Umberto Eco's 14 Points of Fascism, and How They Describe the American "Left"

Before we begin, I'd like to clarify something. The title of this post refers to "the American Left," but that's a really poor descriptor for a group with no accurate name, a group I have dubbed "the Wokesters." It is not a reference to the Democratic Party, though the party often (insincerely) uses language that appeals to Wokesters in order to solicit their support. Nor am I referring to actual economic leftists, who favor some kind of egalitarian politics somewhere along the axis between Marxism and capitalism tempered by strong unions and an effective, compassionate social safety net. Most Wokesters would say they subscribe to such views, but plenty of other people who also do aren't Wokesters.

"Wokesterism" isn't about economic policy so much as it's about using stereotypes to split the population into The Oppressors and The Opressed, and taking a militant position against the Oppressors. Some have called this "Cultural Marxism" because of its emphasis on the downtrodden overthrowing the powerful, but Marx saw revolution as cyclical. The victims overthrow the tyrants, and eventually become tyrants themselves, only to then be overthrown by the people they oppressed. But in the worldview of Wokesters, the first tyrants are forever tryants, even if they're eventually enslaved, and the original victims are forever victims, forever incapable of evil. (If you think about it for a moment, you can see how this is probably the thinking that leads the victorious victims to become tyrants in the first place.)

Though this school of thought appears to have had its origins in third-wave (or "intersectional") and radical feminism, I believe it is more properly described as a postmodernist, second wave of anti-racism. To perhaps oversimplify it a bit, but in the interest of brevity, we can describe the thesis of Wokesterism as basically being, "Straight, white men are the root cause of all evils in the world. Even when people of color or LGBTQ+ people victimize each other, it's because of conditions created by straight, white men. The proof of this is that some individuals who see themselves as victims feel like it's so. Not only is that all the proof that's required, anyone who questions the veracity or objectivity of subjective, anecdotal evidence is committing further acts of aggression against the victims. Anyone who disagrees is a Nazi who must be silenced, shunned, and destroyed."

The first wave of anti-racism is the colorblind sort that prevailed in the Civil Rights era and persisted through the 1980s. It is perhaps best typified in the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote,

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Gen-Xers were raised on this idea, with everyone from our teachers to the characters of Sesame Street indoctrinating us to accept that a person's race, ethnicity, religion, sex, or disability is completely irrelevant to their value as a human being. We were taught to accept that the "wrapper" a person came in didn't determine what kind of person they were, and that it was evil to think otherwise. We saw the attempts by previous generations to grant or deny privileges based on these superficial characteristics as being both evil and absurd.

But this second wave, Wokesterism, defies and criticizes that idea. They say that in order for justice to be done, the injured parties and the perpetrators must be identified. That sounds reasonable on its face, but through the lens of postmodernist subjectivity, the injured parties and perpetrators are whomever the Wokesters feel like naming. They assign both blame and martyr status, not according to the objectively identifiable, documentable acts of individuals, but rather by prejudiced feelings about entire races, ethnic groups, etc. Wokesters claim that colorblindness perpetuates racism, while the first-wave anti-racists see Wokesterism as blatantly racist.

Now that that's out of the way, let's dig into Eco's 14 points*, and how the Wokesters are rushing to embody them.
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1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.

To Wokesters, "Whitey" was the bad guy in the 1400s, he's still the bad guy now, and he always will be the bad guy, no matter what he might do to atone. One often hears opinions on reparations prefaced by, "While, of course, no amount of money could ever possibly be enough make up for the horrors of slavery...". If amends can never be made, why try? What good does it do? What's the point, other than to punish one class of people for things they never did while feeding the sadism and sense of entitlement of people who see themselves as victims for sins that were committed decades before they were born? True progressivism would seek forward movement--"We correct this injustice, and then we move on to the better reality we've created." But Wokesterism doesn't actually want progress. They just want power to switch from one group of bullies to another, and for the new regime to be the status quo forever more. They wish to create a new tradition of straight, white, male submission.

2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.

Umberto Eco, as a 20th century professor and novelist, was understandably focused on the fascism of 20th-century Europe when he wrote these points. Modernism was avant garde during the reigns of Hitler and Mussolini. The Nazis rejected Modernism because it attacked the romantic visions of the past that the Nazis found inspirational. But Postmodernism also rejects Modernism. Postmodernism elevates the subjective and outright denies the objective. Ironically, though, Wokesters accept certain subjective perceptions as Absolute Truth, while opposing views are condemned as heresy. The determining variable at first appears to be the identity of the person expressing their perception. But it's not even really about that. It's about adherence to Woke dogma. The moment a woman criticizes feminism, or a black person says they don't feel oppressed, the Wokesters turn on them. Suddenly, that individual's "truth" is invalid. This adherence to their own orthodoxy is the establishment of a new tradition, one vigorously defended as the only morally acceptable one.

3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.

On May 25th, 2020, Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd for no apparent reason other than to callously defy the crowd of onlookers who were pleading with him to stop strangling Floyd. The rational, modernist view would say that this was a crime committed by one man against another man. Chauvin is the guilty party, and Chauvin should be punished for what Chauvin did. It might further allow that Chauvin had supervisors in the Minneapolis Police Department who also bore some responsibility for having allowed this to happen. Fair enough. The top of that chain of command is the Mayor of Minneapolis, or perhaps even the Governor of Minnesota. 

But that summer, we saw riots nationwide. Wokesters attacked police and smashed the windows of homes and businesses that had no connection to Chauvin whatsoever. Banging a hammer against a piece of metal here in Columbus, Ohio, is not going to fix a malfunctioning engine in China, and throwing bricks at police officers here isn't going to do a blessed thing to cause Minneapolis to change its police policies and practices. But that's logic, and postmodernists abhor logic. Their thinking was, "We're mad, we deserve to lash out, and you have no business criticizing how we choose to express ourselves." 

Wokesters use this same rationale to justify their seemingly aimless (but always authoritarian) actions regarding gun control, environmentalism, diversity, and the suppression of iconography that they find offensive.

4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism.

Put more plainly, Eco said that fascists regard disagreement as treason. We see this every time a feminist Wokester attempts to silence disagreement with her flimsily supported rants by accusing critics of "mansplaining." The mere fact that words are spoken by men is regarded as evidence that the words are wrong and invalid.

5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.

This is a funny one, because Wokesters believe that they hold diversity to be the highest virtue. But as I pointed out earlier, they only tolerate diversity within the confines of their orthodoxy. In fact, the diversity they tolerate is only aesthetic. They don't tolerate any true difference in opinion. They regard "whiteness" as a sin. The mere existence of families formed around cisgendered, heterosexual couples is seen as deeply harmful. They're very clear about which people they find acceptable and which ones they don't.

6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.

Read any fascist, anti-semitic propaganda and simply replace the word "Jews" with "billionaires," "corporations," "the One Percent," "Trumpers," "white men," "cops," or "Christians," and you'll find it's indistinguishable from the rhetoric of Wokesters.

7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.