One of the most perceptive analyses of Trump and his followers was written more than two decades ago. I’m talking, of course, of Umberto Eco’s oft-discussed essay on what he calls Ur Fascism or Eternal Fascism, his attempt to set forth the central features that define Fascism. I reread it today for the umpteenth time, and was struck again by its eerie prescience.
Though it contains precisely zero references to Trump — who at the time was just a real estate mogul with a penchant for boasts and bankruptcy — Eco’s 14-point checklist describing what makes a fascist a fascist applies to Trump and Trumpism in so many ways it’s scary.
Let’s go through the list, shall we? The bold parts are Eco’s categories; the rest is my commentary.
The cult of tradition: Trump frequently harks back to what he sees as a former golden age for America. His slogan, after all, is Make America Great Again.
The rejection of modernism: Trump has famously said that he thinks “a lot of modern art is a con.” In the final days of his campaign a number of his most fervent followers convinced themselves that Hillary was a literal devil worshiper because her campaign chair John Podesta was once invited to a so-called “Spirit Cooking” dinner held by performance artist Marina Abramovic. Many of Trump’s fans seem to actually believe that her artistic performances are in fact Satanic rituals.
The cult of action for action’s sake: Trump is a whirligig of pointless action who repeatedly declared that Hillary was unfit for president because sometimes she took a day or two off from campaign events, and was even known to go to sleep from time to time.
Disagreement is treason: Trump has repeatedly called the press “corrupt” for not accepting his version of reality. During his rallies he regularly led what Orwell might have called “two-minute hates” against journalists covering his campaign. Trump’s fans ultimately began chanting “lügenpresse” at journalists; the term, German for “lying press,” was originally made popular by, yes, literal Nazis in literal Hitler’s Germany.
Fear of difference: Do I even need to cite examples here? Trump’s campaign, which began with a bizarre attack on Mexican immigrants, was largely based around Trump’s weaponization of this primal fear.
The appeal to a frustrated middle class: Again, do I even need to bother with examples? Trump’s whole campaign centered around his attempts to convince white middle-class Americans that they had more to fear from poor people of color than from wealthy tax-avoiders and serial-bankruptcy-declarers like him.
The obsession with a plot, possibly an international one: Trump, like many of his followers, is both a proud nationalist and a conspiracy theorist. He kicked off his political career alleging that Obama wasn’t born in America; last week he declared that the anti-Trump protests that have sprung up all over the country in the wake of his electoral college victory are the work of “professional protestors, incited by the media.” Trump’s fans on the alt-right blame everything on a cabal of Jewish globalists, a charge Trump himself echoed in the final ad for his campaign.
The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies: You might have thought that Trump, in many ways the poster boy for ostentatious wealth, would have had a hard time pretending that Hillary and her supporters were the privileged ones. But Trump was somehow able to convince his fans he was a sort of “billionaire Robin Hood,” as Trump admirer Piers Morgan put it, while portraying Hillary as “a career politician who has repeatedly fleeced her positions of power to make millions of dollars for herself and her husband, and who carried with her a permanent smug sense of entitlement to be America’s first female president.”
Life is permanent warfare: Trump is someone who will go to war against a former beauty queen on Twitter at 3 AM. He’s always fighting someone. His advisors and surrogates also live in a constant state of war — from ideological scrapper Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart boss who Trump just picked as chief White House chief strategist, to spokeswoman Katrina Pierson, known to wear a literal necklace of bullets during her media appearances. Meanwhile, Trump’s alt-right fans — particularly those who learned virtually everything they know about politics from 4chan and Gamergate — are happy to serve tirelessly in Trump’s unofficial meme army.
Popular elitism: Given Trump’s penchant for superlatives, is it any shock to find his fans declaring themselves “the best supporters?”
Everybody is educated to become a hero: Declaring that “I alone can fix it,” Trump famously presented himself as the one true savior of American society. This makes voting for him, or wearing a Make America Great Again hat, itself a kind of heroism.
Machismo: The constant sexual boasting (including his casual admissions of sexual assault); the relentless misogyny; the schoolyard threats of violence — does anyone doubt that Trump wants the world to see him as the ultimate “alpha male?”
And then there’s that whole Wrestlemania thing.
Against “rotten” parliamentary governments: Trump clearly has very little comprehension of how government works, seeming to think that the president has or should have almost unlimited power. We’ll just have to see what happens the first time a legislative body stands in the way of his political desires.
Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak: Trump’s fans have invented a whole weird lingo of their own, calling themselves “nimble navigators” and/or “cenntipedes” and flooding the web with Pepe memes. Trump hasn’t adopted any of this lingo for himself, but he does speak his own, distinctively Trumpian, version of American English — big league! Trump’s speeches are collections of slogans and platitudes; he regularly reduces his opponents to single insulting adjectives — “lyin’ Ted,” “little Marco,” “crooked Hillary.” Trumpspeak, like Newspeak, is an impoverished language filled with thought-stopping cliches.
So there we have it.
Trump basically ticks every one of Eco’s fourteen points. And of course many of his supporters are Hitler-worshipping, Jew-hating, Holocaust-advocating white supremacists. All Trump seems to be missing, Fascism-wise, is an armband.
If you haven’t read Eco’s essay, go read it now. If you have read it, go read it again.
H/T — Thanks to Skiriki, who pointed out some of Trump’s similarities to Eco’s Eternal Fascist in the comments here yesterday.
EDIT: Added more on Trumpspeak.
@Angry Since 11/09/2016
I was very wary of the blockquote mammoth for a long time. I still stuff it up occasionally ??
I too
Wait, is Trump actually going to give the Breitbart (how do you spell that) guy a Serious Government Position?
…I don’t know why I’m surprised.
BTW here’s Dr Lawrence Britt’s own 14 points characterizing fascist regimes http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
Check. Trump’s been proudly calling himself an America Firster for the whole campaign.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
He boasted about his support for torture, advocated warcrimes, praised the Tiananmen Square massacre, and wants to deport and ban foreigners. That’s a check.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
Check. His whole platform is about how “those people” be they PoC, the media, the establishment etc were ploting against America.
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
Ok this one Trump would not seem to meet. He actually seems less pro military then most US politicians.
5. Rampant sexism.
Do I even need to explain? Check.
6. A controlled mass media
Doesn’t meet it yet, but his talk about “opening up libel laws” certainly sounds like he’ll try for it. Check.
7. Obsession with national security.
Once again he meets that in spades. Check.
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.
Trump appears secular himself, but he’s been happy to align himself with the worst of religious right. So far at least Check
9. Power of corporations protected.
He wants to make it illegal to pass new regulations without removing two old ones. Check.
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
Not sure yet, but he’ll probably go along with the more traditional republicans plans to do so.
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
Check. Wasn’t he the one who said America’s sick of experts?
12. Obsession with crime and punishment.
He wants Stop and Frisk a national policy. Check
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
Fits with his business carrier and his allies. Check.
14. Fraudulent elections.
We’ll have to wait til 2018 to find out, but given the non-trump republicans were already engaged in gerrymandering and vote supression…
Continueing from my last post, a few years back I came across a list of the 14 characteristics of Fascists written by the Daily Stormer (I assume in responce to Eco’s famous essay):
• Love for one’s place of origin
• Desire for justice
• Rejection of weakness
• Immunity to liberal programming
• Healthy sexuality
• Respect for culture and aesthetics
• Knowledge of the truth
• Masculinity
• Disdain for stasis
• Passion for righteous violence
• Opposition to materialism
• Dreams of purification
• Freedom from degeneracy
And last but not least…Refusal to read ‘Fascist’ as a pejorative!
Once again translate that into what Fascists actually mean when they say words like justice and Truth, Trump seems to meet most if not all of them. Except maybe for the materialism one, depending on what they mean.
So if we follow the Fascist’s own criteria for being a fascist, Trump counts.
God help us all.
I just wanted to point out that we don’t use the word whirligig enough. It reminds me of my childhood and Seattle Center. That’s a happy thought. I’ll stay with it a while until I’m ready for the rest of this to sink in.
I wasn’t aware of Eco’s list, but for some time now, I’ve been hearing people who were around in the 1930s/40s (WWII veterans, Holocaust survivors) saying ‘Yes. THIS is how it was before things kicked off.’ That alone should give us pause. I was watching a Remembrance Day parade yesterday in a nearby town here in the UK, and that stuff doesn’t normally get to me, but dammit if I wasn’t tearing up watching the old guys with their rows of medals, who fought against exactly the shit we’re seeing resurrected right now.
Modern art….oh, fun. Marina Abramovic was on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour last week, and she was talking about the whole Spirit Cooking thing and how the alt-right had taken it as a sign of Hillary’s ‘Satanism’. Mr. Magpie had stumbled on a YouTube video of some conspiracy guy ranting about it the night before, so it was good to hear her response (it’s probably still on Iplayer somewhere).
I’m somewhat unsurprised, though, as having been Pagan since age 17 or so, and having identified as Wiccan in the times of the whole Satanic ritual abuse craze in the late 80s/early 90s, I’ve heard almost anything that evangelical Christians consider ‘weird’ or outside their reality tunnel, from D&D to yoga to the World Wildlife Fund to ornamental elephants (!), attributed to Old Nick. Modern art being lumped in there is practically a given: ‘I don’t get it, it must be Evil!!!’ But historically, it’s chillingly reminiscent of the old ‘Entartente Kunst’ condemnation.
Don’t know whether it was perhaps already mentioned in the earlier “Survival Guide” thread, but let’s not forget Bob Altemeyer and his work on what he calls the Authoritarians.
The USA can’t say it hasn’t been warned of what’s lying ahead. It’s just a matter of wanting to listen.
You are amazing. I laughed. Dear Goddess, I laughed.
The US has plenty of militia that have already adopted Trump. Moreover, as President Trump has the national Guard to do a lot of his bidding if needs be.
On the other topic, Wynonna Earp is like Buffy with Western elements.
Waverly, the Willow / Dawn / Kaylee equivalent character gradually falls for a Soft Butch Lesbian.
What annoys me is that once again the term bisexual is avoided.
I misread the title as “Donald Trump Licks All 14 Boxes…”
Somehow, I think that makes things even worse. It’s like adding insult to injury.
The amount of stupidity in this thread is staggering.
1/Just because a dude writes about fascism does not mean he knows what he is talking about. What Eco describes is populism, which is why Chavez also fits this description. One central aspect of fascism is the creation of a new man in a totalitarian perspective, which is what distinguishes it from the traditional far-right.
2/On modern art, he is hardly alone, and many art critics have wondered if people like Jeff Koons aren’t closer to leading a Ponzi scheme rather than creating art – which they don’t even create themselves most of the time. As for spirit cooking, lol at the satanism and lol at it being art, but good for her if she finds simpletons to buy it.
Donald the fascist said he was fine with same-sex marriage: it’s clearly 1933 all over again.
Carl Paladino (sp?) has been on BBC Radio 4 talking about NATO. He’s said that if other members don’t pony up more money they will “face the consequences”
He says that if the US withdraws then “without doubt Russia will advance.”
It’s like having a ‘completely legitimate businessman’ telling you “Nice continent; be a shame if anything happened to it”.
WTF is that video? Please tell me the whole thing was staged.
@MassHysteria
Populism is a part of fascism. If you don’t see how Dump has the attributes of a dictator then you are a fool. Your point about modern art does not discredit modern art as a whole. So what if he said he was okay with gay marriage? Looks who he surrounds himself with. Look who his VP is, for fuck’s sake!
If you want to disprove anything, you’ll have to try harder than that.
yea come on Mass Hysteria, dont troll lazily, I agree with this post and I could come up with better “Devil’s Advocate” rebuttals just for the lulz. I could, for example, say that Trump really isnt all that different from a lot of mainstream GoPers except that he is simply more blunt, that he is just a Colteresque clown, I could falsely claim that his words arent really racist or talk about how he is just a lil old billionaire washington outsider trying to fix corruption or any other irrational, uninformed, and perversely entertaining defense. At least put some work into it.
@Kale
Sadly, so many trolls nowadays are lazy.
I hear tales of the trolls of yore — the ones who could both entertain you and troll you for days on end without tiring — and I weep for the current generation of trolls.
Of course, it’s also possible that the trolls of yore are mythical creatures.
But even if that’s true, this particular troll, MassHysteria, is exceptionally lazy.
I feel like I”m going crazy. I keep seeing more people sharing incomprehensible bullshit (like, this is from other liberals, I guess?) about how the Trump voters aren’t racist, are poor rural people who just aren’t understood, and we are all culturally intolerant for not understanding their economic and “cultural” anxiety. “racism doesn’t explain this phenomenon” YES IT FUCKING DOES. OH, and it’s NOT FAIR to judge them for believing a bombastic attention addicted bajillionaire would SOMEHOW understand working class concerns even thought that MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE. Just because you have concerns, doesn’t mean you get to scapegoat people, take away their rights, and impose fascism. Rural areas exist all over the world. So why are we the only democracy that elected a dictator POST WWII??!?!
FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK!!!!!!!
Oh, and I haven’t seen this one brought up 250 billion times in the past not-even-a-week. Did you guys see this picture??? Did you?!!???
http://cdn.inquisitr.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/President-Elect-Supports-LGBT-Community-Holds-Rainbow-Flag-At-Colorado-Rally-LGBT-For-Trump.jpg
Because I sure fucking did, on every single Alt-Right apologists’ youtube channel! Guess what, it says LGBTQ’s for Trump so yeah if you voted Trump I guess he’s “fine” with you! (So, like Milo and 10 other people ). so if you don’t like Trump you must be a BIGOT.
Seriously fuck this country.
Trump’s words don’t mean much if he won’t protect the institution of gay marriage (e.g., spouse rights). Like, I cannot believe I have to keep telling people waving flags and talking on TV doesn’t mean you actually care about us–you can literally turn your back on us gays and such in a snap. And as long as you don’t say much, nobody cares. Pinkwashing is ineffective without action.
Also, like, I really hope you didn’t actually think you made a good point against modern art or Abramovic herself. Seen it, heard it, got the T-shirt. Newsflash: the art world thrives on innovation and absurdity, no matter who wants it dead. Read up on Nazism’s attack on “Degenerate Art” (a key example of fascist attack on aesthetic freedom).
Thanks, Calmdown:
It’s really limp to say that the ONLY reason driving Trump’s election was classism. It was there, but racism was there too. Don’t anybody try to front.
The progress of social justice is incomplete without class analysis.
LaterSpaceCowboy,
Impatient, aren’t we? Don’t worry, all the righty whitey militias are working on coordination and messaging even now. Give them time.
I’ll second what Scildfreja said about their self organizing abilities. They’ve been talking up the ‘leaderless resistance’ idea for a couple decades now.
The party at the inauguration sounds like fun, but how will we see your snappy shirts under your winter coats? (January in DC)
Why should we listen to Umberto Eco when we can listen to some random guy on the internet?
@calmdown
America is unfortunately not the only country to elect a dictator post WWII, and saying that it is is just another form of good old American exceptionalism – the idea that USA is apparently unique even in its massive fuck-ups (spoilers: it’s not. but its fuck-ups are on a somewhat larger scale than most others).
Just look at Venezuela, Poland (technically still a democracy but I don’t have high hopes), or, in a way (depends on how much of a democracy it was after the fall of the Soviet Union, I don’t know), Russia. Or others. Democracy is failing all around the world.
But I generally agree with everything else. Fuck all this bullshit. And I really don’t know how our dear Milo even found 10 other people who agree with his nonsense.
Has anyone taken the time to look up what fascism really means?
I am not a fan of Donald Trump, but i will not follow the misinformed, Anti Trump comments I am reading.
Democrats have no one to blame but themselves, with a corrupt unlikeable Hillary Clinton, who could not,according to CNN,
Couldnt hold on to the Obama coalition.
Fascists believe in the mobilization of a society under a totalarian one party state led by a dictator.
I hope this site will not become a haven of misinformed men and women who cry about
a result they do not like.