What is fascism?
In an essay published in the New York Review of Books, Eco distilled the 14 typical elements of “Ur-Fascism or Eternal Fascism,” while warning that, “These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”
The cult of tradition.
Fascism is obsessed with traditional values and a return to the a fantastical era of stability and purity. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.
The rejection of modernity.
The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.
The cult of action for action’s sake.
Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.
Disagreement is treason.
Fascism devalues intellectual discourse (argument) and critical reasoning as barriers to action.
Fear of difference.
The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. This often manifests as a fear of immigrants, minorities, and foreigners.
Appeal to social frustration.
“[…] one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
The obsession with a nationalist plot.
“The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.” Fascists hype-up enemy threats, lend themselves to nationalism, and defines itself as an absolute struggle.
The enemy is both weak and strong.
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.
“[…] the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.
“For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
"Life is permanent warfare" – there must always be an enemy to fight.
Contempt for the weak.
Every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group.
Everybody is educated to become a hero.
“In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.” The everyday person is taught to romanticize ‘dying for the glory of the state’.
Anxiety around masculinity, sexuality, and gender.
Fascists hold "both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality". This is deep intertwined with the cult of tradition, fear of difference, and contempt for the weak.
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.
Newspeak
Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.
Adapted from Umberto Eco, "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt," The New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995.