I had been planning on writing an article for the blog detailing Umberto Eco's fourten hallmarks of fascism and even started gathering some relevant screenshots (some of which I have included). However last month I saw that Twitter user Seussterhoff had already posted a series of tweets providing an outline of the hallmarks. As such I asked Seussterhoff if they would be willing to write an article on the topic for the blog and more fully flesh out the connection between the far right groups ARC, Yellow Vests Canada Exposed, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, and others have been reporting on.
I would very much like to thank Seussterhoff for this article; if you aren't following this Twitter account, you really should be.
The alt-right is like a box of chocolates - or, in the words of Dr. Umberto Eco, ""fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions." Therefore, in the spirit of tarring the alliance/cross-contamination between PEGIDA, Yellow Vests, hate preachers, Wolves/Soldiers of Odin, Northern Guard, and their good buddies with the same brush, I present Eco's fourteen hallmarks of fascism.
Eco, for the record, grew up in Mussolini's Italy. He got to know fascism firsthand. I've often found his fourteen points a useful reference for analyzing groups and movements that are prone to going off the rails. And I see every one of those fourteen points, to some extent, in the Canadian alt-right.
References: Eco's 1995 original (partially paywalled); OpenCulture's summary; Paul Bausch's point-form summary.
My thanks to the good people of ARC Collective for inviting me to expand on my Twitter thread about this. And while the screencaps may not be the world's best or most pointed examples of all the points below, the vast majority of them came from less than half an hour of casual browsing on the Facebook page of Derek Storie, a prominent Yellow Vest.
#1: The cult of tradition....
...."nourished by...syncretistic, occult elements."
I've got a pagan friend who's prone to rage about all the ways the alt-right has appropriated and twisted Norse and pagan heritage - throwbacks to romanticized days when men were MEN and so forth. The iconography is everywhere:
Note one-eyed Odin, a reference to sacrificing for hidden truths. Ravens, incidentally, reference similar ideas, with a slant toward uncovering secrets and omniscience.
'Syncretism,' for context, is about blending the appealing bits of various cultures and traditions. Observe:
Middle is a Norse valknut symbol, with as many historic and modern interpretations as you can shake a stick at. Very watered-down, basically meaningless apart from its occasional association with white supremacy. Top right is Norse. Top left, in the words of my heathen symbologist friend, is a "Medieval Christian Icelandic 'runesign' most neo-pagans don't realize is Christian." Bottom is a Celtic triskelion. The logo is just one big syncretic mishmash. Neo-pagan or pseudo-Norse iconography like this is all over their social media.
And that's only one small example of their veneration for skewed tradition and heritage. Think about how many of them fly the Red Ensign, Canada's old flag from colonial times, and what they mean by that.
Think, too, what they mean when they try to appropriate and possess the Canadian flag: they're trying to radicalize it as a symbol and position their critics and targets as un-Canadian. Cult of tradition all over the place.
#2: Modernism is the enemy. "The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity."
I would very much like to thank Seussterhoff for this article; if you aren't following this Twitter account, you really should be.
* * *
Eco, for the record, grew up in Mussolini's Italy. He got to know fascism firsthand. I've often found his fourteen points a useful reference for analyzing groups and movements that are prone to going off the rails. And I see every one of those fourteen points, to some extent, in the Canadian alt-right.
References: Eco's 1995 original (partially paywalled); OpenCulture's summary; Paul Bausch's point-form summary.
My thanks to the good people of ARC Collective for inviting me to expand on my Twitter thread about this. And while the screencaps may not be the world's best or most pointed examples of all the points below, the vast majority of them came from less than half an hour of casual browsing on the Facebook page of Derek Storie, a prominent Yellow Vest.
#1: The cult of tradition....
...."nourished by...syncretistic, occult elements."
I've got a pagan friend who's prone to rage about all the ways the alt-right has appropriated and twisted Norse and pagan heritage - throwbacks to romanticized days when men were MEN and so forth. The iconography is everywhere:
Note one-eyed Odin, a reference to sacrificing for hidden truths. Ravens, incidentally, reference similar ideas, with a slant toward uncovering secrets and omniscience.
'Syncretism,' for context, is about blending the appealing bits of various cultures and traditions. Observe:
Middle is a Norse valknut symbol, with as many historic and modern interpretations as you can shake a stick at. Very watered-down, basically meaningless apart from its occasional association with white supremacy. Top right is Norse. Top left, in the words of my heathen symbologist friend, is a "Medieval Christian Icelandic 'runesign' most neo-pagans don't realize is Christian." Bottom is a Celtic triskelion. The logo is just one big syncretic mishmash. Neo-pagan or pseudo-Norse iconography like this is all over their social media.
And that's only one small example of their veneration for skewed tradition and heritage. Think about how many of them fly the Red Ensign, Canada's old flag from colonial times, and what they mean by that.
Think, too, what they mean when they try to appropriate and possess the Canadian flag: they're trying to radicalize it as a symbol and position their critics and targets as un-Canadian. Cult of tradition all over the place.
#2: Modernism is the enemy. "The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity."
