Reading this essay at this time is making our situation as a country crystal clear .These elections clearly illustrate all the points you made and I understand much better what our lives will look like for the foreseeable future.Stoicism is the one tool to effectively deal with this for me and I thank you for all you have thought and please keep it coming.
But I think it's typically really hard for people to make paradigm shifts. I'm sure Massimo you would have had similar experiences! When you go to a new place and start to notice all the things from your home town that you took for granted, and then you come back home, only to find your childhood friends stayed roughly the same as before, but your social and political views have changed, yet you know that trying to convince them would only end your friendship. It's really like Marcus Aurelius' metaphor that those who are ungrateful and irritating still work with you like the upper and lower rows of your teeth, and sometimes, they really are that close to you!! 🙂
Victoria, I know exactly what you mean from personal experience. You are describing Plato’s philosopher who gets out of the cave and sees the light. He then goes back into the cave to enlighten his fellow human beings. And they kill him.
I remember feeling that way when I first read the allegory cave, though I do remember how it felt to be a "frustrated middle class" 😂😂😂 and the ease to mix nationalism and anti foreigners, and pretty much all the other points you've got here about the kind of feelings that fascism appeals to. I understand that without seeing the full picture, people are easily angered, but seeing the full picture requires very uncomfortable paradigm shifts and those require playing mental gymnastics. Either way, it's not easy, and that's why fascism has its appeal throughout the ages.
Hi Massimo, as someone who's worked on the far right for a couple of decades, I sympathise with the intent here. When Mr Trump calls his "Leftist" foes "fascist", we have a word that has no meaning: it just means "enemy". On the other side, calling people "fascists" has as much validity as Project 25 generalising about nefarious "cultural Marxism" in its forward, as justification for repopulating the public service with "political" appointees to enable the President to do what he must. However, there's alot in this article that can be reasonably questioned. Culture war is the art of oversimplifying the foe to stoke fear.
Add to that other conceptual fudges, far right, extreme right, radical right, authoritarian, totalitarian, dictatorship, ethnonationalist, neofascist, fascoid, fascism 2.0, and scholars end up writing more about words than things.
But Eco's point is not to relativise the category of fascism. The category of "totalitarian" is far from uncontroversial, meanwhile, and hardly better defined than "fascism": Arendt is someone whose work has been heavily criticised by historians for trying to falsely equate every later modern total state, in the context of the cold war and the pivot of Western enmities from Nazism to Stalin's Russia after '45. Both historians of Nazism and Stalinism note that Part III of Origins of Totalitarianism is more philosophical than historical, and contains some extremely strange claims (such that all people inthem became superfluous, as against just the targeted victims) such as that totalitarian government has no utilitarian aims, invasions of foreign territories presumably notwithstanding.
The cult of personality developed in the USSR, and Stalin's one man rule really only came with the great purges of 37-38: Russia was celebrated by anti-imperialist third world movements (and reviled in the West by Spengler, Stoddard and others for animated the "colored" peoples), figures from Mao to Gandhi, whereas they recognised fascism as a continuation of Western imperialism. This did not help the nearly 80000 purged in 37-38 under the internal, "national" and "mass" actions, which were nevertheless called off, in a way that the Shoah, eg, never was.
The idea that Nazism was a coherent ideology, rather than a movement based on the idea of life as struggle, in which ideas are instruments of war, and can be used very flexibly, is contestable. Eco can be contested on that (as much as I admire the man, who was a genius, I think). Franz Neumann's Behemoth, written under the aegis of the US government, already comments to this effect.
The National Socialist German Workers Party was without an
ideology, composed of the most diverse social strata but never
hesitating to take in the dregs of every section, supported by the
army, the judiciary, and parts of the civil service, financed by industry,
utilizing the anti-capitalist sentiments of the masses and yet
careful never to estrange the influential moneyed groups. (33)
This absence of a basic theory is one difference between National Socialism and Bolshevism.
The National Socialist ideology is constantly shifting. It
has certain magical beliefs—leadership adoration, the supremacy of
the master race—but its ideology is not laid down in a series of
categorical and dogmatic pronouncements. (39)
So, this is no difference between Hitlerism and Mussolini's fascism. They both used ideas to appeal to different groups: life is struggle, so persuasion should use any and all means. Germany was described as a "proletarian nation" fighting the imperialist democracies by Goebbels et al, at the same time as Hitler ent cup in hand in Feb 33 to big business promising to smash communism and the trade unions, which he did by May that year. The party program so called was almost a dead letter, and even Hitler admitted that it was of no practical value. What mattered was Sieg, victory for the Aryans. Not all Nazis also were polytheists. There was a Nazi German Christianity, which enjoyed support. Bataille, who was a polytheists, for instance complains that the pagans were sidelined, a little too strongly--a thousand racialist flowers could bloom amongst the intelligentsia.
eg: Nazism racialism united everything from skull measuring psuedoDarwinist pseudoscientism to racial mysticism (Rosenberg and Guenther's "racial soul"), and different groups, up to philosophers like Heidegger, competed to "ground" Nazism in a coherence that Hitler cared nothing about--beyond the ultraGermanism, the antisemitism, and the commitment to Eastern conquest, you could fabricate whichever "grounds" you pleased and go for promotions. See the wonderful work of French historian Johann Chapoutot on Nazi antiquity: for "the Greeks" also became "Germanic", lol. Heraclitus for Heidegger was a Germanic dasein!
The idea that fascism in Italy was less lethal because it lacked a coherent ideology is arguably very idealistic. Politics involves action as well as ideas, and response to situations, as well as the rolling out of programs in an orderly way, which neither Hitler nor in some senses even Stalin ever did--the famine for instance in 32-33 in Ukraine and elsewhere was not planned, although Stalin's inner circle tried to oppose warnings from party operatives on the ground the people were dying. And as you say, those Mussolini asked to drink castor oil and so on may not have worried whether he was a totalitarian or not. Nor may not the Ethiopians.
Hitler's Nazism itself became murderous in anything like a programmatic way only gradually (T4 started in 38, although torture and death for leftists and jews in camps began soon after the Gleichschaltung), and the final solution evolved in response to circumstances, notably Russian resistance to the invasion. The first gas chambers (or trucks) were built at Chelmno nearly as the tanks were halted by General Winter outside Moscow at the end of '41; Hitler thought killing the Jews was an act of self-defence, as the Jews were behind Marxism (Judeobolshevism). Before that, the hope to expel the Jews into the far East or Madagascar competed with the idea of physical extermination. In other words, dictators do not care as much as we do about ideas; they balance this concern with a ruthless will to power, and the ability to tack in response to circumstances.
I'll leave it there. I agree with you that it is important to try to use words correctly. I agree the word fascism is a mess; as was totalitarianism, and this mess reflects its political uses. Those who would oppose eg Trump need not use this word and had better avoid it--at least a suffix or prefix is advisable, but usually doesn't help. If they worry about his dictatorial intentions, they need quote his own words or those of Bannon, and now Project 25; for instance this week about Christians not needing to vote after this year, about eliminating the vermin, about mass deportation, his admiring dictators, and so on. If you oppose dictatorship and a politics of fear, the label can wait. As soon as the F-word is used, the debate becomes a shouting match.
Matt, thanks for the in-depth commentary! A few notes. Yes, there are things to be contested in Arendt, Eco, etc.. But the "accusation" that part of The Origins of Totalitarianism is philosophical rather than historical seems a strange one. History can use a bit of philosophy, just like the other way around.
I disagree that Nazism had no ideology. The notion of an alleged superiority of the Aryan race provided the grounds for such ideology. The fact that the Nazi were also pragmatic in certain respects, thus compromising their ideology, is neither surprising nor alien to Stalinism and other forms of authoritarianism. And Stalinism seems to me to have been only superficially ideological. There was very little Marx influence throughout the history of the Soviet Union. Ideology is simply an excuse for authoritarians to do what they wish and convince the masses that they have good reasons for it.
On Heidegger, the less it is said the better...
Regarding the fact that tactics evolve under an authoritarian regime, I agree. Nobody plans everything ahead. But I fail to see what exactly that undermines in Eco's view of the issue. Indeed, I agree that authoritarians don't care about ideas and that they tend to be "Machiavellian" in the worst sense of the word. And I definitely agree that as soon as the "F-word" is used in political debate the debate itself is over. That doesn't mean that fascism as a concept does not have its utility in order for the rest of us to understand what's going on.
Useful “summary”; unfortunately most people use terms loosely/inaccurately. A problem that has been around probably forever, and with “social” media, is if anything, worse:(
Very nice discussion Massimo. Thanks. The literature about populism often distinguishes right-wing from left-wing populism by the fact that only the second seeks (or claims to seek) a redistribution of wealth in favor of the poor. Exemple of left-wing populist: Chavez. On the right: Johnson. Maybe this is a useful distinction.
Pierre, yes, in theory. In practice the two types of populism seem to often behave in the same way, because they are both kinds of authoritarianism. Look at the economic appeal of current US populists, or the approval that Pinochet got in Chile (admittedly, more from the middle class than the people at large). Mussolini was very popular among people who until the year before had voted socialist.
I agree. Theory and practice are different. You may find the paper by Funke et al in the december 2023 American Economic Review interesting. These authors perform an statistical analysis of the economic consequences of populist governments since the early 20th century. They find that populist policies have had a negative effects on average income in the medium- and long-term. They also find that these policies did not reduce inequalities ... Even when enacted by left-wing populists.
Massimo — #2 the cult of irrationality. This one hits very close to home because I find myself having conversations with climate science deniers in politics that resemble conversations about evolution that I’ve had with creationists. “It’s just a theory. It depends on who you believe and where you get your news. Data can be manipulated to prove anything….” At which point, how does the conversation progress?
Breathe.
All to say thank you for your beautiful writing. I always love hearing your voice!
Yes, you are correct: climate denialism has a lot in common with evolution denialism, and I simply don't engage in such "conversations" because they are not conversations at all. I put out what I think is sound information, and I try to act conscientiously. That's all that's up to me, as the Stoics would say.
Jair Bolsonaro, from Brazil, checked the 12 points and probably 3 or 4 bonus points. Strikingly the fear of modernity (anti vaccines), #5 manifested as a level of homophobia that only Freud could explain, #11 (cult of Trump) and #12 (a level of misogyny that Freud would understand in 3 seconds). I do feel that the new fascists are however a bit anti-nationalist. They are pseudo nationalists, they scream for their Country and flag, while burning their country to the ground, privatizing its richness and insulting its people. Cheers. Never again!
I'm also seeing that the new fascist are anti-nationalist but I'd like to know if it's something that happens only in Latin America or also in other parts of the world. Because I'm looking at Javier Milei from Argentina that checks #4, #10 and #12 every time he opens his mouth
Hi Alejandro. I think it is not a LA issue as well. It might be a bit less blunt, but the far right governments (fascist or not) seem very consistent to me in their incoherence about patriotism. Half of what Trump did was against the US interest. And look at the far right in France. When they bluntly offer racism as their platform, they are going against one third of the country to begin with… Anyway…Between Bolsonaro and Milei (and the buffoon from Chile) we have our plate full….
Marcelo, interesting point about the new tyrants' anti-nationalism. Whether it is on purpose or a byproduct of what they do is an interesting conversation to be had.
This article highlights a significant fault about the way a lot of people view politics. These terms like fascism and authoritarianism, and especially democracy, are held from very linear viewpoints, stripping away the nuance that comes with ideology.
I'm currently reading 'The Dictator's Handbook', and it highlights a similar argument you're making with your take on fascism. I really enjoyed this read.
.....taught....
Reading this essay at this time is making our situation as a country crystal clear .These elections clearly illustrate all the points you made and I understand much better what our lives will look like for the foreseeable future.Stoicism is the one tool to effectively deal with this for me and I thank you for all you have thought and please keep it coming.
Glad you found the essay useful, thanks you for your kind words.
Hahaha 😂 😂 i think I was rather fascist in my 20s - nationalism and other rhetoric certainly appealed to my frustrated middle class upbringing. 😅
Then I went to live overseas and read history and philosophy books. Hummm..
Yeah, reading and traveling do mess around with one's brain! 😃
But I think it's typically really hard for people to make paradigm shifts. I'm sure Massimo you would have had similar experiences! When you go to a new place and start to notice all the things from your home town that you took for granted, and then you come back home, only to find your childhood friends stayed roughly the same as before, but your social and political views have changed, yet you know that trying to convince them would only end your friendship. It's really like Marcus Aurelius' metaphor that those who are ungrateful and irritating still work with you like the upper and lower rows of your teeth, and sometimes, they really are that close to you!! 🙂
Victoria, I know exactly what you mean from personal experience. You are describing Plato’s philosopher who gets out of the cave and sees the light. He then goes back into the cave to enlighten his fellow human beings. And they kill him.
I remember feeling that way when I first read the allegory cave, though I do remember how it felt to be a "frustrated middle class" 😂😂😂 and the ease to mix nationalism and anti foreigners, and pretty much all the other points you've got here about the kind of feelings that fascism appeals to. I understand that without seeing the full picture, people are easily angered, but seeing the full picture requires very uncomfortable paradigm shifts and those require playing mental gymnastics. Either way, it's not easy, and that's why fascism has its appeal throughout the ages.
Yes, those are the very reasons. And we need to keep them in mind whenever we interact with people who think that way.
Oh so true!!!
Hi Massimo, as someone who's worked on the far right for a couple of decades, I sympathise with the intent here. When Mr Trump calls his "Leftist" foes "fascist", we have a word that has no meaning: it just means "enemy". On the other side, calling people "fascists" has as much validity as Project 25 generalising about nefarious "cultural Marxism" in its forward, as justification for repopulating the public service with "political" appointees to enable the President to do what he must. However, there's alot in this article that can be reasonably questioned. Culture war is the art of oversimplifying the foe to stoke fear.
Add to that other conceptual fudges, far right, extreme right, radical right, authoritarian, totalitarian, dictatorship, ethnonationalist, neofascist, fascoid, fascism 2.0, and scholars end up writing more about words than things.
But Eco's point is not to relativise the category of fascism. The category of "totalitarian" is far from uncontroversial, meanwhile, and hardly better defined than "fascism": Arendt is someone whose work has been heavily criticised by historians for trying to falsely equate every later modern total state, in the context of the cold war and the pivot of Western enmities from Nazism to Stalin's Russia after '45. Both historians of Nazism and Stalinism note that Part III of Origins of Totalitarianism is more philosophical than historical, and contains some extremely strange claims (such that all people inthem became superfluous, as against just the targeted victims) such as that totalitarian government has no utilitarian aims, invasions of foreign territories presumably notwithstanding.
The cult of personality developed in the USSR, and Stalin's one man rule really only came with the great purges of 37-38: Russia was celebrated by anti-imperialist third world movements (and reviled in the West by Spengler, Stoddard and others for animated the "colored" peoples), figures from Mao to Gandhi, whereas they recognised fascism as a continuation of Western imperialism. This did not help the nearly 80000 purged in 37-38 under the internal, "national" and "mass" actions, which were nevertheless called off, in a way that the Shoah, eg, never was.
The idea that Nazism was a coherent ideology, rather than a movement based on the idea of life as struggle, in which ideas are instruments of war, and can be used very flexibly, is contestable. Eco can be contested on that (as much as I admire the man, who was a genius, I think). Franz Neumann's Behemoth, written under the aegis of the US government, already comments to this effect.
The National Socialist German Workers Party was without an
ideology, composed of the most diverse social strata but never
hesitating to take in the dregs of every section, supported by the
army, the judiciary, and parts of the civil service, financed by industry,
utilizing the anti-capitalist sentiments of the masses and yet
careful never to estrange the influential moneyed groups. (33)
This absence of a basic theory is one difference between National Socialism and Bolshevism.
The National Socialist ideology is constantly shifting. It
has certain magical beliefs—leadership adoration, the supremacy of
the master race—but its ideology is not laid down in a series of
categorical and dogmatic pronouncements. (39)
So, this is no difference between Hitlerism and Mussolini's fascism. They both used ideas to appeal to different groups: life is struggle, so persuasion should use any and all means. Germany was described as a "proletarian nation" fighting the imperialist democracies by Goebbels et al, at the same time as Hitler ent cup in hand in Feb 33 to big business promising to smash communism and the trade unions, which he did by May that year. The party program so called was almost a dead letter, and even Hitler admitted that it was of no practical value. What mattered was Sieg, victory for the Aryans. Not all Nazis also were polytheists. There was a Nazi German Christianity, which enjoyed support. Bataille, who was a polytheists, for instance complains that the pagans were sidelined, a little too strongly--a thousand racialist flowers could bloom amongst the intelligentsia.
eg: Nazism racialism united everything from skull measuring psuedoDarwinist pseudoscientism to racial mysticism (Rosenberg and Guenther's "racial soul"), and different groups, up to philosophers like Heidegger, competed to "ground" Nazism in a coherence that Hitler cared nothing about--beyond the ultraGermanism, the antisemitism, and the commitment to Eastern conquest, you could fabricate whichever "grounds" you pleased and go for promotions. See the wonderful work of French historian Johann Chapoutot on Nazi antiquity: for "the Greeks" also became "Germanic", lol. Heraclitus for Heidegger was a Germanic dasein!
The idea that fascism in Italy was less lethal because it lacked a coherent ideology is arguably very idealistic. Politics involves action as well as ideas, and response to situations, as well as the rolling out of programs in an orderly way, which neither Hitler nor in some senses even Stalin ever did--the famine for instance in 32-33 in Ukraine and elsewhere was not planned, although Stalin's inner circle tried to oppose warnings from party operatives on the ground the people were dying. And as you say, those Mussolini asked to drink castor oil and so on may not have worried whether he was a totalitarian or not. Nor may not the Ethiopians.
Hitler's Nazism itself became murderous in anything like a programmatic way only gradually (T4 started in 38, although torture and death for leftists and jews in camps began soon after the Gleichschaltung), and the final solution evolved in response to circumstances, notably Russian resistance to the invasion. The first gas chambers (or trucks) were built at Chelmno nearly as the tanks were halted by General Winter outside Moscow at the end of '41; Hitler thought killing the Jews was an act of self-defence, as the Jews were behind Marxism (Judeobolshevism). Before that, the hope to expel the Jews into the far East or Madagascar competed with the idea of physical extermination. In other words, dictators do not care as much as we do about ideas; they balance this concern with a ruthless will to power, and the ability to tack in response to circumstances.
I'll leave it there. I agree with you that it is important to try to use words correctly. I agree the word fascism is a mess; as was totalitarianism, and this mess reflects its political uses. Those who would oppose eg Trump need not use this word and had better avoid it--at least a suffix or prefix is advisable, but usually doesn't help. If they worry about his dictatorial intentions, they need quote his own words or those of Bannon, and now Project 25; for instance this week about Christians not needing to vote after this year, about eliminating the vermin, about mass deportation, his admiring dictators, and so on. If you oppose dictatorship and a politics of fear, the label can wait. As soon as the F-word is used, the debate becomes a shouting match.
Matt, thanks for the in-depth commentary! A few notes. Yes, there are things to be contested in Arendt, Eco, etc.. But the "accusation" that part of The Origins of Totalitarianism is philosophical rather than historical seems a strange one. History can use a bit of philosophy, just like the other way around.
I disagree that Nazism had no ideology. The notion of an alleged superiority of the Aryan race provided the grounds for such ideology. The fact that the Nazi were also pragmatic in certain respects, thus compromising their ideology, is neither surprising nor alien to Stalinism and other forms of authoritarianism. And Stalinism seems to me to have been only superficially ideological. There was very little Marx influence throughout the history of the Soviet Union. Ideology is simply an excuse for authoritarians to do what they wish and convince the masses that they have good reasons for it.
On Heidegger, the less it is said the better...
Regarding the fact that tactics evolve under an authoritarian regime, I agree. Nobody plans everything ahead. But I fail to see what exactly that undermines in Eco's view of the issue. Indeed, I agree that authoritarians don't care about ideas and that they tend to be "Machiavellian" in the worst sense of the word. And I definitely agree that as soon as the "F-word" is used in political debate the debate itself is over. That doesn't mean that fascism as a concept does not have its utility in order for the rest of us to understand what's going on.
Useful “summary”; unfortunately most people use terms loosely/inaccurately. A problem that has been around probably forever, and with “social” media, is if anything, worse:(
Yeah, more like anti-social media!
Very nice discussion Massimo. Thanks. The literature about populism often distinguishes right-wing from left-wing populism by the fact that only the second seeks (or claims to seek) a redistribution of wealth in favor of the poor. Exemple of left-wing populist: Chavez. On the right: Johnson. Maybe this is a useful distinction.
Pierre, yes, in theory. In practice the two types of populism seem to often behave in the same way, because they are both kinds of authoritarianism. Look at the economic appeal of current US populists, or the approval that Pinochet got in Chile (admittedly, more from the middle class than the people at large). Mussolini was very popular among people who until the year before had voted socialist.
I agree. Theory and practice are different. You may find the paper by Funke et al in the december 2023 American Economic Review interesting. These authors perform an statistical analysis of the economic consequences of populist governments since the early 20th century. They find that populist policies have had a negative effects on average income in the medium- and long-term. They also find that these policies did not reduce inequalities ... Even when enacted by left-wing populists.
Thanks for the reference!
Massimo — #2 the cult of irrationality. This one hits very close to home because I find myself having conversations with climate science deniers in politics that resemble conversations about evolution that I’ve had with creationists. “It’s just a theory. It depends on who you believe and where you get your news. Data can be manipulated to prove anything….” At which point, how does the conversation progress?
Breathe.
All to say thank you for your beautiful writing. I always love hearing your voice!
Karima, always nice to hear from you!
Yes, you are correct: climate denialism has a lot in common with evolution denialism, and I simply don't engage in such "conversations" because they are not conversations at all. I put out what I think is sound information, and I try to act conscientiously. That's all that's up to me, as the Stoics would say.
Well, we read about this topic often nowadays for some reason. Thanks for a more nuanced and historical perspective, Massimo.
Jair Bolsonaro, from Brazil, checked the 12 points and probably 3 or 4 bonus points. Strikingly the fear of modernity (anti vaccines), #5 manifested as a level of homophobia that only Freud could explain, #11 (cult of Trump) and #12 (a level of misogyny that Freud would understand in 3 seconds). I do feel that the new fascists are however a bit anti-nationalist. They are pseudo nationalists, they scream for their Country and flag, while burning their country to the ground, privatizing its richness and insulting its people. Cheers. Never again!
I'm also seeing that the new fascist are anti-nationalist but I'd like to know if it's something that happens only in Latin America or also in other parts of the world. Because I'm looking at Javier Milei from Argentina that checks #4, #10 and #12 every time he opens his mouth
Hi Alejandro. I think it is not a LA issue as well. It might be a bit less blunt, but the far right governments (fascist or not) seem very consistent to me in their incoherence about patriotism. Half of what Trump did was against the US interest. And look at the far right in France. When they bluntly offer racism as their platform, they are going against one third of the country to begin with… Anyway…Between Bolsonaro and Milei (and the buffoon from Chile) we have our plate full….
Alejandro, yeah, I don't think the new fascism is an exclusively Latin American phenomenon unfortunately.
Marcelo, interesting point about the new tyrants' anti-nationalism. Whether it is on purpose or a byproduct of what they do is an interesting conversation to be had.
This article highlights a significant fault about the way a lot of people view politics. These terms like fascism and authoritarianism, and especially democracy, are held from very linear viewpoints, stripping away the nuance that comes with ideology.
I'm currently reading 'The Dictator's Handbook', and it highlights a similar argument you're making with your take on fascism. I really enjoyed this read.
A thoughtful look at distinguishing between authoritarians like Putin and Trump, and totalitarians like Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping. Thank you!
Thanks Mort, appreciated!