On 22/01/2025 23:50, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
"And I am now an elder, who must
turn experience - even the experience of failures - into something valuable
for present and coming generations."
Thank you Brian for your perseverance! It is invaluable during these
times. And, this reminder from the writings of Umberto Eco...
best
allan
"Ur-Fascism is based upon a/selective populism/, a qualitative populism,
one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but
the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a
quantitative point of view — one follows the decisions of the majority.
For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and
the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the
Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common
will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their
power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to
play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical
fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer
need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in
our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of
a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice
of the People.
Because of its qualitative populism Ur-Fascism must be/against “rotten”
parliamentary governments/. One of the first sentences uttered by
Mussolini in the Italian parliament was “I could have transformed this
deaf and gloomy place into a bivouac for my maniples” — “maniples” being
a subdivision of the traditional Roman legion. As a matter of fact, he
immediately found better housing for his maniples, but a little later he
liquidated the parliament. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the
legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of
the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism." from UR-FASCISM
--
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