppos­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism. I’d like to believe that oppo­si­tion is like an immune sys­tem response that kicks in.”

One detail of Eco’s essay that often goes unre­marked is his char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the Ital­ian oppo­si­tion move­men­t’s unlike­ly coali­tions. The Resis­tance includ­ed Com­mu­nists who “exploit­ed the Resis­tance as if it were their per­son­al prop­er­ty,” and lead­ers like Eco’s child­hood hero Franchi, “so strong­ly anti-Com­mu­nist that after the war he joined very right-wing groups.” This itself may be a spe­cif­ic fea­ture of an Ital­ian resis­tance, one not observ­able across the num­ber of nations that have resist­ed total­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments. As for the seem­ing total lack of com­mon inter­est between these par­ties, Eco sim­ply says, “Who cares?… Lib­er­a­tion was a com­mon deed for peo­ple of dif­fer­ent col­ors.”

Read Eco’s essay at The New York Review of Books. There he elab­o­rates on each ele­ment of fas­cism at greater length. And sup­port NYRB by becom­ing a sub­scriber.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Yale Pro­fes­sor Jason Stan­ley Iden­ti­fies Three Essen­tial Fea­tures of Fas­cism: Invok­ing a Myth­ic Past, Sow­ing Divi­sion & Attack­ing Truth

20,000 Amer­i­cans Hold a Pro-Nazi Ral­ly in Madi­son Square Gar­den in 1939: Chill­ing Video Re-Cap­tures a Lost Chap­ter in US His­to­ry

Rare 1940 Audio: Thomas Mann Explains the Nazis’ Ulte­ri­or Motive for Spread­ing Anti-Semi­tism

George Orwell Reviews Mein Kampf: “He Envis­ages a Hor­ri­ble Brain­less Empire” (1940)


by | Permalink | Comments (103) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (103)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Dennis says:

    Sounds awful­ly much like the SJWs of the left

  • Randy says:

    With the excep­tion of item 1, I agree.

    While I find Trump to be … hor­ri­fy­ing… I also found the Clin­ton cam­paign pol­i­cy to be equal­ly hor­ri­fy­ing.

  • Glynn Kilara says:

    DRumpf is a clas­si­cal Fas­cist by Eco”s def­i­n­i­tions. Fas­cism has final­ly arrived here. I sus­pect though it will be unique­ly an Amer­i­can hybrid.

  • Malinda says:

    It sounds exact­ly like black South Africa today.

  • Laszlo Toth says:

    Den­nis, two ques­tions:

    One, how exact­ly does #12, “machis­mo and weapon­ry,” sound “awful­ly much like the SJWs of the left?”

    Two, you would­n’t hap­pen to own a bar in Philadel­phia, would you?

  • joe says:

    cult of tra­di­tion?
    rejec­tion of mod­ernism?
    fear of dif­fer­ence?
    machis­mo and weapon­ry?
    sor­ry, what­ev­er else you may say about the left, i don’t see these as hall­marks.

  • Emerald says:

    Trump is def­i­nite­ly author­i­tar­i­an but the real dan­ger is that the par­ty that sup­ports him is #2 — ”The rejec­tion of mod­ernism. “The Enlight­en­ment, the Age of Rea­son, is seen as the begin­ning of mod­ern deprav­i­ty. In this sense Ur-Fas­cism can be defined as irra­tional­ism.”

    The extrem­ist, regres­sive and obses­sive posi­tion with reli­gious belief, their refusal to believe in sci­ence. While the rest of the world moves pro­gres­sive­ly for­ward, Amer­i­cans as a peo­ple con­tin­ue to live in the past, adher­ing to rigid morals and val­ues hun­dreds of years old. There are SOME pro­gres­sives but not enough to move the coun­try for­ward in a pos­i­tive way.

  • Woody says:

    Half of these fea­tures char­ac­ter­ize the right and the oth­er half the left. It seems to me that both par­ties have man­aged to cre­ate a lev­el of divi­sion that brings to mind mid 19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, and the media is a big part of the prob­lem. Jour­nal­ism is dead. Now the media is a ser­vant to the left and right respec­tive­ly. Maybe a two par­ty sys­tem isn’t the way to go, and maybe the media needs to stop push­ing pro­pa­gan­da. Ide­ol­o­gy is a fick­le beast. If a fel­low Amer­i­can does­n’t have the same beliefs as you, that’s OK. There is no need for a safe space, or to resort to vio­lence, we live in a democ­ra­cy! Change can be made through the sys­tem. That’s a fact Jack! Sor­ry for the knit­ted sweater that is my com­ment. Also, I love you all.

  • TheWorm says:

    Haha­ha, I live the sec­ond one :)

  • chris Pike says:

    There we go right wingers in first try­ing to neuter the debate.

  • chris Pike says:

    The media is a ser­vant of the right to serve the rich in their con­tin­u­ing exploita­tion of the poor work­ing class and the mid­dle class­es. Trump will make life even worse for the the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans (he stared this yes­ter­day with his tax­a­tion pol­i­cy couched in car­ing right wing rhetoric.

  • Brooke Byrne says:

    I would add:

    1) restric­tion of high­er edu­ca­tion except of those incul­cat­ed into ide­ol­o­gy dur­ing youth. No think­ing for your­self!
    2) for­ma­tion of youth groups to indoc­tri­nate ide­ol­o­gy into future gen­er­a­tions.
    3) using artis­tic ven­tures as pro­pa­gan­da tools and pun­ish­ing inde­pen­dent artists for speak­ing against the regime. Total­i­tar­i­ans always seem to under­stand the pow­er of the arts.

    All of Eco’s points can be used by “left” or “right” (Ger­many, Italy, Chi­na, Sovi­et Union) the moral is to rec­og­nize the ten­den­cies and resist!

  • Benny H. says:

    No! With a few ecep­tions, one or two of these items are not enough to be present to allow fas­cism to coag­u­late around them. This is a seri­ous reser­va­tion I have…
    Any account­ing of a list with­out dis­cus­sion is an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. An over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion is always nar­row­ing the read­er’s choic­es, espe­cial­ly of those that most­ly need a lib­er­al edu­ca­tion.
    To give an exam­ple: To stand against tra­di­tion is not nec­sse­car­il­ly antifascis­tic. Nei­ther to be a fanat­ic of Enlight­ment.

  • Mary Hawkins says:

    Demo­niz­ing oppos­ing views is a tac­tic employed by the left and the right. But the over­ar­ch­ing theme of fear of change and regres­sion is anti­thet­i­cal to pro­gres­sive ide­olo­gies. We all need to check our­selves when we enter into any abso­lutist, emo­tion­al­ly-charged rhetoric. The elec­tion of Trump and lib­er­al back­lash there­of is an awak­en­ing by mil­lions who have been com­pla­cent observers of their gov­ern­ment. I see that as a pos­i­tive thing because it means we will all become less lazy in our think­ing. More crit­i­cal think­ing, less reac­tion­ism. We can only hope.

  • Dolores J. Nurss says:

    I would mod­i­fy #1 to a cult of dead tra­di­tion. Liv­ing tra­di­tion, like any liv­ing crea­ture, adapts and grows. For instance, over time most Chris­tians came to a real­iza­tion that per­se­cu­tion was not evan­ge­lism, and vio­lence against oth­er reli­gions, once con­sid­ered a ser­vice to Christ, was in fact a betray­al of His teach­ings. A dead tra­di­tion does not grow.

  • Devin says:

    How does this apply to the left? I believe the essay made is per­fect­ly clear that in order to qual­i­fy as a tra­di­tion­al facist move­ment it must jave at least one of the items list­ed.

  • Readloudnation says:

    Demo­niz­ing oppos­ing views is a tac­tic employed by the left and the right. But the over­ar­ch­ing theme of fear of change and regres­sion is anti­thet­i­cal to pro­gres­sive ide­olo­gies. We all need to check our­selves when we enter into any abso­lutist, emo­tion­al­ly-charged rhetoric. The elec­tion of Trump and lib­er­al back­lash there­of is an awak­en­ing by mil­lions who have been com­pla­cent observers of their gov­ern­ment. I see that as a pos­i­tive thing because it means we will all become less lazy in our think­ing. More crit­i­cal think­ing, less reac­tion­ism. We can only hope.

    By Don­ald Trump Mus­lim ban will keep Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed direc­tor Asghar Farha­di from 2017 cer­e­mo­ny

  • Patricia Cremer says:

    I want to sign up to this ter­rif­ic sight and don’t see a sign up as in name and email which is all I have, no social media what so ever, just a com­put­er, no iPhone.

    Also: King of them all Umber­to, end­less what he is all about, First, British, both sides at the same time- up side down and back­wards know­ing he is fun­ny, he is his words, that is who he is, beyond bril­liant, nev­er able to cap­ture him in words. and what I see in com­ments, he reveals in Name of The Rose, every sin­gle one of them

  • Patricia Cremer says:

    How to sign up for all your offer­ings as shown. Not any­thing but computer,Mac, no iPhone no social media, just com­put­er email

  • Michael Brandow says:

    “The rejec­tion of mod­ernism … an impov­er­ished vocab­u­lary, and an ele­men­tary syn­tax, in order to lim­it the instru­ments for com­plex and crit­i­cal rea­son­ing.” That cov­ers pret­ty much all of acad­e­mia.

  • Kung T'ze says:

    Pro­fes­sor Eco qual­i­fies for ten of the 14. Is this the iron­ic auto­bi­og­ra­phy of an uncon­scious Fas­cist, or do all Euro­pean philoso­phies look so depress­ing­ly bland and sim­i­lar?

  • yvonne lunde-andreassen says:

    Dit­to UK; I seem to recall Orwell linked this to laguage;

  • bob says:

    Uh no. All media except fox news serves the left, thats why its called the lib­er­al media. 90% of the rich­est peo­ple in amer­i­ca are demo­c­rat left wingers. Most of the mid­dle class is right wing. You are wrong on all your points. Lookup the par­ties of the rich­est Amer­i­cans, the polit­i­cal spec­trum of all the media and the vot­ing sta­tis­tics of the mid­dle class and you will see how wrong you are.

    Fas­cism is left wing and always has been.
    Left wing = big government/more gov­ern­ment. Fascism/communism/monarchy/dictatorship are all on the left giv­ing more pow­er to the gov­ern­ment.

    Right wing = small government/less gov­ern­ment. The fur­ther right you go the less gov­ern­ment you get until even­tu­al­ly you have anar­chy.

  • Marsha says:

    1.The left want open bor­ders because we are tra­di­tion­al­ly a nation of immi­grants.
    2.Their ‘mod­ernism’ is not philo­soph­i­cal, it is ide­o­log­i­cal; huge dif­fer­ence. Philo­soph­i­cal mod­ernism is tol­er­ance of all points of view, as long as they don’t infringe on the rights of the cit­i­zens. Peo­ple can believe in Sharia law (talk about machis­mo and rejec­tion of mod­ernism!), or com­mu­nism (no right to per­son­al prop­er­ty and redis­tri­b­u­tion of it by a gov­ern­ment), or Nazism (dead­ly extreme Dar­win­ism: destroy the ‘unfit’ as defined by a them), or fas­cism (gov­ern­ment con­trols indus­try, such as quo­tas, etc., no free mar­ket), but they must not enact it upon oth­er cit­i­zens. (pos­si­bly, arguably, not even on their own chil­dren; like FGM, or not allow­ing girls to learn to read or write.)
    3.The ‘left’ claim that mul­ti­cul­tur­al means all the dif­fer­ent races and reli­gions must be rep­re­sent­ed equal­ly through­out soci­ety (equi­ty of out­come is a supreme­ly dan­ger­ous ide­ol­o­gy). The right claim that equi­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty is ide­al for cit­i­zens, which includes all the dif­fer­ent points of view — the con­tent of their char­ac­ter, not the col­or of their skin, and real­ly has lit­tle or noth­ing to do with the race or eth­nic­i­ty. Fear of dif­fer­ence is not about skin col­or! In much of today’s estab­lish­ments and insti­tu­tions, con­ser­vatism is brand­ed as fas­cism, and con­ser­v­a­tives dare not speak their minds. This is NOT mul­ti­cul­tur­al, it is fas­cist.
    4.The cur­rent state of the so-called wom­en’s move­ment is mere­ly women being MACHO and hate­ful toward white men and west­ern soci­ety in gen­er­al, which is, of course stu­pid, since it’s only in west­ern soci­eties that we have even these rights, and white men who end­ed slav­ery, which had been going on since humans have had tribes, and has his­tor­i­cal­ly includ­ed any and all eth­nic­i­ties, by the way. Also, one more word on machis­mo and weapons: Antifa. There is a strong imbal­ance of hatred and vio­lence com­ing from the left, because, in their nasty ide­ol­o­gy, only peo­ple who state the polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect opin­ions should be allowed to speak, and the vast bulk of their argu­ment are straw man argu­ments, where they are fight­ing against the var­i­ous hor­rid labels that they put onto any­one who dis­agrees with them. They actu­al­ly insist they have the moral high ground, and all oth­ers be damned! The right gen­er­al­ly just want to be left alone.

  • Marsha Fields says:

    To Joe’s question/comment from Nov. 2016: 1.The left want open bor­ders because we are tra­di­tion­al­ly a nation of immi­grants. It’s all about tra­di­tion­al­ism.
    2.Their ‘mod­ernism’ is not philo­soph­i­cal, it is ide­o­log­i­cal; huge dif­fer­ence. Philo­soph­i­cal mod­ernism is tol­er­ance of all points of view, as long as they don’t infringe on the rights of the cit­i­zens; your right to swing your arm ends where the oth­er guy’s nose begins. Peo­ple can believe in Sharia law (talk about machis­mo and rejec­tion of mod­ernism!), or com­mu­nism (no right to per­son­al prop­er­ty and redis­tri­b­u­tion of it by a gov­ern­ment), or Nazism (dead­ly extreme Dar­win­ism: destroy the ‘unfit’ as defined by a them), or fas­cism (gov­ern­ment con­trols indus­try, such as quo­tas, etc., no free mar­ket), but they must not enact it upon oth­er cit­i­zens. (pos­si­bly, arguably, not even on their own chil­dren; like FGM, or not allow­ing girls to learn to read or write.)
    3.The ‘left’ claim that mul­ti­cul­tur­al means all the dif­fer­ent races and reli­gions must be rep­re­sent­ed equal­ly through­out soci­ety’s insti­tu­tions (equal oppor­tu­ni­ty is great, but the equi­ty of out­come is a supreme­ly dan­ger­ous ide­ol­o­gy). Equal oppor­tu­ni­ty is the best goal, because it includes all the dif­fer­ent points of view — based on the con­tent of our char­ac­ter, not the col­or of our skin; it has lit­tle or noth­ing to do with the race. The left­ist fear of dif­fer­ence is not about skin col­or, but about dif­fer­ence of opin­ion. In much of today’s estab­lish­ments and insti­tu­tions, con­ser­vatism is brand­ed as fas­cism, and con­ser­v­a­tives dare not speak their minds. This is NOT mul­ti­cul­tur­al, it is total­i­tar­i­an and fas­cist: agree to open bor­ders and hatred of Trump (the intrud­er), or lose your job. 4.The cur­rent state of the so-called wom­en’s move­ment is mere­ly women being MACHO and hate­ful toward white men and west­ern soci­ety in gen­er­al, which is, of course stu­pid, since it’s only in west­ern soci­eties that we have even these rights, and white men who end­ed slav­ery, which had been going on since humans have had tribes, and has his­tor­i­cal­ly includ­ed any and all eth­nic­i­ties, by the way. Also, one more word on machis­mo and weapons: Antifa. There is a strong imbal­ance of hatred and vio­lence com­ing from the left, because, in their nasty ide­ol­o­gy of Iden­ti­ty by Group, only peo­ple who state the polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect opin­ions should be allowed to speak, and the vast bulk of their argu­ments are straw man argu­ments, where they are fight­ing against the var­i­ous hor­rid labels that they put onto any­one who dis­agrees with them. They actu­al­ly insist they have the moral high ground, and all oth­ers be damned! The right gen­er­al­ly just want to be left alone.

  • Daddy says:

    To sum up all the com­ments, I’d go with Orwell’s remark :“the word ‘Fas­cism’ is almost entire­ly mean­ing­less.”. It’s become a pejo­ra­tive to smear an oppo­nent.

  • Chris says:

    It is mis­guid­ed to refer to pro­gres­sives, lib­er­als and the more extreme vari­ants as a uni­fied polit­i­cal group called “the left”.
    First, con­ser­v­a­tives con­sid­er any­one dis­agree­ing with their views as “a lib­er­al” or “the left”. That would put Richard Nixon, Ted­dy Roo­sevelt and Ronald Rea­gan as left­ists btw. I agree com­plete­ly that a true lib­er­ty mind­ed egal­i­tar­i­an who believes in strict adher­ence to the con­sti­tu­tion as it relates to civ­il lib­er­ties would fight for the right of Nazis to express them­selves.
    What is chal­leng­ing our democ­ra­cy cur­rent­ly is that at no oth­er time has the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the office of the Pres­i­dent appeared to sup­port those very extrem­ist views.
    Nor­mal­ly the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans would feel com­fort­able that “com­mon sense” (which is Pollyan­nish regard­less of your polit­i­cal view­point) will always win out.
    What “lib­er­als” have nev­er appre­ci­at­ed is how the Oba­ma years desta­bi­lized the right. By ush­er­ing I’m so much change to the order of the world while it simul­ta­ne­ous­ly being used as a dog whis­tle to acti­vate the sub con­scious fear of death we all har­bor (see Beck­er)

  • Tony Ridler says:

    Its nice, to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, when touched! One can’t be too nice, to the touched, seriously-#PoliceThePolice

  • Attila the Hun says:

    Almost two years down the track now, Mary. As an observ­er of US & A from a safe dis­tance, I have seen no increase in crit­i­cal think­ing or reduc­tion in reac­tionary thought. If any­thing, your coun­try has become even more polarised. I’d get out while you can.

  • lendl says:

    1 Nev­er believe any­thing any Khaz­ar says.
    2 All Khaz­ars help each oth­er to get to the posi­tions from which they can dicat­ed what is
    prop­er and what is not.
    3 No mat­ter where they live Khaz­ars will always work for their own good and not the good
    of the coun­try which they live in.
    4 Umber­to Eco is Khaz­ar.
    5 Nev­er believe any­thing Khaz­ar says.
    6 Tra­did­ion is the biggest ene­my of Khaz­ars and they always work on destruc­tion of any tra­di­tion and cul­ture except for their own tra­di­tions.
    7 “Mod­ernism” is a large­ly Khaz­ar­i­an inven­tion and it’s basi­cal­ly replace­ment of good, trust­ed val­ues that have been ok for thou­sands of years with Khaz­ar­i­an garbage val­ues which are imple­ment to destroy any real val­ues.
    8 Khaz­ars hate action because they dont act. They only think how to infil­trate,
    sub­ju­gate, defeat and exploit. They are par­a­sites.
    9 Khaz­ars infil­trate all oth­er soci­eties and that’s why they always prop­a­gate “inclu­siv­i­ty”. They know they are for­eign bodies/parasites.
    10 Khaz­ars hate lead­ers who find out what is that they do and call mass­es to fight back.
    11 You cant talk about Khaz­ars because their par­a­sitism is pro­tect­ed by laws.
    12 Only lives of Khaz­ars mat­ter all oth­er lives of all oth­er nation­al­i­ties are worth­less.
    13 Khaz­ars are cho­sen peo­ple. Thats what it says in their Book.
    14 Khaz­ars only believe in one thing, mon­ey.
    15 Khaz­ars dont have 1 polit­i­cal sys­tem they sup­port. They will use Com­mu­nism, Cap­i­tal­ism, Feu­dal­ism, Slav­ery, Democracy,Anarchism etc..anything is good as long as it works for them in a giv­en moment.…..etc..etc…etc..

  • pbrower2a says:

    Clas­sic anti­semitism, if mod­i­fied to iden­ti­fy cer­tain Jews as Khaz­ars.

    If any­thing, Jews are hos­tile to fas­cism because of its cru­el­ty, its rejec­tion of the decen­cies that make Jew­ish free­dom pos­si­ble, its rejec­tion of ratio­nal thought, and its men­ace to any­thing that can seem dif­fer­ent. Judaism is hos­tile to racist ide­olo­gies that deny the shared human­i­ty of us all and that usu­al­ly turn against Jews.

    Ratio­nal­i­ty requires indi­vid­ual integri­ty, some­thing that fas­cists con­sid­er dis­pos­able. Judaism is a reli­gion of moral­i­ty, and Jews are capa­ble of fault­ing oth­er Jews for eth­i­cal short­com­ings. Jews have often been strangers in strange places,and hence vul­ner­a­ble.

    Jews are not any more greedy and mate­ri­al­is­tic than us gen­tiles. Suc­cess is not the result of greed and mate­ri­al­ism; it is the reward for doing well at some­thing use­ful that the soci­ety desires well enough to pay well for doing.

  • Rich says:

    How on earth does any of that soudn remote­ly like SJWs? Or the Left. You say words with­outh mean­ing.

  • Bill W. says:

    SJW’s are the ones banning/boycotting ANYTHING they dis­agree with. They are the ones block­ing traf­fic and attack­ing white dri­vers who ‘dis­obey’ their com­mands. They dis­troy busi­ness­es and prop­er­ty like the Nazis did in the 30’s, and to Pro­gres­sives, any­one to the right of Stal­in is a ‘Nazi.’ Mind­less vio­lence is the Left­ist way, they are what they claim to hate!

  • Sasha says:

    Fas­cism is a scape­goat for the rich/poor prob­lem nowa­days. Lets talk about fas­cists instead of rich who mis­use their wealth to fur­ther drain the work­ing class. Con­tri­bu­tion of rich is 0, mer­i­toc­ra­cy is dead. It is shame that Ecco par­tic­i­pates in giv­ing rich a free ride.

  • jlockley says:

    That is because you do not know and thus under­stand the use of the myth­i­cal past in Fas­cist regimes.Hitler built the Ger­man fol­low­ers on the Val­hal­la myth, a myth­i­cal past in which there was nei­ther greed nor crime, which was then attrib­uted to the Jews, Gyp­sies and oth­ers who were sup­pos­ed­ly not only cor­rupt­ing Ger­man blood buy threat­ing the entire civ­i­liza­tion. Ger­many is the tem­plate but not the only coun­try to incor­po­rate the idyll con­cept into its pro­pa­gan­da. As a mat­ter of fact it is com­mon to all pop­ulist philoso­phies. Here and now it is the myth of per­vi­ous Amer­i­can great­ness. Pre­vi­ous­ly it was man­i­fest des­tiny.

  • jll@chefsprofessional.com says:

    I had for­got­ten this. Thank you for shar­ing it cogent­ly and direct­ly with­out emo­tion.
    I sim­ply wish that more of your read­ers were able to under­stand it.

  • jlockley says:

    Thank you for try­ing, but read­ing the com­ments you must real­ize that their cre­ateers either do not want to grasp the pro­posed con­necx­tions, or, more like­ly, sim­ply are unable to do so.
    A frac­tured say­ing: In the land of the blind the one eyed man should prob­a­bly keep silent. It is worth con­sid­er­ing.

  • HEJC says:

    Awww, look­it all the “Must be the SJWs/Leftists!” posts. Me thinks the poor wid­dle racists doth protest to much. Or, as ele­men­tary school stu­dents say when some­one farts…“Fox knows his own hole first.”

  • Catherine Morrisey says:

    I agree that the rejec­tion of mod­ernism is the real dan­ger. Ratio­nal thought is essen­tial for progress and social sta­bil­i­ty. I enjoy antiques, but they are roman­tic ciphers from a past time that was fraught with rigid val­ues tied to top­pling pow­er struc­tures. Huge wars result­ed as empires died. Do we have to do this again? If we teach the val­ue of ratio­nal thought, can we pro­mote a bet­ter future for all, includ­ing the bit­ter­ly dis­en­fran­chised?

  • Mikey Boy says:

    Wow, are you ever dumb. Machis­mo is anti-fem­i­nism. Machis­mo is call­ing some­one a soy boy. In your mind, Adolph Hitler was a big pro­gres­sive who loved mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, immi­grant rights, fem­i­nism, and he just could­n’t stand ‘white priv­i­lege’. I’m not even an antifa sup­port­er. Antifa hates tra­di­tion and hier­ar­chy, which are the cor­ner stones of ur-fas­cism.

  • Mikey Boy says:

    Women can’t be macho sil­ly.

  • Mikey Boy says:

    Would­n’t be hard to get you to shoot some peo­ple up.

  • James Williams says:

    As a faith­ful, believ­ing Catholic, I thor­ough­ly and solemn­ly reject the so-called ‘enlight­en­ment’, and the ‘Age of Rea­son’, which are with­out a doubt the begin­ning of our mod­ern deprav­i­ty. If that makes me a ‘fas­cist’ and ‘reli­gious extrem­ist’, then so be it.

  • jane says:

    oh this is spot on for neo fas­cist in cen­tral europe !

  • jon says:

    Your response is an exam­ple of #14.

  • David van Wyk says:

    Eco com­plete­ly ignores the alliance between fas­cism and big busi­ness and the arrange­ments of the cor­po­ratist state to pro­mote the inter­ests of big busi­ness.

  • Matthew Wingett says:

    Now let me think. Nazi Ger­many had a mas­sive state appa­ra­tus. So did Fas­cist Italy. When the USSR took over East Ger­many and set up the Stasi, they used the struc­tures already in place left behind by the Nazis. Augus­to Pinochet had a mas­sive army under his con­trol and a huge secret ser­vice that tor­tured its ene­mies on an indus­tri­al scale. Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan is a clas­sic right wing near-dic­ta­tor. Again, a mas­sive intel­li­gence ser­vice detain­ing and tor­tur­ing polit­i­cal ene­mies. Right wing behav­iour is only “small gov­ern­ment” under a cer­tain form of eco­nom­ic lib­er­al­ism. But even then, many of the appa­ra­tus of sup­pres­sion and con­trol are pri­va­tised. So, try again.

  • odiaw says:

    you’ve entire­ly missed the point

  • discordio says:

    I see a lot of com­men­tary that iso­lat­ed the left/ right par­a­digm to the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal stage. This insu­lar view of the spec­trum negates the veary real fact that there is no left rep­re­sent­ed in amer­i­can pol­i­tics. To call the demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty left is to rede­ploy the the cumpass to ignore true north. The neo-librals are hosts of the neo-con man­tel at least since Clin­ton’s welfair reform and law and order admin­is­tra­tion that helped surge the prison pop. Past 2.3 mil. But let us not for­get that add her ww2 we helped destroy the par­ti­san move­ments that help dis­loge Hitler and his boys from pow­er and put some of those moth­er­fuck­ers right back into dici­sion mak­ing roles to fur­ther Amer­i­can buis­ness inter­ests abroad. And are actions in south amer­i­ca from both par­ties helped to top­ple democ­ra­cy where ever they found it. Because the sim­ple fact is total­i­tar­i­an­ism is just plain good buis­ness.

  • Per Johnsen says:

    I find that sev­er­al of the fea­tures are more or less com­mon in many coun­tries, cul­tures, and nation­al, region­al or local groups, though nec­es­sar­i­ly not more than with­in a cer­tain basic. In my opin­ion nation­al­ism, uni­for­maty, fear of dif­fer­ence, and resis­tance of dis­agree­ment or crit­ic as the most dan­ger­ous and nor­mal fea­tures. When one or more of these become fanat­i­cal with­in groups and the gen­er­al pub­lic, it’s a cause for alarm.

  • Per Johnsen says:

    It’s indeed hard to describe the US as left and right polit­i­cal­ly, but there has recent­ly been a clear ten­den­cy of divi­sion and polar­iza­tion, much due to nation­al­ism and so called patri­o­tism devel­oped since 2001 and with the last Bush admin­is­tra­tion, but which has also been ampli­fied with the retor­i­cal style and polit­i­cal meth­ods of the cur­rent pres­i­dent. More­over, Fas­cism, and even Nazism, is noth­ing new in the US. There was a strong move­ment dur­ing the time between WW1 and WW2, with large Nazi gath­er­ings and strong lead­er­ship. Then, there is the type of fas­cism much rep­re­sent­ed by the racial con­flict with organ­i­sa­tions as KKK and oth­ers. Still, the pub­lic polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in the US is com­plex also because of the mul­ti etni­cal pop­u­la­tion. Nev­er­the­less, par­tic­u­lar­ly nation­al­ism and mil­i­tary ide­al­ism stands strong­ly.

  • Per Johnsen says:

    Final­ly? Glynn, it seem like you have some cru­cial Amer­i­can his­to­ry reasearch to do.

  • Per Johnsen says:

    Con­trary to Zion­ism.

  • Seeker 7 says:

    Did you read any of what you com­ment­ed on? If so, can you cite a fac­tu­al exam­ple that sup­ports your state­ment?

  • Seeker 7 says:

    EXACTLY!!! Thank you for this.

  • Richard Galli says:

    I use Eco’s list in my class when we study
    the ‘despot­ic utopias’ of marx­ism & fas­cism
    [between the world wars]
    it did not take much time to find the same
    to com­pile a list about marxism/communism
    but where is it in our world
    fascim hates the mod­ern arts,
    marx­ism uses it to pro­mote their agen­da
    just as full of ene­mies
    tra­di­tion ver­sus nihilism is anoth­er one

    if you are say­ing ‘not my marx­ism’
    i’ll ask you to look up the mur­dered vic­tims of both
    and we only know about fas­cism because they lost the war

    now in the good old usa, & the impeach­ment farce
    i can use beri­a’s quote to stal­in
    ‘you show me the man & i’ll find you the crime’
    usu­al­ly trea­son, how many times has the left
    con­demned the trump­ster­fire for this?

  • Thought says:

    You are mere­ly repeat­ing the utter­ly ahis­tor­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da of the 21st cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can right in your def­i­n­i­tions of left/right wing. Do some prop­er read­ing and think for your­self. Argu­ing that fas­cism is left wing might get you far on mes­sage boards, but it’s just non­sense and has no rela­tion­ship to real­i­ty.

  • Kalit says:

    While I would agree that there are over­laps between fas­cist and author­i­tar­i­an pow­ers, there is a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence that Eco give sev­er­al bul­let points to: fas­cism is based in the dom­i­na­tion of an under­class. In author­i­tar­i­an states, atroc­i­ties hap­pen, yes, but the goal isn’t dom­i­na­tion in itself. The goal is a pro­duc­tive and pow­er­ful nation, as defined by the few that are able to have a say (selec­tive pop­ulism, a sim­i­lar­i­ty to fas­cism). With author­i­tar­i­an regimes, the ever shift­ing goal of renown for the nation and its lead­ers can lead to impres­sive things, such as the first per­son in space. How­ev­er, there is of course the pos­si­bil­i­ty of awful acts of vio­lence and oppres­sion, but that is a guar­an­tee under Fas­cism.

  • Apollo says:

    It isn’t mere­ly about the dom­i­na­tion of an under­class. It is about the cal­lous por­tray­al of anoth­er, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly por­tray­ing them as both weak and strong, when­ev­er the need aris­es. This is most­ly true for the hard right when they spout anti-Semi­tism. Sad­ly, this is also true for those on the left, who are wont to crit­i­cize Israel, and right­ly so, but are just as like­ly to invite Aryan-lov­ing folks in their fold just because of their eth­nic-cul­tur­al group­ing. This has hap­pened in some form. There’s a rea­son why BDS was a good thing, and then it was­n’t.

  • Mike says:

    It’s fun­ny read­ing through all the com­ments on here declar­ing SJW’s and the left as fas­cists. The left isn’t a sin­gu­lar uni­fied enti­ty. It’s a col­lec­tion of peo­ple with an essen­tial­ly infi­nite com­bi­na­tion of beliefs and ide­olo­gies. Some left­ists may line up with some of these 14 points, while oth­ers may not line up with any. It’s also a bunch of non­sense to declare Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives as fas­cists for the same rea­son. In 2020 some Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives are indeed fas­cists, but most aren’t. Which gets back to the point… the term can’t be used to define a col­lec­tive group such as “lib­er­als”, “the left”, “con­ser­v­a­tives” or “the right”. It can only be used to label indi­vid­ual move­ments with­in those broad­er groups. Trump is very unique Amer­i­can “con­ser­v­a­tive”, but whether or not he is con­ser­v­a­tive isn’t the point. There is no point in sling­ing the word fas­cist around with­out seek­ing deep­er pur­pose. I believe the sole pur­pose of using the word is that it allows us to pre­dict when a move­ment has become “fas­cist” and is there­fore a grow­ing threat to those who val­ue social equal­i­ty.

    Also, to the per­son who declared anar­chy is right wing because it is small gov­ern­ment… you clear­ly don’t under­stand how the tra­di­tion­al left-right spec­trum works. It has noth­ing to do with big or small gov­ern­ment, and every­thing to do with social equal­i­ty ver­sus social hier­ar­chy. Do some read­ing 🤦‍♂️

  • Kgbebop says:

    Accuse the ene­my of that which you are guilty.

  • Lilah says:

    Fas­cism is a move­ment not a form of gov­ern­ment. It does­n’t mat­ter if the move­ment has polit­i­cal pow­er it still exists. Those peo­ple don’t lose hatred for peo­ple not in their “in group” when they don’t hold pow­er. I think we could hon­est­ly label maga a fas­cist move­ment. Not every con­ser­v­a­tive is a maga sup­port­er of course. Trump preached the same thing dur­ing his last elec­tion with maga at the fore­front promis­ing some weird man­i­fest des­tiny ideals. That if you believe in JESUS, noth­ing else, you can have a good life where we will help you. If not … who knows whats going to hap­pen. We won’t look your way unless we feel threat­ened then no amount of actu­al lives mat­ter in our anger. Trump coin­ing fake news is sad­ly genius.

  • David says:

    I wish peo­ple who write these arti­cles would write in sim­ple lan­guage not words that requires a dic­tio­nary to find out the mean­ing.

  • Dave P says:

    “One detail of Eco’s essay that often goes unre­marked is his char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the Ital­ian oppo­si­tion movement’s unlike­ly coali­tions.… This itself may be a spe­cif­ic fea­ture of an Ital­ian resis­tance, one not observ­able across the num­ber of nations that have resist­ed total­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments.”

    In fact this was a very gen­er­al phe­nom­e­non, with par­ty pol­i­tics per­sist­ing from France and the Low Coun­tries to the Balka­ns: we too often think of “the Resis­tance” when every­where rival groups some­times co-oper­at­ed, some­times com­pet­ed and some­times in the east fell into internecine war­fare, espe­cial­ly as lib­er­a­tion approached.

    For all their strains, the Resis­tance coali­tions broad­ly sur­vived in the west until the advent of the Cold War in 1947, with co-oper­a­tion between Chris­t­ian Democ­rats and Social Democ­rats per­sist­ing into the 50s and beyond and con­tribut­ing to the devel­op­ment of the post­war Euro­pean project.

    That’s actu­al­ly good news: we don’t have to aban­don our prin­ci­ples to work togeth­er, but we’re all the more effec­tive if we recog­nise that some things are above par­ty pol­i­tics. We can put the pol­i­tick­ing on hold and come back to it lat­er, as we inevitably will (such being human nature), but hope­ful­ly the wis­er for the expe­ri­ence of join­ing in a wider cause.

  • Erin says:

    Bob, you’re an idiot. Please stop talk­ing for­ev­er.

  • Sandra says:

    Bob.
    Keep on talk­ing and nev­er stop.
    San­dra.

  • Idiota says:

    Pro­gres­sives always have to drag the con­ser­v­a­tives into the mod­ern area, kick­ing and scream­ing. A bunch of une­d­u­cat­ed morons that have no crit­i­cal think­ing abil­i­ty have plat­forms now to spew dis­in­for­ma­tion and stu­pid­i­ty to an audi­ence filled with their peers. They per­ceive “tHe LeFt” as… what exact­ly? Actu­al pro­gres­sives and anti-fas­cists aren’t going to put up with your racist, idi­ot­ic bull­shit. Why should they? The rur­al parts of the Unit­ed States have an unequal say in gov­ern­ment. The fact is that major­i­ty should rule and the major­i­ty of peo­ple live in cities and oth­er dense areas that are more pro­gres­sive than regres­sive. If rur­al back­wa­ter trash don’t like this they should leave Amer­i­ca. If pearl clutch­ing sub­ur­ban house wives whose sole val­ue is the abil­i­ty to lay on their back don’t like it they should leave Amer­i­ca. If “good” Chris­tians don’t like they should part the sea and head to Rus­sia.

    1. War on Christ­mas is a per­fect exam­ple (though whol­ly child­ish and stu­pid at it’s core).

    2. Anti-vaxxers. Nuff said. They are NOT pro­gres­sives. Say­ing stu­pid things that makes no sense does­n’t change real­i­ty. Con­ser­v­a­tives don’t under­stand that words actu­al­ly have mean­ing.

    3. Sto­chas­tic ter­ror­ism is run­ning ram­pant. If their “leader” tells them some­thing, they accept and act on it unques­tion­ing­ly.

    4. If you dis­agree with their lead­ers you’re part of the plot! Deep state! You’re not a true racist, big­ot­ed, dumb… sor­ry, you’re not a true maga!

    5. Any­thing that isn’t cishet is seen as scary and wrong. Those poor, “straight”, white peo­ple… how can they live in a world where their frag­ile val­ues are con­stant­ly being attacked!? Wait… their frag­ile val­ues aren’t being attacked, they just don’t like some­thing and want to impose their val­ues on every­one else. Go jump in a fire, please and thanks.

    6. Paint­ing “coastal elites” as the rea­son why the mid­dle class is shrink­ing and why you don’t have as much mon­ey (along with, para­dox­i­cal­ly, ille­gal immi­grants “tak­ing all the good jobs”… how stu­pid and bad at your job do you have to be to have some­one who does­n’t speak eng­lish nor have advanced knowl­edge of a job take your posi­tion?). It’s stu­pid but stu­pid peo­ple eat it up! Let’s just ignore that fact that rea­gan and rea­gan con­ser­v­a­tives dereg­u­lat­ed cor­po­ra­tions allow­ing them to b*** f*** the mid­dle class and every­one else, stag­nat­ing wages for near­ly 40–50 years now. But yeah, no, it’s ille­gal immi­grants tak­ing mon­ey from “hard work­ing” sub­ur­ban moms with­out jobs. Keep shoot­ing out kids, Karen. San­dra. Who­ev­er. I’m sure some­day your hus­band will respect you… ROFL.

    7. Deep state. Need I say more?

    8. Snowflakes. Thugs. Which is it? Can you kick my ass or not? Answer: Not. Your beer bel­ly fat f***ing a** would get dropped in sec­onds. Pathet­ic. Do some pushups you dis­gust­ing clowns.

    9. Right-wingers are obsessed with work, think­ing that it’s the only val­ue a per­son has. That work is strug­gle so there­fore life must be a strug­gle. How droll.

    10. Snowflakes are weak. Also, the peo­ple who sup­port racist, cheat­ing, pedophiles who attack the dis­abled are seen as moral­ly supe­ri­or. What a joke you peo­ple are! It’s a shame you aren’t capa­ble of self-reflec­tion.

    11. Jan. 6, 2021. Except, you know, they’re trai­tors and many are going to jail. Enjoy prison “hero”.

    12. If right-wingers could have sex with their guns they would. Not only to prove how man­ly they are, but also because they are IN LOVE with their guns. It’s fetishis­tic. Plus, you have real­ly stu­pid white women who think that they are respect­ed while men spit on them and pump and dump ’em. Total­ly respectable from a chris­t­ian view­point! Way to go, Karen! Hope­ful­ly you can get preg­nant and trap him! Oth­er­wise, yikes… it’s not look­ing good for you. Also, did you know boe­bert, the idiot, failed her ged exam twice before pay­ing some­one to take it a third time so she’d pass and could join the house of reps? This coun­try is a s***show. And you right-wingers smear feces on the walls while decry­ing you “owned the libs”.

    13. Right-wing “per­son­al­i­ties”. You already know of at least a dozen of them you can name off the top of your head because of how utter­ly moron­ic the crap they spew is. Peo­ple believe them because they don’t have the abil­i­ty to think and instead respond emo­tion­al­ly to every­thing.

    14. Big werds are fer thems col­lege edu­macat­ed lib­tards. Also, con­ser­v­a­tives don’t seem to under­stand that words have actu­al mean­ing. So when you use a word, it does­n’t mean what­ev­er you want it to mean. It means what it actu­al­ly means. It’s a hard con­cept to grasp, for sure.

    The very peo­ple the con­ser­v­a­tives cham­pi­on are the same peo­ple who have put them in the sit­u­a­tion they are in now. Their “lead­ers” have failed them, on pur­pose, for their own gain. Too dumb to real­ize they are being weaponized and tak­en advan­tage of, they turn against their own fel­low cit­i­zen, one who has done no harm to them and does not wish to cause them any incon­ve­nience, and attack them ver­bal­ly, men­tal­ly, and phys­i­cal­ly.

    Facism, nazism, and, at this point, Repub­li­can con­ser­vatism must not be tol­er­at­ed. While I would pre­fer to end it peace­ful­ly, those who wish me dead or enslaved are my ene­my. This is me defend­ing my right to exist. The con­ser­v­a­tives have already attacked and pro­gres­sives are only defend­ing them­selves.

    If every con­ser­v­a­tive ceased to exist at once the world would be a much brighter, much hap­pi­er, much more peace­ful place. Have a blessed day.

  • Tad says:

    Fas­cism IS Nation­al SoZIal­ism god­less Hitler, IS god­less Mousoli­ni, was on the wrong side of WWII, Italy wrong­ful­ly enabling Ger­many’s oppres­sion of Judeo Chris­tians in East EU, killing 6M of each, cor­rupt­ing elec­tions, tam­per­ing with food sup­ply, and cen­sor­ing free speech and silenc­ing dis­sent as your big tech lib­er­al fas­cist social media does. Let’s review:

    1. “Tra­di­tion” of shacked up veg­an art bro­ker Hitler or the “cult” of Sanger’s Planned Par­ent­hood?
    2. Con­ser­v­a­tive bas­tions way more mod­ern. Tents and shit on the street is not “mod­ernism”
    3. “Emas­cu­la­tion” — come on, you had more sons and inven­to­ried way less art than Hitler.
    4. “Dis­agree­ment is trea­son” and you need ID for COVID but not to vote and you cen­sor experts that dis­agree with manda­to­ry vac­cines instead of debat­ing.
    5. “Fear of dif­fer­ence” more like fear of debate. Heck the tech fas­cists even put token serf lib­er­als in FB jail to appear fair.
    6. “Appeal to social frus­tra­tion” — yeah, attack cops, they are found not guilty 85% of the time, and YOUR mur­der sky­rock­ets while Trump bas­tions are safest.
    7. “Obses­sion with a plot” Rus­sia Rus­sia Rus­sia?
    8. “The ene­my is both strong and week” you mean marx­ist fas­cist stooges cry­ing about Trump being too con­ser­v­a­tive and retreat­ing when schooled that he is aligned with cen­trist JFK?
    9. “Paci­fism is traf­fick­ing with the ene­my” You mean traf­fick­ing $1B from CCP to Biden fam­i­ly and the cor­rupt left­’s uneth­i­cal silence, or your par­ty’s traf­fick­ing ille­gals that brought some COVID into the US along with gang­sters jack­ing your mur­der rates and rents?
    10. “Con­tempt for the weak” fly­over states? They hunt­ed and sur­vived a depres­sion and don’t ask to invade your wal­let.
    11. “Every­one is edu­cat­ed to become a hero” Edu­cat­ed or con­clud­ed that our act of lib­er­at­ing 200M in East EU from your beloved vote and food block­ing com­mu­nism was THE great­est act of human­i­ty of the 20th cen­tu­ry, even if the frauds at Nobel did not award Rea­gan and Pope for win­ning a war with­out a weapon fired. Are haters livid that East EU is free, or can they con­grat­u­late Rea­gan?
    12. “Machis­mo and weapon­ry” you mean like brag­ging about one’s junk while hav­ing dis­dain for a tra­di­tion­al ladies room at LAX and insis­tance that 50–80 year old ladies change instead of push­ing for more neu­tral bath­rooms?
    13. “Selec­tive pop­ulism” you mean soc­cer fields and world class camps for ille­gals, or cred­it cards and Catholic char­i­ty rides to sanc­tu­ary cities, jack­ing up rents, while our poor are home­less poop­ing your streets?
    14. “impov­er­ished vocab­u­lary”, stooges of lib­er­al­ism that make less than con­ser­v­a­tives retreat­ing in debate to dis­play their “Gram­mar Priv­e­lage” cards from mom­my’s base­ment?

  • Edgar says:

    Like the arti­cle says, and you can think I’m reach­ing when I say this: aside from the cli­mate, I think Feminism(the more inclu­sive ver­sions), BLM, LGBTQ, etc are the immune sys­tem con­cept at work… you mess peo­ple up, things turn to riots and inflam­ma­tion.

  • Mark says:

    Seems like democ­rats hold 12 of the 14 val­ues of faci­sist. If you changed nation­al­ism to glob­al­ism democ­rats have 13 of 14 traits of faci­sist. Nazis could­n’t afford not to take over the world they already robbed the coun­try. The only thing they don’t hate is gay peo­ple that vote Demo­c­rat. Oth­er­wise they also hate gay peo­ple that vote repub­li­can. So 13.5 of 14 traits for the pro faci­sist democ­rats.

  • Mark says:

    Thats neo marx­ists faci­sist. Marx­ists you need to be able to con­trol some­thing that is uncon­trol­lable in sci­ence like cli­mate change. Cli­mate sci­ence is only con­trol­lable if you pay enough peo­ple to have a con­sen­sus to do that pur­pose. Sci­ence nev­er has a con­sen­sus they have the­o­ries. One famous car­toon that is fact now is 97% of sci­en­tists believe in glob­al warm­ing. The only thing true about that state­ment was it was made by a car­toon­ists in the car­toon sec­tion of the news­pa­per but now its a demo­c­rat talk­ing point, a fact.

  • Ingmar says:

    Tad, Mark, Inclu­sion of the non inclu­sive is dis­crim­i­na­tion?
    Hitler is god­less? And he’s evil because he’s god­less or because of what he did? How is him marx­ist? There’s not cor­re­la­tion with being athe­ist and the evil­ness, it depends on how you inter­pret the scrip­tures. See as you risk flip­pant think­ing?
    And Pinochet?

  • NAYMAR says:

    MDD DISEASE Mass Delu­sion­al Dis­or­der near 1 mil­lion deaths from covid in USA soon.

  • Quash says:

    I’m just here to see but­thurt con­ser­v­a­tive cultists des­per­ate­ly grasp at straws and use olympic gold lev­el men­tal gym­nas­tics to prove that if you squint real­ly hard, twist your brain into a pret­zel, and ignore absolute­ly every­thing about the repub­li­can par­ty since the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion, the left are the REAL fas­cists!

    Lol, what­ev­er you failed insur­rec­tion­ists got­ta tell your­selves to sleep at night! I just hope you don’t think you’re actu­al­ly fool any­one, we all know yall are just virtue sig­nalling to oth­er white­hoods with chee­to dust on their lips so you can break your arms jerk­ing eachother off.

  • Cam says:

    So please explain? 1/6 2021 were the peo­ple who attacked our Capi­tol fight­ing for our democ­ra­cy?
    It has been 1 year, are the peo­ple who attacked our Capi­tol still fight­ing for our Democ­ra­cy? (As they call it a repub­lic).
    Is it fair to say, the ones who go against our gov­ern­ment lost their crit­i­cal think­ing skills? To turn over a legit elec­tion and the TFG not con­ced­ing. With fab­ri­cat­ed lies, that it was the democ­rats who rigged the elec­tion. Then to blame it Antifa, BLM, Pelosi and FBI who were the ones on 1/6 who attacked the Capi­tol. (I’m proud to be called “Antifa”). What do they not under­stand that this is not an orga­ni­za­tion? BLM is not a Ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. But the ones who tried to over­throw our gov­ern­ment and the par­ty who agrees with them and insti­gat­ed it, are def­i­nite­ly home­grown Ter­ror­ist.
    We have Proud Boys, 1%ers in our right wing polit­i­cal par­ties. Q, the biggest con­spir­a­cy theory’s with a mil­lion fol­low­ers believ­ing it. White nation­al­ist evan­ge­list that has become a cult.
    The Repub­li­can Par­ty has gone bat­shit crazy.
    But, any­how I just want­ed some answers. The 1/2 who hasn’t gone crazy, we love you too! 🇺🇸

  • Wrong-Dennis says:

    Not real­ly, but what you are doing is list­ed right up there as fas­cist.

  • WronDennis says:

    Not real­ly, but what you are doing is list­ed right up there as fas­cist.

  • DennisWrong says:

    Not real­ly, but what you are doing is list­ed right up there as fas­cist.

  • Socialist says:

    You would say that Den­nis (Prager?) but I’m afraid it’s a bit hard to be fight­ing for equal­i­ty and racist at the same time. Was­n’t one of the ele­ments of fas­cism anti intel­lec­tu­al­ism? lol

    Did­n’t Tuck­er Carl­son say the left had made the mil­i­tary weak by hav­ing women and flight suits that fit preg­nant women while at the same time say­ing they’re ‘great replace­men­t’ing you poor white males?

    Does­n’t Jor­dan Peter­son com­plain about post mod­ernists (while bla­tant­ly not hav­ing a clue what post­mod­ernism IS)?

    Isn’t the Repub­li­can par­ty occult in the sense of hav­ing reli­gion at the core of their ide­ol­o­gy despite the con­sti­tu­tion you keep using to jus­ti­fy your hate say there has to be a sep­a­ra­tion of church and state?

    Isn’t dis­agree­ment being trea­son the right see­ing as sen­a­tors and activists from the right are open­ly talk­ing about purg­ing the left from every­where?

    Did­n’t the right active­ly ignore and ridicule the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing covid, and show dis­trust by refus­ing vac­cines and social dis­tanc­ing?

    Aren’t you obsessed with a plot? From the great replace­ment to antifa infil­trat­ed the jan 6th riot, to elec­tion fraud, to witch hunts etc etc

    Isn’t one of those plots about how you’re all going to be replaced by immi­grants and there­fore have your class sta­tus tak­en and end up in low­er social groups?

    Aren’t the left both strong and weak see­ing as we made the mil­i­tary weak with our flight suits and trans peo­ple but are also ter­ri­fy­ing­ly strong enough that you need riots and guns to stop us?

    Don’t you show con­tempt for the weak? There is no sys­temic racism all blacks should just work hard­er, women should­n’t get bod­i­ly auton­o­my, the trans should be banned, the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty should­n’t be vis­i­ble, immi­grants should stay away?

    Aren’t you all macho fools with weapon­ry? Dressed in tac­ti­cal gear to ‘protest’? Found with weapons going through the mags on Jan 6th? Proud boys and oath keep­ers caught with stashed guns and explo­sives in Wash­ing­ton at both their hotel and in a truck near by. Even if we believe it was­n’t planned and just got out of hand you STILL fit the fas­cist descrip­tion here.

    Don’t your right wing media present 4–5 tweets as being what the peo­ple feel or what the left believe? You can find most arti­cles on the dai­ly wire for exam­ple are made like this.

    And last but not least, did­n’t you guys just ban a ton of books in Flori­da that had noth­ing to do with race, they were math books, but were removed under the guise of CRT?

    Con­grat­u­la­tions, you look stu­pid on the inter­net because your ide­ol­o­gy fits every sin­gle point on here. Now you try and go through and match each to the left, and not because you found a tweet that said some­thing, lets keep it mass move­ment like I did.

  • old white guy says:

    Spot On Social­ist ‑That sums it up

  • Junker Georg says:

    I think every­one has most of the neg­a­tive “isms” on an inher­ent, pri­mal lev­el, whether it be fas­cism, racism, etc. The imper­fect solu­tion is to rec­og­nize it, admit it, and try to fight against it in one’s self. It is not a “Right-Wing” thing or a “Left-Wing” thing. It’s a human­i­ty thing. And his­to­ry, includ­ing recent his­to­ry, proves it. Depend­ing on which definition/s of fas­cism you go with, the very things One polit­i­cal par­ty espoused and reject­ed can be flipped very quick­ly to the oppo­site. I mean, for exam­ple, despite warn­ings of what it could become, many if not most Repub­li­cans wel­comed the cre­ation of the Sur­veil­lance State under the Bushies (The Patri­ot Act) with a fas­cist fer­vor. 20 years lat­er and now they decry it. Or take the Democrats–they used to be against Cor­po­ratism (Big Govt in league with Big Corp, e.g., Big Phar­ma, Big Tech), were for free-speech no excep­tions, anti-war, and now today under Biden, they flipped and cheer on all these things with a fas­cist fer­vor.

    Point is, any­one call­ing the oppo­site par­ty of their own. “the fas­cists” miss­es the point that all par­ties are prone to it and guilty of it. This is because all human­i­ty is capa­ble of it and even prone to it, espe­cial­ly if that fact isn’t rec­og­nized. So stop the fin­ger-point­ing at anoth­er per­son or group unless you have first point­ed the fin­ger at one’s self, admit it, and strive to keep it in check. If each human indi­vid­ual did this, the world would be a bet­ter place–not per­fect, but much bet­ter.

  • Kyle says:

    Cause you don’t under­stand, prob­a­bly because you left edu­ca­tion young or nev­er went to high­er edu­ca­tion… dip­shit.

  • Johnson says:

    You’ll be pleased to know that Clin­ton and Trump are both in the Author­i­tar­i­an right part of the polit­i­cal com­pass.

    Hillary said that she will always be a Gold­wa­ter girl. She is just a Demo­c­rat In Name Only (DINO).

  • Richard Leclercq says:

    Actu­al­ly, intol­er­ance of “the nor­mal” is a good def­i­n­i­tion.

    Being pro life is not fas­cist. Being pro “elim­i­nat­ing the mon­ger­al races” with abor­tion is.

    Read Mar­garet Sanger.

  • Anto says:

    Quite com­mon deflec­tion.

  • Anto says:

    Tad august 10 2021
    Is that satire? Because “muh Hitler was actu­al­ly social­ist, check­mate” is text­book mis­com­pre­hen­sion, but I don’t want to be snob of course.

  • Anto says:

    @Richar Leclerq Which intol­er­ance of the nor­mal? Het­ero­pho­bia too?
    It’s a buzz­word and man­u­fac­tur­over­sy, don’t fall for it, like the “nor­mal” is expe­ri­enc­ing the same per­se­cu­tion the “non nor­mal” used to. Sor­ry it makes it sound like some white cishets are afraid, for no rea­son, that we are gonna expe­ri­ence what the “oth­ers” had to expe­ri­ence. Sor­ry but feel­ing per­se­cut­ed is real­ly text­book priv­i­lege here, and I’m a per­son who agrees it’s some­times overused by the loud minor­i­ty straw­man lib­er­al “Sjw” as well, you know in any move­ment there are extrem­ist who prob­a­bly already thought that extreme “anti man”, “anti white” and “anti straight” idio­cy as mis­ad­dressed reac­tion to a more com­plex sit­u­a­tion, for­get­ting that priv­i­lege is lay­ered, espe­cial­ly men and women, com­plex, mul­ti­fac­to­r­i­al and inter­sec­tion­al, not black and white.
    But sor­ry the whole war on nor­mal, is too often the whole zero sum argu­ment against, say gay mar­riage as an attack to straight mar­riage, but the sub­text is gay mar­riage shalt not exist lest straight mar­riage is under­at­tack.
    Being pro life, well being pro abor­tion is not pro death, it is being pro choice, peo­ple against are often proud to exib­it less empa­thy for ful­ly form

  • Anto says:

    You know, thought, I can give that as soon as lib­er­al­ism as well as chris­tian­i­ty, instead of focus­ing on cre­at­ing equal­i­ty, free­dom, inclu­sion, com­mu­ni­ty, show­ing with facts what they are about and let­ting results speak, defend them from actu­aly threat, they start look­ing for heretics to per­se­cute, they ceas­ing being about free­dom and equal­i­ty and become or risk becom­ing sim­i­lar to those they are fight­ing about, the prej­u­dice, per­se­cut­ing some­one on the base of their label, iden­ti­fy­ing as chris­t­ian or not, with us against us, fem­i­nist or not, etc, which is or should be what chris­tian­i­ty and lib­er­al­ism fight against, aka being dis­re­spect­ed and hav­ing peo­ple assume the worst about you because of being poor, gay, female, or assum­ing you’re gay for not con­form­ing to arbi­trary gen­der norms like men not wear­ing nail pol­ish or make­up, which is what counts, the moment you turn into witch hunt mode into puri­ty tests is what caused the dialec­tic traps and reac­tionary dog­whis­tles to yield so effi­cient­ly.

  • Anto says:

    Junker Georg says:
    Sep­tem­ber 4, 2022 at 4:25 pm
    I agree about this, the poten­tial has to be rec­og­nized which helps fight­ing against it rec­og­niz­ing its neg­a­tives. Too bad a part, not just one but most­ly, wants to make a thing about embrac­ing it because it’s “human nature” and like give up to it and is par­tic­u­lar­ly invest­ed on nar­rat­ing the sta­tus quo as a result of non descript nature, inher­ent and unmod­i­fi­able.
    Also, and this goes for the lib­er­al part as well, nature and nur­ture are not so clear cut and a part of us pro­gres­sives can make it appear as if the envi­ron­ment in the form “cul­ture” forms every sin­gle cell :D, while it’s a very com­plex feed­back loop where both aspects influ­ence each oth­er, and are part of each oth­er, but of course not in the for­ma­tion of the brain, just in the way it devel­opes after.

  • Nita Nicholson says:

    Fas­cism in Italy under Mus­soli­ni was not mild — not enough is said about atroc­i­ties Italy com­mit­ted in East­ern Libya (con­cen­tra­tions camps for Bedouin where thou­sands died, and also a con­cen­tra­tion camp for Jews in the Nafusa Moutains in West­ern Libya) and Eritrea /Abyssinia and lat­er coop­er­a­tion with Nazi Ger­many over per­se­cu­tion of Jews and trans­port­ing Jews to the con­cen­tra­tions camp. It was not ‘mild’.

  • Brian Macker says:

    This list com­plete ahis­tor­i­cal baloney because the vast major­i­ty cri­te­ria can be used to mis­clas­si­fy oth­er groups as fas­cists. Many of the sup­posed traits are inoc­cu­ous, such as being a tra­di­tion­al­ist. The Jain reli­gion is tra­di­tion­al­ist and paci­fist, as are the Amish. To clas­si­fiy either as “fas­cist” is ludi­crous.

    The orig­i­nal fas­cists were eth­nic nation­al­ist syn­di­cal­ist social­ists. Yes, social­ists. Mus­soli­ni him­self was a life­long social­ist (and his father a social­ist). Mus­soli­ni was a respect­ed leader in the Ital­ian Social­ist par­ty and edi­tor of their paper Avan­ti. When the social­ists split over involve­ment in WWI many meme­bers of the social­ist par­ty joined Mus­soli­ni, and his rise to pow­er.

    Mus­soli­ni based his Ital­ian fas­cist par­ty on Nation­al Syn­di­cal­ist Social­ism. This is sourced on the same social­ist ide­o­log­i­cal thinkers, intelelctu­als, and schol­ars that oth­er eth­ni­cal­ly nation­al social­ist move­ments used. The Ger­man Nation­al Social­ist (nazis) being anoth­er exam­ple.

    Here are the cri­te­ria that are absolute­ly vital for iden­ti­fy­ing groups and indi­vid­u­als as fas­cists: 1) They must be sourc­ing their ideas from Nation­al Syn­di­cal­ist thinkers. 2) They must be eth­ic nation­al­ists. 3) They must be syn­di­cal­ist social­ists and thus for gov­ern­men­tal con­trol over all aspects of eco­nom­ic pro­duc­tion. 4) They must be for gov­ern­men­tal social con­trol hav­ing pri­or­i­ty over the indi­vid­ual (ie. no indi­vid­ual rjghts.) 4) They must be for abol­ish­ment of pri­vate free mar­ket labor unions and their syn­di­cal­iza­tion under gov­ern­men­tal con­trol.

    Of course, not all social­ists are fas­cists. For exam­ple the Sci­en­tif­ic Social­ists (Marx­ists aka com­mu­nists) are not bas­ing their ide­ol­o­gy on Nation­al Syn­di­cal­ism, nor syn­di­cal­ist social­ism. The root Marx­i­an social­ism is inter­na­tion­al­ist even if in spexif­ic cas­es like Baathism or North Kore­an Kimism it became racist and based on eth­nic­i­ty.

    Clear­ly after all the Ital­ian Nation­al Social­ists sep­a­rat­ed them­selves from the Ital­ian Social­ist Par­ty it was both inter­na­tion­al­ist in spir­it (even though labelled Ital­ian), and non-syn­di­cal­ist. There­fore clear­ly not fas­cist.

    Call­ing any fas­cist move­ment ful­ly tra­di­tion­al­ist is hard to jus­ti­fy giv­en the fact they want­ed rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes to the eco­nom­ic struc­ture in order to impose syn­di­cal­ism (a brand new non-tra­di­tion­al sys­tem). It is how­ev­er due to the inter­nal con­tra­dic­tion in these nation­al syn­di­cal­ist move­ments since they do call for non-tra­di­tion­al social­ist reor­ga­ni­za­tions of soci­ety along social­ist lines in sup­posed sup­port of tra­di­tion.

    BTW, the nat­ur­al rights move­ment and the repub­li­can par­ty are the com­plete oppo­site of fas­cist. 1) They are for nat­ur­al indi­vid­ual right that pre­cide and over­ride any gov­ern­men­tal pow­ers. 2) They are egal­i­tar­i­an non-ras­cist in view­ing “all men cre­at­ed equal”. 3) The are for free mar­kets which includes free labor. Thus are abolosh­ion­ist. It was the nat­ur­al rights move­ment and repub­li­cans who end­ed slav­ery in the US and abroad. They did so a great per­son­al sac­ri­fice. 4) Nat­ur­al rights based nation­al­ism is not based on eth­nic­i­ty, but instesd indi­vid­ual rights based con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism.

    Which is why it is just plain stu­pid to con­fuse US con­sti­tu­tion­al indi­vid­u­al­ly “all men cre­at­ed equal” nation­al­ism, with Ger­man eth­ic col­lectvist “Aryan supe­ri­or­i­ty” nation­al­ism. Any­one for free mar­kets can­not be fas­cist.

  • Janus Daniels says:

    More here…
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism
    My inter­est in fas­cism began dur­ing the inva­sion of Iraq. My gov­ern­ment open­ly set tor­ture as nation­al pol­i­cy. I thought that would end the admin­is­tra­tion. Yes, I was that naive. They were re-elect­ed, grant­ed by hook and by crook, but they should have lost by a land­slide.
    That led me to start study­ing the his­to­ry of fas­cism. After decades of read­ing many descrip­tions, Eco’s still stands out as the best. I defy any­one to find any fas­cist move­ment that does­n’t check his box­es, or the inverse of that.
    Despite the impu­dence, I feel dis­sat­is­fied with his 14 points. I want 15: Fas­cists need to idol­ize glo­ri­ous beloved leader. Fas­cists can exist with­out a leader, but fas­cism requires, not only a leader, but a spe­cif­ic type of leader.
    Our most pow­er­ful polit­i­cal par­ty is one ener­getic charis­mat­ic com­pe­tent leader away from full Fas­cism.

  • Sam says:

    Wow, some­one got trig­gered because the Ur-Fas­cism check­list must’ve hit a nerve. Nice try flip­ping this around on the left, but fas­cism is far right by nature and won’t fit any­where else on the polit­i­cal spec­trum.

  • Ian Tinny says:

    How to Spot a Social­ist (aka Fas­cist): Umber­to Eco wrote the essay “Ur-Fas­cism” (Eter­nal Fas­cism) and he also wrote “How to Spot a Fas­cist.” In his essay, Eco pur­ports to list 14 typ­i­cal ele­ments of fas­cism. Eco’s work was smashed by a crit­ic in a book enti­tled “How to spot a social­ist” (or the essay “Ur-Social­ism”). It con­tains a list of 14 com­mon fea­tures of Eco and every social­ist:
    1. He talks and writes a lot about “Fas­cism.” (e.g. “Ur-Fas­cism” and “How to Spot a Fas­cist”).
    2. He doesn’t point out sim­i­lar­i­ties between Social­ism and Fas­cism, despite ubiq­ui­tous oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed in his descrip­tions of “Fas­cism.”
    3. In his “Fas­cism” com­ments, he nev­er admits nor states that he is a Social­ist.
    4. He nev­er admits any­where that he is a Social­ist.
    5. He just goes on and on about how bad “Fas­cists” are.
    6. When he writes about Mus­soli­ni, he seems igno­rant that Mus­soli­ni was a long-time Social­ist leader. Or is he just being intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­hon­est?
    7. He appears to be igno­rant in his writ­ings that Fas­cism was cre­at­ed by a Social­ist (Mus­soli­ni).
    8. He men­tions “Nazis” an awful lot.
    9. He seems igno­rant that “Nazis” didn’t call them­selves “Nazis.”
    10. He seems igno­rant that “Nazis” self-iden­ti­fied as “Social­ists.” He men­tions Mein Kampf and appears igno­rant that “Nazi” is not with­in it; that “Fas­cist” is not with­in it as a self-iden­ti­fi­er by Hitler; that “Social­ism” and “Social­ist” ARE in it through­out as self-iden­ti­fiers; Eco has noth­ing to say.
    11. He needs his read­ers to be igno­rant about “Nazis” so that they will con­tin­ue to pay mon­ey for his benight­ed com­ments on “Fas­cism.” Eco relies on his echo cham­ber of igno­ra­mus­es.
    12. He seems embar­rassed that he self-iden­ti­fies the same as Hitler: SOCIALIST. So, he nev­er says any­thing about that.
    13. His igno­rant tun­nel vision pre­vent­ed him from dis­cov­er­ing that Hitler used the swasti­ka to rep­re­sent “S”-letter shapes for “Social­ism” (the dis­cov­ery by the lib­er­tar­i­an his­to­ri­an Dr. Rex Cur­ry).
    14. Now that he knows about Dr. Curry’s dis­cov­ery con­cern­ing the swasti­ka, he will nev­er men­tion it (nor any of the above) to his fans any­where. He will nev­er inform his read­ers. Ever. He will glad­ly go to his grave with­out ever say­ing any­thing about it. He prays every day that the wide­spread igno­rance will nev­er end.
    Bonus com­mon fea­ture: Eco is hope­less­ly brain­washed by the absurd Left-Right polit­i­cal spec­trum that is taught in gov­ern­ment schools (social­ist schools). He assumes that every­one else is brain­washed in the same way too. Curb Ur Social­ism.

  • Tony says:

    I real­ly enjoyed your com­ment. I do think one par­ty is orders of mag­ni­tude worse than the oth­er, leav­ing ratio­nal peo­ple one real choice. But thanks and I’ll end my sweater in sim­i­lar fash­ion: I love you all.

  • Tony says:

    These are just ele­ments that typ­i­cal­ly are seen in fas­cist author­i­tar­i­an regimes. The author nev­er claims that the pres­ence of one or any of the ele­ments indi­cates fas­cism, just that these traits tend to exist.

  • Tony says:

    Ian, you can’t pos­si­bly be so dumb as to believe a Nazi would self-iden­ti­ty as such. The whole point is Nazi ide­ol­o­gy is not pop­u­lar innate­ly, but there are ways to insid­i­ous­ly get peo­ple on board.

    If you hon­est­ly think Nazi Ger­many call­ing them­selves Social­ists proves that mod­ern-day Social­ist­s/De­mo­c­ra­t­ic-Social­ists are fas­cists who want to put you in camps, I implore you to edu­cate your­self using any oth­er source than you are cur­rent­ly.

  • Jeff says:

    >The whole point is Nazi ide­ol­o­gy is not pop­u­lar innate­ly, but there are ways to insid­i­ous­ly get peo­ple on board.

    Yes, the Nazis were very sub­tle in their pros­e­lytis­ing. They did­n’t pub­lish any books on their beliefs, hold meet­ings, have mass ral­lies, or wave ban­ners and flags. So keep your peep­ers peeled, they could be under your bed.

  • Susan says:

    I thought fas­cism also referred to Cor­po­rate takeover of gov­ern­ment. Per­haps that’s a more mod­ern def­i­n­i­tion?

  • Arkiv Neo says:

    You’ve no clue at all what social jus­tice even means. It ben­e­fits all of soci­ety to stand for the mar­gin­al­ized, the oppressed, those pushed to the fringes of soci­ety, and call out oppres­sion espe­cial­ly by gov­ern­ment. SJWs seek to ele­vate every being and assist those who need it. So no, it sounds noth­ing like SJWs. Word of advice: leave pol­i­tics to the grownups.

  • Ptolemy says:

    This is a very old com­ment, but an extreme­ly goofy one. Your com­ment indi­cates a very sim­plis­tic mode of think­ing. The idea that any major media com­pa­ny is left wing is ludi­crous. This only shows that you have no con­cept of what left wing means. Lib­er­al and left are not the same. Most actu­al left­ists would shud­der to hear them­selves called lib­er­al, and most lib­er­als hate left­ists. Lib­er­als spend all their time denounc­ing the left in pub­lic and mak­ing sure the pub­lic are ter­ri­fied of the left. Lib­er­al in the US is cen­trist, and the lib­er­al elite are entire­ly cor­po­ratist. You are con­fus­ing a thin veneer of left wing social values/social lib­er­al­ism with actu­al­ly being left wing. Not want­i­ng to stone gay peo­ple does­n’t make you a lefty. Being open and unafraid of trans peo­ple does­n’t either. But that’s not the same as being on the left. The elite in the US, be it in indus­try, the media, or enter­tain­ment are solid­ly right wing when it comes to eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy. There has­n’t been a tru­ly left lean­ing Pres­i­dent, in eco­nom­ic terms, since FDR. The very elites you are try­ing to frame as left wing are the ones who assure this.

    You’re also con­fused about the right wing. The right wing isn’t about small gov­ern­ment. It’s about elim­i­nat­ing depart­ments that help the weak and poor, and call­ing that small gov­ern­ment. But when it comes to the police, pris­ons, the mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex, and con­trol­ling every aspect of peo­ple’s per­son­al lives that right wingers don’t like, THEY LOVE big gov­ern­ment.

  • Dennis, but smarter says:

    That’s because you agree with the list and you’re pro­ject­ing

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.