I was reading Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt by Umberto Eco. At first I thought it was a thinly veiled liberal attack on the Bush administration.
The cult of tradition
andthe rejection of modernism
is a reference to the strong role of religion in the Bush administration.Action for action sake’s
is a reference to the Bush administration staying the course a. k. a. stubbornness.Disagreement is treason
andpacifism is trafficking with the enemy
are references to the likes of Ann Coulter.Fear of difference
is a reference to Islam vs. Christianity.Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak
: Terrorists.Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy
: Iraq.The Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters
: I must admit that this seemed to come out of left field. Not sure what they were trying to get at about the Bush administration here.
The article, particularly this last bit, made more sense when I got to the bottom and read Umberto Eco © 1995
. But also at the same moment I got really scared.