[lbo-talk] In control, yet "oppressed"

B. docile_body at yahoo.com
Mon Dec 13 11:06:22 PST 2004


This is a reply to my own post, an email list faux pas, I know. It also makes my 4th post of the day. Oops! I'm not in Yoshie territory yet, but after sharing the comic in the previous post, a friend forwarded me a relevant observation from Umberto Eco I thought I should share:


>From Umberto Eco, "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of
Looking at a Blackshirt"

"8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.

When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy."

===== "I'm not too worried by hegemony / I know the cadre will look after me" - Magazine, "Model Worker," 1978



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