A Fascist Government?

Umerto Eco wrote this essy on Fascism.

• I hate the way that Fascism is thrown about on social media.
• BUT
• Think about this government and see how many of his 14 points can be ticked.
• Certainly number 1, a fixation with tradition.
• 2, well, maybe.
• 3, Action for actions sake. Operation Save Big Dog is a prime example.
• 4, Liz Truss said that she was a patriot introducing a bill that breaks international law. The obvious inference is that you are not a patriot if you disagree with her.
• 5, Fear of difference. This seems to me obvious. Ukrainian refuges from conflict are good, Syrians fleeing conflict are bad.
• 6, Appealing to frustrated middle classes? Just look at The Daily Mail.
• 7, feeling that there are plots against them? Oh yes. Both within the party and from outside. Johnson is doubling down.
• 8, “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” That is so obvious within the government at the moment. The unions have no power and repressent no one. As well as being athreat to the nation.
• 9, “Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” I do not want to be killed in a nuclear war, so wanting to reduce the weapons of mass destruction is unpatrionic (see point 4).
• 10, Contempt for the weak. “We put a caring arm around the vulnerable in homes, but not during the pandemic.
• 11, OK not sure about his one. Give me time and I will come up with answers.
• 12, “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.” So completely untrue of this country, they embrace difference, unless you are a woman, gay or have a different life style. God help you if you are a gay traveller. NIMBY is this governments, and their supporters’ watch word.
• 13, “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.” We are there.
• 14, “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.” Sounds like dumbing down to me, and discouraging the study of English lit in universities. Placing more value in learning “practical” skills over learning “soft” skills like thinking.
• Rant over, for now.

Tags: Fascism, Liz Truss, Tory Fascism, Tory Party