So what is this Ur-Fascism book I keep hearing about?

[skykiii]

Here's what I know:

It's by Umberto Eco and people like to cite it to prove something or other is fascist. I searched it on Kiwi and that was enough to find out many here consider it a load of dingos kidneys, but many of those also assume a basic familiarity with both the author and whatever the fuck the author is on about, so much like Nord and Bert, I had trouble making heads or tails of it.

Please demystify it for me?

Thanks in advance.

 

[bouquetnine]

Sounds like some typical libtard bullshit used to smear anyone they don't like. Like "dog whistling" or whatever.

Layman: How can this possible be a bad thing? It seems innocent enough.
Liberal priest caste: Trust me bro.

 

[Gregis]

It's just an essay. Get cracking, nigger.

https://archive.org/details/umberto-eco-ur-fascism/umberto-eco-ur-fascism.lt/

 

[cugel]

The essay is really wrong. I both studied fascism as my degree and am one. It was the period of time when people said fascism was not an actual idea but a capitalist con, The funny thing is that fascism went to war against capitalism, but communism did not. It is all, fascism is a trick on people and no one is fascist stuff. For like 30 years people now view facism as a thing with ideas etc, but that has not trickled down to layman.

 

[Blue Flying Leaf]

The funny thing is that fascism went to war against capitalism

It was one capitalist fighting against the other capitalist

 

[Gregis]

The essay is really wrong. I both studied fascism as my degree and am one. It was the period of time when people said fascism was not an actual idea but a capitalist con, The funny thing is that fascism went to war against capitalism, but communism did not. It is all, fascism is a trick on people and no one is fascist stuff. For like 30 years people now view facism as a thing with ideas etc, but that has not trickled down to layman.

I cannot let this opportunity go by, please ignore OP's illiterate ramblings and instead use his thread to explain fascism to me. My heuristic understanding is it's fairly heterogenous and not necessarily "right wing" in any real sense, being essentially a reaction against communism, including by anti-fans like in the case of "beefsteak Nazis". Do you get a more coherent definition by focusing on earlier theorists? Of those historical governments commonly classed as fascist, which ones do you consider actually to be so?

 

[cugel]

I cannot let this opportunity go by, please ignore OP's illiterate ramblings and instead use his thread to explain fascism to me. My heuristic understanding is it's fairly heterogenous and not necessarily "right wing" in any real sense, being essentially a reaction against communism, including by anti-fans like in the case of "beefsteak Nazis". Do you get a more coherent definition by focusing on earlier theorists? Of those historical governments commonly classed as fascist, which ones do you consider actually to be so?

I would say it is right wing, the proto facist party is the oldest active poltical party in France, Action Française. But it is the great war that made it, the idea is that violence is good, struggle is good, struggling together is good. It is not really a reaction to commuism to but a reaction to end of the war and the peace being bad for victors and and also the losers. You should read the thinkers and writers of them. With facism its normally about movements as most dont get into power, like Franco blocked them. Japan really blocked them hard. While they pruged them they actually took seats in the election of 1944.

I would say it is right wing, the proto facist party is the oldest active poltical party in France, Action Française. But it is the great war that made it, the idea is that violence is good, struggle is good, struggling together is good. It is not really a reaction to commuism to but a reaction to end of the war and the peace being bad for victors and and also the losers. You should read the thinkers and writers of them. With facism its normally about movements as most dont get into power, like Franco blocked them. Japan really blocked them hard. While they pruged them they actually took seats in the election of 1944.

Also there is a divide between racial and non racail, certain movements like Italy and Spain where not so racial while romania croatia and germany where.

It was one capitalist fighting against the other capitalist

How? Germany and Italy had more state ownership of industry then an country in the world apart from the american dog the CCCP

I would say it is right wing, the proto facist party is the oldest active poltical party in France, Action Française. But it is the great war that made it, the idea is that violence is good, struggle is good, struggling together is good. It is not really a reaction to commuism to but a reaction to end of the war and the peace being bad for victors and and also the losers. You should read the thinkers and writers of them. With facism its normally about movements as most dont get into power, like Franco blocked them. Japan really blocked them hard. While they pruged them they actually took seats in the election of 1944.

this is hardly straching the suface, but its the Emperor's birthday today so hoilday tommrow and going on a hot springs date with my gf, so dont want to get into so i can be rested,

 

[Cedric_Eff]

Oh jeez, condense your thoughts into one post @cugel

Forum etiquette.

But aside from that, what make you more predisposed to fascism?

 

[Gregis]

I would say it is right wing, the proto facist party is the oldest active poltical party in France, Action Française. But it is the great war that made it, the idea is that violence is good, struggle is good, struggling together is good. It is not really a reaction to commuism to but a reaction to end of the war and the peace being bad for victors and and also the losers. You should read the thinkers and writers of them. With facism its normally about movements as most dont get into power, like Franco blocked them. Japan really blocked them hard. While they pruged them they actually took seats in the election of 1944.

With Franco, my impression is he used them to get power, but once he had it secured he turned to his more moderate backers. Japan though, if fascism is largely about war and shared struggle, they were an intensely militaristic society. I know they suppressed communists, the idea they would be threatened by fascism seems strange to me. Does fascism have a theory on sovereignty, in the way say democracy does or monarchy? Was that the issue the Japanese had, given that they managed to fully modernize around the existing traditional imperial system?

Also, are there any governments you would say actually represented a fascist system, or at most were fascists part of coalitions? Sounds like Spain and Japan are out.

this is hardly straching the suface, but its the Emperor's birthday today so hoilday tommrow and going on a hot springs date with my gf, so dont want to get into so i can be rested,

Thanks for what you've written, no problem if you get back to my new questions later. Sorry if the questions seem retarded, but I have a lot of trouble pinning down these definitions given the rhetoric that goes around (like the Eco essay, or people calling Spain and Portugal fascist) and I'm very interested to hear from someone who studied it and considers himself one.

To OP, sorry I made the fascist quadpost all over your thread, but it's 10 fucking pages, why don't you just read it and tell US what it says?

 

[cugel]

Oh jeez, condense your thoughts into one post @cugel

Forum etiquette.

But aside from that, what make you more predisposed to fascism?

I read alot as a child, one of those, at 11, was a series of books by Major-General Fuller The Decisive Battles of the Western World, three volumes from ancient Greece to world war 2. He was the father of tank warfare, a mystic and very pro-fascist that when world war 2 happened he was not allowed to hold a position in the military. He was part of a plot to take over if there was peace in 1940. When i was 17 i joined the communist party for a years but reading marx and Lennin gets you out of it. Reading fascist theory makes sense, its about the struggle with your people, if you win or lose you did it. I like the collective idea that i even moved to a society like that from the west.

 

[grump]

Fascism is historically a movement that arose from socialism combining economic socialism with nationalistic elements and a grab bag of different thirdway ideas depending on the specific faction. After the Soviets won the war they lumped Fascism, Nazism, and Francoism together under the label of fascism and together with their stooge fellow travelers in the west convinced everyone that they were the same thing and right wing, conservative, and capitalist. Even though all three are obviously quite different from each other except for the fact that they all arose from socialism and opposed/or rivaled might be a better word, marxist communism.

This revisionism was so successful even trailerpark neonazis call themselves such because they think its rightwing even though even francoism which was really the only major 'branch' that could be considered conservative in a meaningful sense came from strong anticonservative roots.

Just wanted to remind everyone since I'm seeing the usual soviet inspired wikipedia misinformation being repeated here.

 

[Hazard Crab]

I recommend reading Charles Haywood's review of Fascism: The Career of a Concept by Paul Gottfried. Umberto Eco's essay is an attempt to categorize fascism as a coherent ideology with definitions that are conveniently loose enough that it just becomes "everything that dares to oppose the Left project."

In short: Fascism was a revolutionary right-wing movement, separate from national socialism or traditional conservatism, that existed for a brief time in the early 20th century before burning out. It can only really be understood in its historical context, as the right-wing in each of the countries it passed through had different ideas what needed to be revolutionized.

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

@Cnidarian made this great thread but never finished it.

If you want a funny and thunk-provoking read regarding Fascism, try this:

https://kiwifarms.pa/threads/wip-transgenderism-is-a-fascist-movement.202516/

(It really kind of proves that anything can be fascism)

 

[Vect]

I'd like everyone to appreciate the irony that we have no issues calling this essay on fascism bad yet we're arguing about what fascism is.

I both studied fascism as my degree and am one.

What does that even mean to you? The thing is, Eco's right: fascism is not an ideology, it's a loose connection of revolutionary movements that were militaristic, authoritarian and most importantly ultra-nationalistic, depending on each country's circumstance and largely as a reformists reaction to the First World War. Italian Fascism, an eccentric blend of national identity revival and futuristic thinking had little in common with Nazism, a national restoration and raciest centralized state, or Francoist Spain, an economic and isolationist dictatorship, or any of the half dozen or so South American countries that flirted with it.

The problem with some of these criteria of 'Ur-Fascism' is that they're outdated. For example, there is no reason to believe that a modern 21st century fascist movement would have to be racially homogenous, it's simply that it used to be an easy populist scapegoat because skin colour was the easiest way to draw differences between groups. By his criteria, Nick Fuentes' America First, a sex-regressive, white nationalist pro-Hitler movement, would be too diverse to qualify as a fascist organisation.

All these places had their own problems and these movements were reactions to the hardships and perceptions of the time. What does it mean to be a political fascist in 2025? In any country? The word, the political denomination, is obsolete.

What people mean when they say fascist now, when they use words like authoritarian, dictator, or Nazi (and this is on all sides of the political compass) is simply an expression of powerlessness and lack of real will articulated as oppression - 'I have no easy power to stop you from doing something I don't agree with, therefore I am being oppressed'.

When the Kiwi Farms gets called fascist, what they actually mean is 'they document our retarded behaviour, but I don't have the willpower to stop being retarded, therefore, they are oppressing me.'

(It really kind of proves that anything can be fascism)

He has a point (though I think he could have written it a bit clearer. The two missing ones are embracing machismo (if any is displayed, it's not intentional) and rejection of diversity - trannies consider themselves incredibly diverse, gender being a spectrum - what they fail to realize is they are artificially and homogamically diverse - in their need to all be different and special, they all end up looking and thinking the same, because they've ruined the things that made them individuals and people.

 

[Rekieta’s Broken Penis]

rejection of diversity - trannies consider themselves incredibly diverse, gender being a spectrum - what they fail to realize is they are artificially and homogamically diverse - in their need to all be different and special, they all end up looking and thinking the same, because they've ruined the things that made them individuals and people.

That seems like an easy gotcha but all things are bounded. Anybody who advocates for diversity is only advocating for diversity in some specific attributes. A recruiter who says “I’m looking for a diverse range of candidates” probably isn’t looking for shit candidate as well as good candidates, nor candidates who are diverse in some imperceptible manner orthogonal to that role and culture. It’s like saying all metal sounds the same and people who form metal bands are really giving up on their own true sound.

Freedom ain’t free, as they say.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

IMO the only useful contemporary writing on this is Nick Land's The F Word: https://dailycaller.com/2016/10/17/the-f-word/

Eco, in contrast, is thr usual vague commie bullshit best summarized as "all resistance to communism is fascism."