Umberto Eco’s infamous essay on “ur-fascism” is one of the dumbest things he ever wrote – naturally, it’s a great favourite of the left-media. If we’re to take Eco’s nonsense seriously, just about everything is a sign of imminent fascism. The saddest part about such idiocy is that it demeans the public discourse, turning everyone in the legacy media into Rik from The Young Ones.
Even dumber than Eco, though, are legacy media journalists who don’t just see fascists lurking under their beds, but who spend all their time screaming ‘fascist!’ at the mirror.
So, when the numb-nuts at MSN (aka ‘Maoist State News’) gibber about ‘how to recognize a fascist’, the results are as simultaneously predictable, sad and hilarious as you should expect.
When an article proceeds from being wrong about the most basic facts, you know you’re reading a legacy media garbage article.
The most infamous fascist leader was Adolf Hitler.
Hitler was not a fascist. Hitler was a Nazi. These are not, as the left-media use them, mere swear-words. They’re words whose originators coined them with definite meanings. Meanings which, to be sure, had some similarities, but also some key differences.
Fascism, like Nazism and Communism, originated as a hyper-authoritarian socialist doctrine. But where Nazism’s key platform was racism, and Communism’s internationalism, Fascism’s key platform was nationalism. A nation, Benito Mussolini emphasised in The Doctrine of Fascism, was not synonymous with a race. In fact, there were key Jewish fascists (230 Jews took place in the pivotal March on Rome). Mussolini had a Jewish mistress for over 20 years. Anti-Semitism was a very late arrival on the Fascist scene, mostly under pressure from the Nazis with whom Mussolini finally and somewhat reluctantly threw in his lot during the Hitler-induced crises of the 1930s.
Fascism was initially born of a revolt against modernity.
Another howler, given that Fascism was, in its day, regarded as the modern ideology. Indeed, of all major political movements (democracy, socialism, communism), Fascism is the only one born in the 20th century rather than the 19th.
Hannah Arendt was right to see regard Fascism as one amongst many excrescences of totalitarianism. To damn it with faint praise, Fascism was the least of the major authoritarian ideologies of the 20th century. Certainly in terms of body count.
But it’s when the legacy media morons start hand-waving about ‘how to spot a fascist today’ that it gets really hilarious.
Fascists are traditionally opposed to democracy, blaming it for all of society’s ills […]
Fascism’s contempt for democracy goes hand in hand with multi-level authoritarianism. Historically, fascist regimes exercised total control over both the state and society. Authoritarian thinking also tends to reject all criticism and diversity, a trait clearly observed in current movements.
Which movements? Forgive me for noticing that it’s not the “far-right” movements that MSN wants you to find under the bed.
As a slew of recent surveys have found, a strong majority of young voters believe ‘democracy has failed’. These same young voters are overwhelmingly, not just left, but extreme left.
They’re also addicted to violent repression of any dissenting views. Far from extreme elements, Antifa, Black Bloc and other such groups are mainstream on the contemporary left. With not an inkling of the moronic irony, “Anti-fascist” gangs dressed in black shirts regularly turn out to perpetrate extreme, sometimes fatal, street violence, vandalism and other acts of thuggery.
Does that remind you of anyone?
Does this?
Fake news and slogans, similar to Orwell’s newspeak, used to prevent critical reasoning and impoverish thought […]
an obsession with conspiracy […]
the adulation of a charismatic leader.
MSN
Russiagate, “systemic racism”, catastrophic global warming, “police hunting unarmed black men”, the Sixth Extinction, HIV/AIDs denialism, “George Bush did 9/11”… all of these are widespread conspiracy theories on the left.
From Greta Thunberg and Jacinda Ardern to Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau, the left hero-worship a pantheon of Dear Leaders (even if many of them have all the charisma of a week-old blancmange).
As always, the legacy media left are a pack of witless parrots endlessly attacking their little mirrors.