Are we fascist?
Umberto Eco, in the November/December 1995 issue of the Utne Reader, explains fourteen elements of "Ur-fascism," which he defines as "eternal fascism."
Eight says the followers of Ur-Fascism feel humiliated by their enemies, but also "must be convincd 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 consitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy."
This doesn't seem quite like what's happening in Iraq -- except that we were humiliated, from an imperialist (fascist?) point of view, by our not completely obliterating them in the Gulf War.
But we do seem to have a "constitutional" inability to accurately evaluate the situation.
What do you think?
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