This was a nice quick read, with a little bit insight into Umberto Eco’s early childhood in Italy under Mussolini’s regime.
A list of the possible fascist characteristics Eco identifies: the cult of tradition, believing the truth has already been announced, and all we must do is continue interpreting its message, rejection of enlightenment, suspicion of intellectual life, no ability to accept criticism, any dissent is betrayal, fear of difference, an appeal to the frustrated middle classes, who may be disquieted by economic crisis or some political humiliation, and who are frightened by social pressure from below, obsession with conspiracies, and appeal to xenophobia.
He continues, the disciples of a fascist movement must feel humiliated by their enemy’s wealth and power, but must also believe that their enemy can be defeated, thus concluding the enemy is at once too strong and too weak (think about the party of “snowflakes” somehow still operating a vast deep state that took down the Trump presidency, not to mention managing to fix the entire 2020 election). Fascists reject peace with their enemy, believing pacifism is collusion; peace can only be achieved after their enemy is wholly defeated.
A “popular elitism”, a belief that the masses need and deserve a “dominator”, a cult of heroism, a cult of death, and machismo.
A concept of popular will, that the fascist leader interprets, where the emotional response of a select group of citizens is presented and accepted as “the voice of the people”. This one we see constantly, for example, in New Jersey, there was a gubernatorial race last year where the Democrat won. However, all the post-election analysis focused on the far-right minority of voters who rejected the governor over covid conspiracy theories and anti-mandate hysteria. None of it focused on the majority of voters who re-elected the governor and what their concerns were (such as, a desire to take the pandemic seriously). Similarly, Donald Trump lost the 2020 election because more people came out to vote against him than ever before in history, but in both cases, the analysis always treats the concerns of the party who lost power as the real “voice of the people”.
And finally, Eco identifies “Newspeak” as an aspect of fascist movements, employing poor vocabulary and elementary syntax to limit the instruments available to complex and critical reasoning. Think of Donald Trump’s twitter feed as well as the absolute smooth-brained drivel that is conservative talk radio. These are dumb sounding people making dumb arguments, but you become dumber listening to and engaging with it.