US Politics Mega-thread - Page 681

In his 1995 essay "Eternal Fascism", cultural theorist Umberto Eco lists fourteen general properties of fascist ideology. He argues that it is not possible to organise these into a coherent system, but that "it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it". He uses the term "Ur-fascism" as a generic description of different historical forms of fascism. The fourteen properties are as follows:

• "The Cult of Tradition", characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by Tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.
  
• "The Rejection of modernism", which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.
  
• "The Cult of Action for Action's Sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
  
• "Disagreement Is Treason" – Fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.
  
• "Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
  
• "Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class", fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
  
• "Obsession with a Plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite's 'fear' of the 1930s Jewish populace's businesses and well-doings; see also anti-Semitism). Eco also cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
  Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak." On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
  
• "Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy" because "Life is Permanent Warfare" – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to NOT build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.
  
• "Contempt for the Weak", which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate Leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
  
• "Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero", which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, "[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."
  
• "Machismo", which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold "both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality."
  
• "Selective Populism" – The People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the Leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of "no longer representing the Voice of the People."
  
• "Newspeak" – Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

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Regarding the economy, society, health, education, public transport, trade, taxation, etc. his electoral manifesto consisted of one sentence: “We’ll go on as before.” He does not give interviews and participated in no debates.

This was his message to Hungarians:

• Hungary will not allow dark-skinned Muslim refugees or immigrants to enter the country, and will resist all forces of “mongrelization” (masquerading as “multiculturalism,” “internationalism,” and “cosmopolitanism”), which seek to destroy “White Christian Europe”;
  
• Hungary will not disarm in the face of “political correctness,” which is nothing more than godless communism;
  
• “Mongrelization,” or the dilution of Hungary’s racial stock, is pushed by the “international Jew,” George Soros, who bankrolls the anti-national, liberal-Bolshevik Hungarian opposition and who will even harm the only kind of Jew we like, the religious Zionist. Our dear friend, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, agrees with us as he, too, hates the Yids;
  
• The European Union, the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the western press, the social-democratic, liberal, and Green parties are simple tools in the hands of George Soros — that is, of rootless cosmopolitan Jewry;
  
• Pope Francis is an internationalist liberal Bolshevik;
  
• “Gender madness” or “genderism,” radical feminism,” “human-rightsism,” gay marriage, the Istanbul treaty (which prohibits domestic violence against women and children) — all of these will suppress the Christian family and make “faggotry” the new model of morality;
  
• We shall save Europe from itself, which allows Muslim terrorists and hard-left rioters to plunge it into chaos, unlike the true allies of Christianity like Erdoğan, al-Sisi, Berdimuhamedov, Aliyev, and the rest;
  The Roma people — just like Muslims — cannot be integrated because they do not like to work. They ought to be disciplined, separated, segregated, and, if need be, resettled;
  
• Freemasons, illuminati, cultural Marxists, stock-exchange speculators, anarchists, and sundry intellectuals wish to convince us to renounce anti-Romanian revanchism and irredentism because they have, of course, no understanding of our souls;
  
• Our main enemies are journalists and human rights groups in the pay of You-Know-Who.
  

You may think this is a joke. But it isn’t. It is similar, in a way, to the 1930s, but it is a pastiche, a parody.

A few weeks ago, in a small town in Hungary, two Catholic nuns were stopped on the street and berated by people yelling, “Migrants! Migrants!” After pushing the old ladies a bit, they called the police, believing they had seen Muslim women in a burqa and hijab. The police saved the nuns from the Christian crowd.

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Right-wing extremist arguments almost always rest on the state’s alleged failure to deal adequately with migration. There is a reason for this. It serves to justify a position in which the Right’s actions can be construed as “self-defense.” Under the German legal system, violence committed in self-defense cannot be punished; the claim of self-defense in the face of “state failure” thus provides intellectual justification for openly racist displays of vigilante “justice.” The racist mobs in Chemnitz are a forewarning of what this form of justification could imply, and what German society can expect from the far right in the future.

A striking example of this outlook is detailed in an article entitled “Chemnitz’s Turning Point 2.0?” published on the right-wing German blog Politically Incorrect. The argument works by way of a biological analogy: the riots and mobs are depicted as the natural, self-preserving reaction of a national population’s healthy immune system against a harmful foreign invader. Nowhere in Germany, we are led to believe, is this “immune system” as healthy as in the area surrounding Chemnitz.

It is high time we started taking these kind of statements seriously. To understand how deeply these ideas have penetrated German political discourse, we need only look at the AfD, the country’s ascendant far-right parliamentary party, and one of its chief ideologues, Björn Höcke. Höcke leads the party in the federal state of Thuringia, and regularly appears as a speaker at AfD-sponsored rallies and events.
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Höcke is building on an understanding of history in which each society is always in a process of transition to new forms of rule. For Höcke, we today face the “final stage of the degeneration of democracy,” which will be followed by a phase of absolutist autocracy. This transition can only be achieved through a “renovation” — Höcke’s euphemism for revolution. There is no doubt that his fascist theory is steeped in fantasies of the putsch, the violent seizure of power. And yet he remains one of the AfD’s most important regional leaders.

Particularly noteworthy are the bases of support which Höcke believes will bring about his revolution. His “popular opposition”, as he calls it, consists of three “fronts.” The first is unsurprisingly his own party, the AfD. The second are street movements like Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West), or more organic formations like the mob in Chemnitz. His third front consists of “frustrated sections of the state and security apparatus … that have to deal with the government’s insane policy and have the right to show their disapproval.”

Höcke shrouds this point in legalistic terminology, but its real meaning is clear: he is suggesting that public officials and civil servants should disobey orders. In other forums, he speaks more bluntly. At right-wing demonstrations, Höcke often feels confident enough to call on police officers to refuse the orders of their superiors. His approach ultimately relies on splitting the judiciary, police, and military into two camps: into supporters and opponents of his revolution. This means undercutting the government’s authority over the state machine — an essential component for a revolution or coup.

This scenario is easily dismissed as fantastical and alarmist. And yet Höcke’s focus on the “state and security apparatus” evidences a fine-tuned practical sense. This third front is a new component of his “people’s opposition,” which — drawing on the work of Rosa Luxemburg — he conceives as consisting of both a parliamentary wing and a street movement. Höcke has likely adjusted his perspective after assessing developments within his own party. After all, the AfD has become a home for policemen, soldiers and judicial officials who fall politically in between conservatism and militant right-wing extremism.

Of the AfD’s ninety-four members of parliament, thirty have links to the security, legal, or military sectors. Four MPs are former prosecutors, senior prosecutors, or judges. Among them is former Dresden judge Jens Maier, who co-organized the Pegida demonstrations and is known for his particularly crass verbal attacks on Muslims. Seventeen AfD state parliamentarians have connections to the military. Seven others have connections to the police.