Like the equally absurd notion of a nationalist international, which only holds to oppose a common enemy, fascism binds only in reaction to societal change (or the fear of)
Yes, and point 7 in Eco's typology is that: "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." Eco's key point is that all these contradictions are held in a sort of balance.
I was thinking that we don't seem as worried about great wealth as we once did and thought it had something to do with the change in mindset brought about by neoliberalism. We (I mean Australians) seemed to have imbibed that US mindset where we aren't poor, we are just temporarily embarrassed millionaires. I might be wrong, but I was reacting to the first line of Number 8.
It's not the point of this piece, but "Ur-Fascism" is one of those essays that's a joy to re-read every year or so: banger after banger, like "I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric. " The story about young Umberto getting his first bit of spearmint chewing gum from a visiting American-African officer isn't bad either.
Isn't it great? I love how he articulates the force of contradiction and the way the various points reinforce each other. There isn't so much a straight logical connection between each so much as what I called a resonance. And yeah, I love how the personal experience then resonates with the theory in an illuminating way. I hadn't read it in ages, but was so glad to stumble on it again.
10,000 years ago we were all hunter gatherers living in small groups where we knew everyone and were probably related to most. We lived that life for hundreds of thousands of years. Fear of strangers was built in. They could steal your women and hunting grounds and spread disease. Some people in the 21st century sadly lack the intelligence to recognize that these primitive instincts are no longer needed. Just a guess. Personally I can't understand people like Hanson, Trump, Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage.
Yes, I agree. I'd go further, though, and say that it is not only the far right that suffers from the neurological schism born of our deep prehistory. It is, alas, built into our species as a whole. Our cerebral cortices have evolved to a phenomenal degree, allowing us to develop sophisticated language, reasoning, art, complex social organisation, and, crucially, tools that have given us the capacity to not only bend the natural world but transform it.
But our limbic systems, our lizard brains, have not kept up. So not only do we retain the fear of the other that you refer to, we also far too often lack the capacity to act in our species’ overall best interest, and have a singular inability to balance long-term threats with short term interests, to act on what we know to be true, or even to accept it as true if it conflicts with those ancient instincts.
It is the giraffe’s neck of our species, evolved piecemeal and in engineering terms absurd but not so absurd as to have wiped us out (yet, but the climate crisis might yet see to that). It is our fatal flaw. There are, of course, outliers, the prophets like Eco and Orwell, but all too often they are shouting into the void of our incomprehension and inertia.
We are forever--as modern humans-- poised on the bridge between the two systems, aren't we? I guess it is inevitable that at different times and in different circumstances the balance shifts. In Arendt terms, when the material conditions of work and labour shift (as she defines them) then the sort of action (her third category) will also shift. Or in Eco's terms (Point 7) "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."
We just watched the Vikings series and this very thought kept occuring to me the whole way through, the absolute destructiveness of trusting no-one outside your immediate in-group. You get the logic of it, but it so obviously counterproductive in a world of irreducible difference. And hey, I know Vikings TV show is hardly historically accurate, but it did serve to raise the question. (I also kept thinking about how we ban social media for under 16s and these guys were hanging out with their kids at public executions.)
That's a good example. Another is King Ethelred the Unready, a Saxon king in England who ordered the massacre of all Danes in his kingdom because he was told they were plotting against him. Danes and Saxons were very closely related people but just different enough for the Danes to be massacred. This was only a thousand years ago. We have not changed at all.
Ken, that kind of thinking of 'primative instincts' is hopelessly out of date. Read some contemporary neuroscience and anthropology. The "hunter gatherer" myths have been thoroughly de-bunked as deliberate strategies of of patriarchy and colony.
Even using them to denigrate your opponents is just sad.
I tend to agree, but I don't think that is a "natural" number, by which I mean, you have to actively counter the tendency towards ur-fascism by offering not just alternative ideologies but ensuring a liveable life for all, a level of material security. We have to constantly and strongly make the counter case.
Eco's 13 and 14 answer this - selective populism and Newspeak. Enforced cultural silos that restrict and even criminalise other views as 'dangerous'. The Voice of the People in each select populous, expressed in illusions of unassailable 'truth' and the sense of 'struggle' against an 'enemy'.
Most people are not swayed by conscious, rational argument. If it ever was, rational debate is no longer even a purpose of academia.
In Australia we need not fear the fascist State, for we are a nation of multiple fascist micro-states. We need only live within each tiny fascist eco-system and continue our war of words against our 'enemies'. That is safe enough as they are not listening either.
Thinking about some recent political success in the US by some prominent social democrats, they've managed to put forward a narrative that doesn't posit an "other" or scapegoat, other than the system itself that can be reframed to be more inclusive and less unequal, striving for egalitarianism.
In agreement with what you are saying here. Have been thinking along these lines now for a while, I am not religious and everyone needs to have beliefs that will give them comfort and help them carry on somehow. Think of the people during the world wars and the countless struggles which occur, they hold on to the hope that it will come good again one day.
But where I have been going with this particular idea is that people don't really want peace what they want is for the culture they are part of to be competitive and a future winner, all people want this, it is a part of human nature. At the moment there are plenty of people going on about immigration but when you intervene by saying something like 'well all the uber drivers I have had in the past 6 months have been immigrants, what would I do?' there is usually a hushed silence and you can tell they are on there way to find someone who won't challenge them with details to talk about the "commie" or "woke" person they have just come across. The devils in the detail with most of the points that are being debated, I liked the Carl Jung quote "Thinking is difficult, that’s why many people judge." But given these people are human you have to attribute them with the emotion of the fear of coming second. They find it difficult otherwise and I suppose that's why people like Pauline Hanson get air time, it's like a drug "she's fixed it, if we do what she says I won't have to worry". The fact that by scratching at the surface she is usually talking a lot of twaddle, well they don't care they've had their fix and it feels good.
Must admit to feeling a bit disheartened about this situation it appears the only way to solving this is to "reset" somehow which usually means drastic action, a way to get people to sit down and actually think about things before making decisions. We are maybe in the situation described in Isaac Asimovs' The Foundation Trilogy' where the Empire dissolves and the Foundation is there to help mitigate the problem of a long period of disasters. I realize I have a responsibility there as not every decision on a subject I make is always the right one.
One area however which I have seen might encourage this is the "New Democracy" where say 100 random citizens decide on a subject which is too critical, MPs are an easy target for influencers. Let them think!
I with you, in that there are no easy answers to any of it: which is kind of the point of opposing Hanson, isn't it (as you suggest)?
And yes, I am all for "sorititon" and citizen juries and the like as a way through, not so much the power of influencers, as the heavily financed lobbying of well-organised vested interests (which is maybe what you meant by influencers). We live inside powerful systems that make opposition hard. But not impossible.
"... if we step outside the constraints of institutions built on Eco’s logic and try instead to reconnect at a community level, we might not resolve the contradiction he (and Orwell) highlight, but we might at least survive the struggle in better shape."
In other words, vote for The Greens! Community based and grassroots membership with policies based on science and evidence.
There does seem to be something of an uptick in their vote atm. The Vic state election is going to be revealing in this regard: and many others, I suspect.
Fantastic as always. I think a very infantile, almost prelinguistic level of envy drives the far Right and it, for them, insatiable
It is a reaction against cooperation which itself involves cooperation.
Like the equally absurd notion of a nationalist international, which only holds to oppose a common enemy, fascism binds only in reaction to societal change (or the fear of)
Yes, and point 7 in Eco's typology is that: "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." Eco's key point is that all these contradictions are held in a sort of balance.
I like that. Or things like the AMA or BCA being anti-union unions.
Excellent. Thanks. Just one question: why do you say Number 8 no longer holds?
I was thinking that we don't seem as worried about great wealth as we once did and thought it had something to do with the change in mindset brought about by neoliberalism. We (I mean Australians) seemed to have imbibed that US mindset where we aren't poor, we are just temporarily embarrassed millionaires. I might be wrong, but I was reacting to the first line of Number 8.
It's not the point of this piece, but "Ur-Fascism" is one of those essays that's a joy to re-read every year or so: banger after banger, like "I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric. " The story about young Umberto getting his first bit of spearmint chewing gum from a visiting American-African officer isn't bad either.
Isn't it great? I love how he articulates the force of contradiction and the way the various points reinforce each other. There isn't so much a straight logical connection between each so much as what I called a resonance. And yeah, I love how the personal experience then resonates with the theory in an illuminating way. I hadn't read it in ages, but was so glad to stumble on it again.
Well said , and thank you for this most insightful post 🙏👏🏻👏🏻
10,000 years ago we were all hunter gatherers living in small groups where we knew everyone and were probably related to most. We lived that life for hundreds of thousands of years. Fear of strangers was built in. They could steal your women and hunting grounds and spread disease. Some people in the 21st century sadly lack the intelligence to recognize that these primitive instincts are no longer needed. Just a guess. Personally I can't understand people like Hanson, Trump, Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage.
Yes, I agree. I'd go further, though, and say that it is not only the far right that suffers from the neurological schism born of our deep prehistory. It is, alas, built into our species as a whole. Our cerebral cortices have evolved to a phenomenal degree, allowing us to develop sophisticated language, reasoning, art, complex social organisation, and, crucially, tools that have given us the capacity to not only bend the natural world but transform it.
But our limbic systems, our lizard brains, have not kept up. So not only do we retain the fear of the other that you refer to, we also far too often lack the capacity to act in our species’ overall best interest, and have a singular inability to balance long-term threats with short term interests, to act on what we know to be true, or even to accept it as true if it conflicts with those ancient instincts.
It is the giraffe’s neck of our species, evolved piecemeal and in engineering terms absurd but not so absurd as to have wiped us out (yet, but the climate crisis might yet see to that). It is our fatal flaw. There are, of course, outliers, the prophets like Eco and Orwell, but all too often they are shouting into the void of our incomprehension and inertia.
We are forever--as modern humans-- poised on the bridge between the two systems, aren't we? I guess it is inevitable that at different times and in different circumstances the balance shifts. In Arendt terms, when the material conditions of work and labour shift (as she defines them) then the sort of action (her third category) will also shift. Or in Eco's terms (Point 7) "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."
We just watched the Vikings series and this very thought kept occuring to me the whole way through, the absolute destructiveness of trusting no-one outside your immediate in-group. You get the logic of it, but it so obviously counterproductive in a world of irreducible difference. And hey, I know Vikings TV show is hardly historically accurate, but it did serve to raise the question. (I also kept thinking about how we ban social media for under 16s and these guys were hanging out with their kids at public executions.)
That's a good example. Another is King Ethelred the Unready, a Saxon king in England who ordered the massacre of all Danes in his kingdom because he was told they were plotting against him. Danes and Saxons were very closely related people but just different enough for the Danes to be massacred. This was only a thousand years ago. We have not changed at all.
it doesn't take much "difference", does it? Ugh.
Ken, that kind of thinking of 'primative instincts' is hopelessly out of date. Read some contemporary neuroscience and anthropology. The "hunter gatherer" myths have been thoroughly de-bunked as deliberate strategies of of patriarchy and colony.
Even using them to denigrate your opponents is just sad.
Great analysis - putting our pseudo - competition of ideas in the media to the fire to see what is real
It drives me crazy, their eternal framing in these terms. Not all journalism, of course, but too much of it.
I don't think those sorts of feelings get you to 25-28% of the Australian electorate though, they're surely only felt by small numbers of people.
I tend to agree, but I don't think that is a "natural" number, by which I mean, you have to actively counter the tendency towards ur-fascism by offering not just alternative ideologies but ensuring a liveable life for all, a level of material security. We have to constantly and strongly make the counter case.
Eco's 13 and 14 answer this - selective populism and Newspeak. Enforced cultural silos that restrict and even criminalise other views as 'dangerous'. The Voice of the People in each select populous, expressed in illusions of unassailable 'truth' and the sense of 'struggle' against an 'enemy'.
Most people are not swayed by conscious, rational argument. If it ever was, rational debate is no longer even a purpose of academia.
In Australia we need not fear the fascist State, for we are a nation of multiple fascist micro-states. We need only live within each tiny fascist eco-system and continue our war of words against our 'enemies'. That is safe enough as they are not listening either.
Thinking about some recent political success in the US by some prominent social democrats, they've managed to put forward a narrative that doesn't posit an "other" or scapegoat, other than the system itself that can be reframed to be more inclusive and less unequal, striving for egalitarianism.
And their approach is also tied to practical policy, which I think helps a lot. Essential, in fact.
And these successes are grass roots movements that are relational, inclusive, non-violent and strength-based.
Those core values are important because they represent real change and hope.
well argued TD - great article
Thanks, Gavin
In agreement with what you are saying here. Have been thinking along these lines now for a while, I am not religious and everyone needs to have beliefs that will give them comfort and help them carry on somehow. Think of the people during the world wars and the countless struggles which occur, they hold on to the hope that it will come good again one day.
But where I have been going with this particular idea is that people don't really want peace what they want is for the culture they are part of to be competitive and a future winner, all people want this, it is a part of human nature. At the moment there are plenty of people going on about immigration but when you intervene by saying something like 'well all the uber drivers I have had in the past 6 months have been immigrants, what would I do?' there is usually a hushed silence and you can tell they are on there way to find someone who won't challenge them with details to talk about the "commie" or "woke" person they have just come across. The devils in the detail with most of the points that are being debated, I liked the Carl Jung quote "Thinking is difficult, that’s why many people judge." But given these people are human you have to attribute them with the emotion of the fear of coming second. They find it difficult otherwise and I suppose that's why people like Pauline Hanson get air time, it's like a drug "she's fixed it, if we do what she says I won't have to worry". The fact that by scratching at the surface she is usually talking a lot of twaddle, well they don't care they've had their fix and it feels good.
Must admit to feeling a bit disheartened about this situation it appears the only way to solving this is to "reset" somehow which usually means drastic action, a way to get people to sit down and actually think about things before making decisions. We are maybe in the situation described in Isaac Asimovs' The Foundation Trilogy' where the Empire dissolves and the Foundation is there to help mitigate the problem of a long period of disasters. I realize I have a responsibility there as not every decision on a subject I make is always the right one.
One area however which I have seen might encourage this is the "New Democracy" where say 100 random citizens decide on a subject which is too critical, MPs are an easy target for influencers. Let them think!
I with you, in that there are no easy answers to any of it: which is kind of the point of opposing Hanson, isn't it (as you suggest)?
And yes, I am all for "sorititon" and citizen juries and the like as a way through, not so much the power of influencers, as the heavily financed lobbying of well-organised vested interests (which is maybe what you meant by influencers). We live inside powerful systems that make opposition hard. But not impossible.
"... if we step outside the constraints of institutions built on Eco’s logic and try instead to reconnect at a community level, we might not resolve the contradiction he (and Orwell) highlight, but we might at least survive the struggle in better shape."
In other words, vote for The Greens! Community based and grassroots membership with policies based on science and evidence.
There does seem to be something of an uptick in their vote atm. The Vic state election is going to be revealing in this regard: and many others, I suspect.
Unfortunately not more than an uptick but it's hard to get any attention with the wall to wall coverage of One Nation and the shenanigans of Labor.