doIn this era, fascism has returned to the West, and if it is a little difficult for the public conversation to take note of this, it is no doubt as much because of faintheartedness and an unconscious desire to protect itself from the obvious as because it is difficult to say precisely. define what a fascist leader, movement or regime is.
Not content with instigating the assault on the Capitol in 2021, in Washington, Donald Trump campaigned with videos proclaiming the arrival of a “Unified Reich”promised that he would lead “mass deportations”He compared immigrants to “vermin” WHO “poison the blood of the United States”He declared that it was enough for him to win the elections so that American citizens would no longer have to vote in the future, etc.
However, several commentators continue to present him, implicitly or not, as a somewhat radical and fanciful conservative, a simple and uninhibited reactionary who wants to revive the American economy, etc.
This difficulty in identifying fascism, and therefore in naming it, is the topic of a conference given in New York in 1995 by Umberto Eco (1932-2016), and republished in January with the title Recognize fascism (Grasset, 64 pages, 7.90 euros, digital 6 euros). Umberto Eco says of fascism that it is a set of archetypes, that it is a rhetoric, a style. By nature it is ” vague “according to him, because it is not supported by a doctrine, but rather serves as a vehicle for other ideologies.
“ If we remove imperialism, we will have Franco and Salazar; Eliminate colonialism and you have Balkan fascism., said Humberto Eco. Add radical anti-capitalism to Italian fascism (…) and you will have [l’apologue américain d’Hitler] Libra Ezra [1885-1972]. Add the cult of Celtic mythology and Grail mysticism (completely unrelated to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, [le poète et idéologue de l’extrême droite italienne] Julio Evola [1898-1974]. »
A libertarian ideology
At the end of the 1990s, Umberto Eco identified fourteen fundamental characteristics of fascism: nationalism and xenophobia, virilism, irrationalism and anti-intellectualism, destruction of the complexity of language, instrumentalization of the frustration of the middle classes, etc. Today a fifteenth marker could be added: an all-out war against the environment and its defenders.
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