Umberto Eco defined fascism as, inter alia, “essentially rejecting the spirit of 1789, the spirit of the Enlightenment. Fascism sees the Age of Reason as the beginning of modern decadence.”
I would have been tempted to add another redolent spirit to the list, that of the Vendée. Following the 1793 regicide, the revolutionary government slaughtered 170,000 inhabitants of that province (about 20 per cent of its population) who had risen in protest against the closure and robbery of churches. The spirit of the guillotine wouldn’t go amiss either.
Thinkers like Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre instantly saw the link between “the spirit of the Enlightenment” and revolutionary violence, leading to a frontal assault on Western civilisation. Let’s describe them, along with the Vendée martyrs, as proto-fascists and move on, keeping in mind that people like Eco use the words ‘fascist’ and ‘conservative’ interchangeably.
Having read his definition, I realised it fit me like a glove. I then looked at myself in the mirror, expecting to see the scowling mug of a fascist. Instead, I saw, well, me – a rather rotund gentleman not in the first flush of youth whom I happen to know rather well.
This chap has many foibles and he has committed many sins. Nevertheless I am absolutely certain he doesn’t have a fascist bone in his body.
So, I thought, fearful that a lightning from the sky will smite me, Eco must be wrong. One may see a direct link between “the spirit of 1789, the spirit of the Enlightenment” and today’s decadence, and still be something other than a fascist.
Yet even people who wouldn’t dream of taking issue with all those spirits can’t help noticing certain unpleasant things about modernity. These fall in the broad range between decadence and degeneracy morally, bossiness and tyranny politically, uniformity and freedom socially.
Name your own bugbear, and you’ll find it in today’s life. Children as young as seven encouraged by their teachers to undergo castration. Education that doesn’t educate. Policing that doesn’t police. Justice that isn’t just. The law that fails to protect property and life. Madcap permissiveness combined with systematic suppression of free speech. The state meddling in every aspect of private life. Idolatrous worship of flora and fauna…
You can extend this list or compile your own. One way or another, it takes a singularly unobservant person not to see that something is rotten in our modern world. Yet being observant doesn’t make one a fascist. What does then, Mr Eco?
Obviously, it’s regarding those enormities as a natural consequence of the Enlightenment, rather than its unfortunate malfunctioning. A fascist, according to Eco, is someone who detects congenital defects in the Age of Reason and shows how they ineluctably lead to moral degeneracy and political tyranny.
Back in the late 90s I wrote a book titled How the West Was Lost, in which I argued that all the regimes of modernity, such as liberal democracy, socialism, communism, fascism and Nazism, have much in common. Moreover, that commonality is directly traceable to “the spirit of the Enlightenment”.
Talking specifically about liberal democracy, the dominant method of government in the West, I pointed out many features it shares with communism. That line of thought drew on my personal experience of both regimes, and my personal sadness at seeing the gap between them getting narrower.
The Enlightenment was all about the wholesale repudiation of the old and replacing it with the new. The entire history of the preceding 1,500 years was declared to be nothing but a sustained practice of superstition, obscurantism, oppression and ignorance.
The lyrics of the communist anthem, the Internationale, capture that sentiment perfectly: “No more tradition’s chains shall bind us/ Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall;/ The earth shall rise on new foundations,/ We have been naught we shall be all.”
Rousseau opened his Social Contract with the words “Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.” The spirit so dear to Eco was supposed to blow away those tethers by changing not only the existing methods of government but the very nature of man. Man was supposed to recover his primordial beauty destroyed by Western civilisation.
Western, which is to say Christian, Man was to be replaced with a new sociocultural type, Modern, which is to say liberal-democratic, Man. He would have no use for such anachronisms as God, autocracy, social stratification or hierarchies of any kind. Instead he would marshal his own unlimited resources to conquer nature (including human nature) and create a new world.
Alas, that type didn’t exist yet. It was an ideal to strive for, and society was to strain every sinew to make sure its march towards that ideal would be unstoppable. Every snag in its way was to be eliminated – man finally saw the truth, and it was to make him perfect eventually, if not in one fell swoop.
Does this sound at all familiar? It should, because this is where liberal democracy converges with communism, socialism and fascism. They all see life as a steady evolutionary development away from an unsatisfactory past towards a shining secular ideal. Life to them is a linear and teleological evolution towards paradise in this world, for there is no other.
This teleology is chiliastic: once the ideal has been reached, man will no longer have to travel anywhere – he will have arrived.
People (including me) mocked Francis Fukuyama who responded to the 1991 ‘collapse of communism’ in Russia by declaring the end of history. Yet he merely expressed the fundamental liberal-democratic tenet: liberal democracy had triumphed even over its erstwhile formidable adversary.
Hence, history in the sense of evolution towards a pre-set goal had indeed ended. Fukuyama knew the odd twist and turn would still occur, but by and large stasis had arrived. The ultimate goal of progress is to stop progressing.
Liberal democracy seems to differ from communism and fascism because it sets great store by liberty as a hoist raising common man to hitherto unreachable heights. However, this concept of liberty has caveats built in by definition. It presupposes severe limitations on the liberty of those who dislike the declared ideal and see it as appallingly destructive.
Liberty is allowed only within the narrow channel through which society inexorably moves towards its ideal. Any step outside that channel is variously treated as treason, heresy or apostasy. This must be discouraged by any means necessary, and that’s where liberal democracy still differs from other products of the Enlightenment.
Communism and fascism rely on propaganda and, should it fail to achieve the desired result, unrestrained violence. Liberal democracy also practises total, not to say totalitarian, propaganda, but its use of violence is so far limited – mainly because it’s unnecessary.
Ostracism, demonisation, exclusion from meaningful careers, damning and shaming seem to be adequate as a means of hushing up people who are better able than Eco to see historical trends in their dynamic development from inception. But if at some point those he calls fascists and I call conservatives refuse to be silenced, violence will be used more widely.
Some people rejoice to see that liberal democracy is still different from communism and fascism. That jubilant emotion, however, shouldn’t interfere with the ability to see their common origin and weep over the increasing similarity between liberal democracy and its Enlightenment cousins.
They all innately have more in common with one another than any of them have with the traditional Western societies and governments. They all set out to stamp tradition into the dirt and realise an ideologically contrived eudaemonic ideal. The first part has proved easier.
Alexander, in regard to, “where liberal democracy converges with communism, socialism and fascism… see life as a steady evolutionary development away from an unsatisfactory past towards a shining secular ideal. Life to them is a linear and teleological evolution towards paradise in this world, for there is no other.”
Didn’t the Postmodernists give up on any future idealism, and like all atheists they saw no prospect for an after-life. Because of this lack of meaning and vision they helped steer the u-turn to ones roots as they embraced relativism. Meaning is therefore found in cultural heritage… be it Aboriginal, First-Nation, Celtic or whatever and there the divine mystery, the Dreamtime, the celestial connection is rediscovered. That is why ‘Mother Earth’ is so adored by the anti-oil-anti fracking-anti-gas-anti-car-anti-plane 15 minute city living vegans.
Wonderful stuff. The comparisons and analysis certainly ring true. I can think of two reasons why liberal democracies have so far abstained from violence: 1) as much as traditional conservatives are hated by liberals, politicians may find it difficult to get re-elected after unleashing such tactics; and 2) modern man is less independent (in his largely non-agrarian society) and relies more heavily on his job and social status to get along in life; therefore he can be more easily controlled via “ostracism, demonisation, exclusion from meaningful careers, damning and shaming”.
Even atheists must see that a thorough survey of history shows that when man believes in a higher power he strives for higher things; when man does not he becomes prideful and selfish. Does any man look at a gray block produced by modern (soviet) architectural ideals and compare if favorably to a Gothic or Baroque cathedral? The “spirit of 1789” may contain the idea that we all are equal, but then it continues on that we all must be kept equally low.
I do not see a new entry for today (Aug 10) and seeing that it is already after 6pm London time I assume there will not be one. I also assume the reason for that is you are out for a nice evening. Happy birthday!
I haven’t read your book, but I think I don’t need to, because I already agree with its conclusions. I think perhaps I was born agreeing with them.
Don’t forget that there would have been no so-called Enlightenment without the so-called Renaissance and the so-called Reformation. (I repeat “so-called” in order to emphasise that all three words are used to pretend that some innovation suspected by its victims to be bad is really good. And please note that I include in the so-called Reformation the so-called Counter-Reformation.)
As for Democracy, Plato and Aristotle saw that it tended to Tyranny, and any observer of politics in South America (e.g. Brazil) and Africa (e.g.Niger) today would have to agree. Only tradition preserves the West from similar upheavals, and tradition has been almost destroyed by the would-be tyrants who have taken over our traditional institutions.
I think the New Dark Age is upon us, and all we can do is preserve what we can and pray.