Eternal Fascism: 14 Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt

[Questionable]

http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html

Has anyone read this? I've seen it posted in a few liberal forums.

What do you guys think? I couldn't help but notice that it totally ignores any class aspect of fascism and instead relies on Idealistic concepts to explain it, but could this be a good analysis of fascist ideology that arises from its class character?

[ComingUpForAir]

Very interesting.. the concept of permanent war not being able to end, thus a golden future not possible.. and the idea that fascists can't objectively assess the strength of their opponent..reminds me of HItler and the 6th Army..The Fascists took the 'will to power concept' to extremes.. Hitler was always trying to get his army to will themselves through tight spots... still can't believe Hitler had so much sway.. if he had listened to his generals the Fascists would have won.. then again it wouldn't have existed as fascism if it wasn't absolute in structure.

[#FF0000]

Well to be fair Hitler's "HURRR WILL 2 PWER GUGUBGBUB" shit worked out a few times. His insisting his generals blitz their mechanized divisions through the Ardennes Forest.

But yeah the fuckin stupid "CURAJE IS MAH AMMYONISHIN" bullshit is for the birds.

Anyway, I think this is a pretty good rundown of fascist ideology. Certainly better than that "14 points of fascism" hogwash that was so popular during the Bush years.

[Thirsty Crow]

I think there is a fundamental difference between the historical materialist approach to fascism and what Eco here argues:


However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

This is an illustrative excerpt.

The social and economic practice of the Nazi regime was such that it simply does not leave any option of any meaningful talk of a "praise of modernism" being only a superficial aspect of an ideology. It was its foundation. So we can flip this around and say that blut und boden ideas were only the surface of an ideology in the service of German imperialism and expansionism.

The real question is whether the Nazi regime presided over any kind of a practical rejection of the modern world.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

In the absurd fixation with lurking fascist potentialities, liberals overlook the horrors of democracy.

[doesn't even make sense]

It's a good description of the common points of fascist ideology. It of course does not explain where these beliefs and attitudes come from, because this type of analysis cannot do that except perhaps to trace their genealogy.