I was on the panel of an event for West Country Voices last night, alongside Naomi Smith, Molly Scott Cato and Peter Jukes.
During the discussion, both Molly and I referred to the fact that we think the UK is under threat from fascists. Molly has written about this on a number of occasions. We both referred to Umberto Eco's fourteen-point definition of fascism and agreed that we are close to these being met. These are those characteristics, originally published in 1996 in the New York Review of Books:
- "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 represent[ing] the Voice of the People."
- "Newspeak" — Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.
I stand by the argument.
Worry.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
All of these characteristics could be ascribed to most communist regimes so why not accuse the Tories of being like communist dictators? Is it because some of your friends are communists so you give communist regimes and their brutal dictatorships a free pass?
I am nit, never have been and never will be remotely akin to a communist
Nor do I have time for the far left – whose totalitarianism I condemn
What I propose is pretty much what the Tories once did
You really need to learn some politics
“You really need to learn some politics”
So do you, if you think our current government is even remotely like the fascist dictatorships of Germany or Italy in the 1930s and 40s.
Quite honestly it’s an insult to those who suffered under those regimes to make the comparison.
In fact there is plenty in your demands for ever more state control and state interference in people’s lives that would chime well with those regimes.
I am a liberal opposed to unnecessary state control but who believes state support vital to let people succeed – and that requires compromises
You on the other hand are unwilling to see what is happening and that makes you, wittingly or unwittingly, a part of the problem of fascism
The American scholar Robert O Paxton has a slightly different take. He cites the emergence of the cult of the leader with a street organisation. That is true of the US , less so here.
He also gives evidence that Fascists will do a deal with corporate power, support conservative religion and use them to sanctify their power. They will seek to crush labour or socialist movements and their ideology. That is not true of Communism.
As a Timothy Snyder fan, I see a lot here redolent in his writings – particularly the ‘Road to Unfreedom’.
However, I was unaware of this – it certainly adds more meat to the bone – thank you for sharing.
The best book that I have read recently on the way in which an elective dictatorship (Lord Haisham) is established is the book by Ece Telmekuran on the rise of Erdogan. Fascinating parallels with UK.
The direction of travel is clear. At the time of the 1944 Education Act, the Secretary of State had only three powers to intervene. He or she now has 1500.
Born outside the UK, with access to other passports, I will shortly only be allowed to stay if I stay in favour with the Home Secretary.
Checks and balances? Community freedoms?
Whistle for them
You may well be right but those 14 points seem like a much closer fit for Trump’s wing of the Republicans (Big Wall, Big Lie, QAnon, anti-science, anti-CRT and all).
Yes Trump’s Republicans.
But their’s a strand of the Tory party that is heading the same way, and Johnson will indulge it to retain power.
One thing that is missing from Eco’s list is corporate power. A necessary condition for fascism to gain power is corporate power deciding that they have more to loose from supporting democracy and paying higher wages and taxes than from supporting an autocratic leader.
That might be true now, but it certainly wasn’t the case in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The fascist regimes of that era were either ignorant of, or very naïve about, economics. Money and greed weren’t their motivations for seizing power; they had darker motives, although they were corrupted by money and greed very rapidly.
The Nazis ran a centralised command economy, not dissimilar to the Soviet model, and were hostile to capitalism initially; too Jewish for their taste. The Spanish ran a corporatist model, again overly centralised, with quotas and set prices that was too rigid to cope real world fluctuations. I can’t say much about the early fascist period Italy, because I haven’t read about it, but they and the Germans did turn to businessmen after armaments production crashed during the war. Spain didn’t open up to a market economy until the 60’s, then experienced rapid growth after a long period of stagnation.
A blog for ‘Peter’’, late of this parish, to read. The German government of the early 30’s had all these characteristics, before they were recognised as full on fascists. Steve and Peter could do with a few history lessons. They might then recognise those characteristics in Johnson’s government. I recall being at a WWII museum in the Ardennes a few years ago with a mate and it prompted us to have that conversation back then
He clearly does not have a clue what communism is either. Nothing Richard has said or written remotely suggests that. There are plenty of ‘socialists’ here but I’m not sure I’ve yet spotted a full on communist!
Hi Richard
Paul Mason’s recent book, How To Stop Fascism, is also worth mentioning here, as it focuses particularly on what can be done to prevent it establishing itself. I certainly learned a lot about the 1930s from it!
I never got around to reading it….
All,
‘How to Stop Fascism’ is the wrong question.
You’ve got to accept that IT IS ALREADY HERE! It’s just that the Tories are very good at the iron fist in the velvet glove approach aren’t they – they lie about what they are doing but do it anyway.
Today, Fascism is more covert and the British establishment would never do anything as vulgar these days as to shoot and gas people they did not like. Anyhow, the prisons are too full and building labour/extermination camps means spending money and is too obvious in a small country like this!
No – the British establishment/Tories have a more refined, dare I say more gentle approach – they take money from people living in a market economy instead; they hire middle men to stop payments to disabled and ill people; they make long term immigrants persona non grata by changing the rules and barring them from citizenship (Windrush); they make no preparations to deal with a global pandemic.
All these actions have killed people the Tories do not care for (removing people you don’t like or agree with is common to Right wing and Left wing Fascists). They’re ‘killing us softly with their wrongs’ – to paraphrase an old song.
So, the focus is now on how to slow Fascism down and hamper Fascism in our country with a view to removing it. Just like the French, Italian, Polish and other Nazi occupied partisans did in WWII.
This partisan war is using everything it can at the moment – what’s left of the law and independent judiciary (The Good Law Project for example) and the WWW on blogs like these where anyone can dissent about anything it seems (but for how much longer?).
Some historians insist that history does not repeat itself (David Runciman in ‘How Democracy Ends; (2018) : others like Timothy Snyder say it does. I contend that if we accept Hannah Arendt’s thesis of the ‘banality of evil’ (that there are people in society pre-disposed to Fascist behaviour) the risk is that Fascism can come back anytime and does, but is able to update itself. Each new iteration enables itself to exist no matter how ‘enlightened’ we are told the times are supposed to be. People like Stephen Pinker tell us and salve our perceptions that the world is ‘less violent’ – he should perhaps pay more attention to what has happened in places like Syria, Yemen and the places we don’t get to hear about that often.
That ‘updating’ of Fascism therefore is always related to how it is spread – contemporary media and PR practice – the means of propaganda – presentation. Fascism is not as stupid as some make out. It’s an art. The art being to make itself presentable and acceptable even though its intellectual basis is abhorrent. Just because there are jackboots, swastikas and military parades does nor mean that we are ‘on the road to Fascism’? Fascism has chameleon like qualities – that’s why it endures and always will.
And anyway, isn’t Fascism always based on lying, on subterfuge? The Nazi’s made the German people hate Jews but never told them how they were going to express that hate and removal of them from society. They used words like ‘evacuation’ to describe extermination. The secretly killed the mentally ill and disabled in ‘hospitals’ – places where you were supposed to get better or at least looked after. Work camps were extermination camps. Fascists abuse people – but they are also masters of abusing language.
‘Levelling up’ have you not realised yet is just making sure that the better off get plenty of Government money. How else can you explain a policy like ‘Help to Buy’ where people who can afford houses are encouraged to get bigger and more expensive houses by having them subsidised by the State when tenants are still being persecuted for having a spare bedroom? Can you imagine how much fun the Tories had creating that one – what a hoot!
I’m quite serious here – this is where we are.
Have no delusions.
Yes – things are much worse than you think they are I’m afraid.
Fascism has arrived right under our noses. It’s here now
We need to deal with it on that basis.
Please now – let’s not kid ourselves here.
I’m not sure if this government (regime?) is driven by fascism even though they are showing definite fascist tendencies. Its key members are from the old privileged land-owning and probably big industrial (eg cotton mills) families who, pre-Victorian times were they only people to hold the vote. After 40 years of campaigning, Benjamin Disraeli obtained the vote for the common man (not forgetting Emmeline Pankhurst later on for women), thus destroying the ‘elite’s’ hegemony over the country, and weakening the families’ standing and assets..
Brexit wasn’t about removing immigrants or increased funding for the NHS (these were ploys to get people hooked), it was about removing the EU’s socialist forces so the ‘elites’ could have the freedom to clumsily restore their hegemony for their own social and financial benefit. Lies and deceit fed to the people to keep them settled. Democracy has nothing t do with it.
Yes, there are fascists here. They are the people who wholeheartedly support this government, probably not realising, if I’m right, what they really are up to. The French had dealt with their ‘aristos’ with the guillotine.
We are now serfs again, my friends.
I do not see those people in this government
That is, I think, a caricature of governments past
This government is made up of very different people
Yeah, true, but Rob Fris kind of has a point to the extent that blatant empire nostalgia underlies the Tory take on Brexit (and a mythical revival of glories past, btw, is a perennial fascist characteristic eg. ‘fasces’ symbolism, ‘Aryan’ myths, MAGA etc.). The Tories’ Elections Bill also has a whiff of the old rotten boroughs and limited suffrage about it.
I could work these threads into a more coherent argument I suppose but I don’t have time for that and its probably been done already. Either way I think Rob might be onto something. 21st century Tories may not be peers or old money for the most part, as you suggest, but their most pretentious aspirations tend to lean that way.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/05/11/brexit-is-not-only-an-expression-of-nostalgia-for-empire-it-is-also-the-fruit-of-empire/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/19/empire-20-is-dangerous-nostalgia-for-something-that-never-existed
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/13/mps-call-for-halt-to-uk-elections-bill-as-voter-id-could-hit-turnout
If that is the argument I am much more willing to buy it
There is massive pretension on display
Mussolini was the original Fascist. There are many similarities between Johnson and Mussolini. Mussolini was opportunistic having started as a Socialist and when that failed to give him any power moved right. Johnson has no fixed beliefs and shifts his views to those which offer him the most personal gain. Mussolini had no moral compass when it came to dealings with others and I would suggest neither does Johnson and both indulged in many sexual encounters. What Johnson doesn’t seem to have is the ability to unify his party behind him consistently nor to carry the support of the nation behind him as a whole in the longer term. He is prone to too many errors of judgement which in the age of instant communication will be his downfall something which Mussolini did not have to contend with.
Steve’s point that regimes professing a communist tradition (ie those that use a class war argument) also have many of these characteristics seems a bit trite. Communist regimes do tend towards Totalitarianism because they too rely on the “big man” leader and revolutionary hero but that doesn’t lesson the argument against the trends in British or US politics surely. Merely pointing out that others can be equally as bad seems a poor reason for accepting a situation.
The person who gave me the epiphany that Fascism existed in both Left and Right is Timothy Snyder whose research and books bear this out – to me at least. There are a lot of similarities between the practices used – even if the political ideologies are very different.
For example, no one can say that the Left does not create enemies for it’s followers ( the rich for example are a traditional target even though people like Nick Hanuer – ‘The Pitch Forks are coming ‘- does not bear that accusation out). Corbyn’s slogan ‘For the many not the few’ I felt was along the same enemy-creating lines.
The Right talk about ‘The Left’ as a mortal enemy or communists etc., but it could be anyone who just thinks differently.
BREXIT was different in my view. BREXIT was just full on nationalism that used modern Fascist techniques to ‘win’ the argument.
I’m not always satisfied that Fascism is a stand alone political belief as it is sometimes presented. To me, it is a technique aimed at dominance and exclusivity – mono-culturalism as opposed to multi-culturalism or even social markets.
And thus, it is not even political since politics is or should be about accommodation and compromise – win/win.
Therefore Fascism is anti-politics in my view, capable of being adopted by any political ideology.
Interesting….I have more Snyder to read
Hmmm, yes and no. Yes re. Stalin, yes re. Strasserism and Ernst Rohm’s “beefsteak nazis” (‘brownshirt on the outside, red on the inside’) but no if you carefully go through Eco’s 14 points again.
It is, as we know it, primarily a right-wing thing.
[…] You can read Richard’s article on the 14 characteristics of fascism here. […]
Typo alert:
Just because there are jackboots, swastikas and military parades does nor mean that we are ‘on the road to Fascism’?
Should read:
Just because there are NO jackboots, swastikas and military parades THIS TIME does NOT mean that we are JUST ‘on the road to Fascism’?
There’s nothing like undermining yourself with poor typing is there? At least Mr Warren know he’s not on his own.
Marco
Are you sure that ‘fascism’ – as a political tool – is primarily a Right wing phenomenon?
I think Soviet Russia was also fascist State – it made enemies of the farmers during the great famine for example as Stalin sought to get as much grain sold for foreign currency as he could in his great push to modernise Russia. It used propaganda as much the Germans did, it incarcerated and killed its own people (as the Nazis did to its German Jews, gays, disabled and mentally ill plus political opponents). Again my observation comes from reading Snyder. It’s not just the Nazis who send us a warning from history.
There are just so many parallels between the countries at this time in history that cannot be ignored. That’s why I think Fascism as more of a mode of operation or social mobilisation than a purely political position.
Fascism is like a tool – like a hammer – that ANY political ideology can pick and use – in war for example or peace.
Further (sorry) in his book ‘Bloodlands’ Snyder says that at the root of the Nazis and Soviets is turbo charged politics of ‘nationalism’ that can then use fascist techniques as they see fit.
Snyder is philosophical about this and sets an example of what we should be thinking when confronted with evaluating the likes of Hitler and Stalin. He repudiates revenge and an eye for an eye and says instead (p. 400):
‘To yield to this temptation, to find other people to be inhuman, is to take a step toward not away from, the Nazi position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history.’
Snyder (underpinned by Arendt) advocates asking why people turn to Fascism as users and the used.
Indeed even in the West we dehumanise or de-citizen those who offer and opposing view during war and even recently when we’ve been debating BREXIT or even when Thatcher told us that unions were the enemy within or where Blair made out that the public sector had ‘left scars on his back’ (or words to that effect).
Fascism is more prevalent really that we would like to admit. Maybe this is the problem with contemporary politics?
Again – I suggest seeing it as a technique of power, rather than ideology in itself.
If Socialism is the language of unity and cohesion, Fascism must be the language of conflict.
PSR,
I really like that last comment of yours about unity and cohesion vs conflict. I’m agreed to that. Its like multiculturalism and tolerance vs nativism, that’s a big part of fascisms past and present.
in my first reply I had already agreed with your point about the Soviet Union (sort of) where I said “Yes, re. Stalin”. I guess that you were expanding on that and I can see the parallels. My only point of difference with you concerns the idea that fascism is “a political tool” or some general mode of operation.
Some people can and will use a broad interpretation. Yours is quite a good one but in the final analysis Fascism is more of a specific ideology and Eco does a pretty good job of identifying it.
Stalin had his own ‘ism’ – Stalinism which shares some fascist characterisitics for sure. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Strasserism which was the philosophy of the Nazi’s left faction, of Ernst Rohm and the SA, for the purposes of this discussion I think you’d be interested in it
The connection between Strasserism and modern white nationalisms like that of UKIP and America’s “Third Position” is deftly explored this long rant of an article which is very good and right up your alley:
A few choice quotes:
Third Position’s “most important antecedent is Strasserism, a strain of Nazism that Adolf Hitler violently extinguished while consolidating his power in the thirties. Strasserists — named after the brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser— expounded a form of Nazi ideology that wedded scientific racism and conspiratorial anti-Semitism to radical anti-capitalism. Effectively, they put the “Socialism” in “National Socialism.”
“To populists of both the left and right, there is no good faith opposition; there are only enemies of the authentic people, however one chooses to define that term”
“(US) “democracy is under threat. White nationalists understand they can’t win a fair election, so they will spent the next four years trying to render more elections either unfair or irrelevant.”
That last one was quite prophetic in 2017.
“The center has fallen, and white nationalism is filling the vacuum: Racism has the power to transform both right and left.”
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-center-has-fallen-and-white-nationalism-is-filling-the-vacuum-beb0611dfe94/
This wiki is quite good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasserism
This short piece below (also from 2017) was written by a smarter-than-average US conservative (asshat) for a conservative think tank (asshat) publication. It is Strasserism-lite straight from the horse’s mouth. You’ll see why Trump purged Bannon just as surely as Hitler purged the Strasser brothers (well, not quite as surely, but sure enough).
“Bannon’s unfinished mission to make the Republicans a worker-friendly party”
https://unherd.com/2017/08/bannons-unfinished-mission-make-republicans-worker-friendly-party/
Albert Einstein, spells out who is behind authoritarianism and who benefits:
I have now reached the point where I may indicate
briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis
of our time. It concerns the relationship of the
individual to society. The individual has become more
conscious than ever of his dependence upon society.
But he does not experience this dependence as a
positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force,
but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his
economic existence. Moreover, his position in society
is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are
constantly being accentuated, while his social drives,
which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate.
All human beings, whatever their position in society,
are suffering from this process of deterioration.
Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel
insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and
unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find
meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through
devoting himself to society.
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists
today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We
page 2
see before us a huge community of producers the
members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive
each other of the fruits of their collective labor – not by
force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with
legally established rules. In this respect, it is important
to realize that the means of production – that is to say,
the entire productive capacity that is needed for
producing consumer goods as well as additional capital
goods – may legally be, and for the most part are, the
private property of individuals.
For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows
The full article by him: why socialism : http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/uploads/Einstein%20on%20Why%20Socialism.pdf
Thanks
If they haven’t already been cited, two quotes from Mussolini on Fascism are worth remembering:
1) “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
2) “The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.” (One of several on similar lines – such as “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state” making the State the subject, and its components the objects.- classic reification).
Finally, this one is relevant to the discussion:
“Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.”
All of the above are indeed applicable to Stalin’s USSR, so that it may justifiably be called a Fascist Left State.
On which, it is worth nothing that Herbert Marcuse, in his book “Soviet Marxism” characterised its practice as “magical”, in the slogans were almost incantations, or spells, intended to produce the effect they claimed to describe.
Thanks