Fascism during the life of Umberto Eco

The very Italian Umberto Eco is better known as a novelist for his best selling books The Name of The Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum, but he was also an expert in semiotics, the study of the use of signs to produce meaning. He wrote the definitive book on Fascism, albeit a very short one. Eco’s Eternal Fascism dissects the living corpse of Fascism: the body may be dead, but its parts keep regenerating and coming to new life.

Eco was born on January 5th, 1932 in Alessandria in Piedmont, somewhere between Turin, Milan and Genoa.  He grew up under Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship, one of thirteen children. His father, an accountant, was drafted in three wars. Eco’s introduction to Fascism was in grade school reciting Fascist loyalty pledges. The liberation of Italy and partisan heroics made a huge impression on young Eco, and so did the evils and lies of that time, when people’s loyalties and alliances shifted like sand.

Oddly enough Eternal Fascism, sometimes titled Ur Fascism, with the German prefix Ur for root, was written in English in 1995 while Eco was a visiting Professor at NYU, for the monthly New York Review of Books.

Eco’s theory on Fascism

Eco’s principal thesis is that Fascism is not a unique ideology that has come and gone but a recurring phenomenon rooted in human psyche and emotions: a disease, a parasite, a sickness in the heart of man. Like many diseases it presents itself through several symptoms but has one core origin. He gives many examples of how this disease spread and of the symbols that came with it:

“Italian fascism was the first to establish a military liturgy, a folklore, even a way of dressing – far more influential, with its black shirts, than Armani, Benetton, or Versace would ever be.  It was only in the Thirties that fascist movements appeared, with Mosley, in Great Britain, and in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia, Spain, Portugal, Norway, and even in South America”.

The symptoms of Fascism and Fascists movements

We can add to Eco’s list of fascist movements and countries by looking at ones that developed after: Rashid Ali’s wartime Iraq; Bashar al-Assad’s Syria; Videla’s Argentina; Vargas’ Brazil, Pinochet’s Chile; and Modi’s India. Perhaps more controversially, present-day far right or right-wing governments are also compared to Fascism in a wider sense, with varying degrees of accuracy: Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Netanyau’s Israel, and Trump’s USA. In countries like Ukraine, where far right parties enjoy virtually nonexistent electoral support, the ready availability of military equipment and tenuous control of peripheral areas means that it’s easy for such fringe groups to organise in paramilitary units.

Like a doctor diagnosing a patient, our focus here is to diagnose this disease. Eco’s symptoms of Fascism can help us identify what regimes can be said to align to Fascism or at least to have fascist tendencies.

1. Cult of traditions, focusing on national or racial origin
2. Rejection of modern diversity, where science is in service of war and subordinate to the state.
3. Action for action’s sake, connected with anti-intellectualism
4. Disagreement as treason
5. Fear of difference, often racism and anti-immigration
6. Appeal to the middle class, rallying it against lower classes and immigrant groups
7. Appeal to the socially marginalised, exploiting their resentment
8. Nationalism, xenophobia, conspiracy theory, and the imminence of a threat to the social order
9. Cultivating social resentment
10. Permanent war as opposed to the permanent revolution of the left, ‘Armageddon complex’
11. Elitism
12. Cult of heroes and cult of death
13. Virility or machismo, and contempt for the weak, coupled with misogyny
14. Selective populism reflected in the leader who expresses the “will of the people;”
15. Jargon and propaganda to limit and discourage critical thinking, as also diagnosed by Orwell.

Although this list is already quite long, it is but a summary of Eco’s full analysis. Reading this list alongside the original text helps understand these symptoms even more and can make clear how they are still present nowadays.  All this considered, reading the original text is a worthwhile effort, as it is not long and certainly helpful in understanding the modern world.

Other authors on Fascism

A number of other authors have joined Eco in identifying similar universal traits of Fascism: Nolte, Griffin, Dimitrov, Kitsikis, Orwell, Passmore, and Hayek. The list also includes fascist writers: Gentile, Panunzio, Mussolini and Maurras. These writers, with only minor differences, agree on what the ethos of Fascism is in all of its manifestations around the world.

The Austrian conservative economist and sociologist, Hayek, found similarities between Fascism and Communism that other writers do not see. He also made the interesting point that a disgruntled middle class, more than an economically insurgent proletariat, was one of the drivers of Fascism during interwar Europe. Clearly the role of the middle class has been important in Fascism wherever it has appeared. American writers generally overlook this, and blame Fascism on the working classes who were often actively opposed to it, as in Spain, Germany, and Italy.

Indeed the 1933 election results in Germany, in which Hitler obtained a plurality of votes, are available to historians and the public alike. The results, broken out by income and class, show Hitler obtained most of his votes from the middle class, while the working classes voted Socialist and Communist. Later, proletarians largely remained opposed to Hitler’s brownshirts, although organised ‘Antifa’ units were quickly infiltrated by the Gestapo, leading to mass arrests. While Hitler never achieved outright majority support, and had to complete his path to power through cajoling and violence, other fascist leaders didn’t even get to a plurality, and only achieved power through the manipulation of the legal system – a threat we must remain on the lookout for today.

Fascism’s love of death

One key aspect of Fascism that Eco alone, out of the aforementioned authors, successfully identifies is Fascism’s love of death. This rather deep-seated trait was noted by another Italian writer of the period, Luigi Barzini in The Italians: “From the black clothing fascists universally favour, to the skeletons and flags announcing ‘Viva La Muerte,’ ‘Long Live Death,’ the nihilistic nature of these movements is as plain as day and night after so many years of fascist self-destruction”.

Fascists’ love of death stems from a deep emotional abyss of discontent and self-hatred, rather than from any social analysis. Even when dressed up in the garments of sophisticated philosophy, fundamentally this is a yearning to die. This theme can be seen in Hitler’s statements on the failure of the German people and consequent need for its destruction, as well as in his belief in the coming apocalypse. The same could be said for the actions of ISIS, who provoke enemies they can not possibly defeat, destroying historical monuments and whole ethnic groups as they go.

Fascism and populist movements today

How well do these criteria fit current far right movements and even the populist regimes in power today? One cannot help but think of the current increasingly conservative American political landscape when reading the symptoms defining fascist movements. The cult of the ‘all powerful’ leader is obviously there.  But other factors are clearly in play: the unsettled middle-class support, racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, distrust of science and intellectuals, oversimplification of political discourse through jargon, machismo and misogyny.

While the leader cult may not be as present in other established right wing groups in Europe, these are being outflanked by more extreme groups. One can witness ongoing radicalisation in multiple parties: the semi-fascist National Front, now the Rassemblement National or National Rally in France, UKIP, as well as Italian North League, Hungary’s Fidesz Civic Union, and Poland’s Law and Justice in coalition with Right Wing of The Republic. Together with these radicalising parties, there are numerous other far right or neo-nazi movements on the fringes but growing in numbers and legitimacy – like Italian neofascist party Casapound, which is often winked at and normalised by North League leader Matteo Salvini.

Fascism’s expression and cultural impact

An example of the cultural impact of these groups is the throwing of bananas at black soccer players and politicians, as well as in soccer hooliganism, with its outright racist and homophobic chants in stadiums. It cannot be avoided on social media and is making slow but steady inroads into popular culture. Hate crimes and assassinations such as that of the German Mayor Walter Lubcke, British Parliamentarian Joe Cox or the Mayor of Gdansk, Pawel Adamowicz, match increasing right wing violence against immigrants.

The cultural expression of Fascism in the U.S. is not much different. It takes on more of a religious connotation, as it did in earlier times in Europe and Latin America and does today in BJP’s Hindu nationalism, Kach – now banned – in Israel, or ISIS’s Islamic fundamentalism. The increasing violence from the right in the U.S. is not much different than elsewhere. One difference is that far right extremists in the U.S. have not yet successfully attacked any major political figures, though the threats are constant and violence is present, as shown by the tragic events of the Unite The Right rally of 2018 at Charlottesville, which descended in violence.

Ultimately, it’s up to the reader to think on the similarities in all these movements, or their uniqueness, and to decide if Eco’s frightening diagnosis leaves them cause for concern or action.

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