#umbertoeco — Public Fediverse posts

It's timeless. You can read it not often enough. It's important. Umberto Ecos whole #essay about #UrFascism. Eco composed the text for a speech at a conference at Columbia University on April 25th 1995 under the rubric "Eternal Fascism". https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism

#UmbertoEco #longread #NoToFascism #resist #mustread #elections #Wahlen

It's timeless. You can read it not often enough. It's important. Umberto Ecos whole #essay about #UrFascism. Eco composed the text for a speech at a conference at Columbia University on April 25th 1995 under the rubric "Eternal Fascism". https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism

#UmbertoEco #longread #NoToFascism #resist #mustread #elections #Wahlen

It's timeless. You can read it not often enough. It's important. Umberto Ecos whole #essay about #UrFascism. Eco composed the text for a speech at a conference at Columbia University on April 25th 1995 under the rubric "Eternal Fascism". https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism

#UmbertoEco #longread #NoToFascism #resist #mustread #elections #Wahlen

It's timeless. You can read it not often enough. It's important. Umberto Ecos whole #essay about #UrFascism. Eco composed the text for a speech at a conference at Columbia University on April 25th 1995 under the rubric "Eternal Fascism". https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism

#UmbertoEco #longread #NoToFascism #resist #mustread #elections #Wahlen

It's timeless. You can read it not often enough. It's important. Umberto Ecos whole #essay about #UrFascism. Eco composed the text for a speech at a conference at Columbia University on April 25th 1995 under the rubric "Eternal Fascism". https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism

#UmbertoEco #longread #NoToFascism #resist #mustread #elections #Wahlen

#BookChatWeekly #UmbertoEco #UmbertoEcoSky #FoucaultsPendulum #BookSky #Literature #LiteratureSky #ItalianLiterature #Fiction #FictionSky #ItalianFiction #Mystery #ItalianMystery #MysterySky #Philosophy #PhilosophySky #Occult #OccultSky #ReadABookDay

I see yet another thread where reasonable and respectful users receive undeserved accusations, getting silenced by other users who aren't even trying to understand.

When this happens, #UmbertoEco's words come to my mind.

In his #UrFascism essay he talked about the #Resistance movement in Italy.
A key figure in the fight against Mussolini was #EdgardoSogno. He wasn't a #Communist, rather a reactionary monarchist. Yep, that's right.

Divisions only make us weaker.

https://ia802906.us.archive.org/31/items/umberto-eco-ur-fascism/umberto-eco-ur-fascism.pdf

Any error can be the unrecognized bearer of truth.
-- Umberto Eco

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #UmbertoEco #Error

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #ChacoCanyon #PuebloBonito #Ruins #360panorama #NewMexico

Notes on Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

(Pictured: Rhodes Cemetery, Greece. A rose cross monument dedicated to the Knights of Rhodes – I think)
It’s unfair that people compare Foucault’s Pendulum to Ulysses.

Ulysses is a novel that spans an entire day but some take years to finish. On the other hand, Eco’s Pendulum is a novel that covers a few years but can be read in a few days. Sure, they are both abundant in references, but the story in Ulysses is obscured precisely by all these references. Pendulum‘s references, on the other hand, might get overwhelming but this is part of its charm.
I won’t give spoilers, especially for the ending, I’ll just mention what’s probably on the book jacket: the story follows three editors who make up a conspiracy theory concerning the Knights Templar. Being a philosopher and medievalist, Eco of course has fun with this story and inserts an uncountable number of references to historical characters, events, books and so on. You can follow along and join the madness, sure, or just nod and carry on, like you do when that relative starts spouting InfoWars talking points at Christmas dinner…

Apophenia is people’s tendency to find patterns and connections within seemingly unrelated things. Wouldn’t you know it, I had such a fun time with this book because I became one of the characters for a week. I had no idea what it was about when I picked it as my June beach read in Rhodes. And wouldn’t you know it, a few of the book’s major plot points happen right in the middle of June. And while Rhodes wasn’t the Templar’s headquarters, it was, for a few centuries, the HQ of the Knights Hospitaller (Knights of St. John, or the Knights of Malta today). So of course I had so many connections around me – the symbol of the Rose Cross, the sculptures of Knights, the flags. It was exactly like if I randomly picked up Ulysses and read it on a trip to Dublin. Which I haven’t done.

What is most hilarious is that the Knights Templar conspiracies aren’t exactly recent. They started around the 1700s. Freemasonry started as medieval guilds, but they wanted to have a fancier history so they made up a connection to the Templars. In the 1950’s another chapter starts, with Pierre Plantard who… planted fake documents in the French Archives, and started the whole “Priory of Sion” conspiracy. In 1982 comes the final blow, where three Brits read the Priory stuff and make up their own crap about “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail”, where they make up a conspiracy that the Templars were hiding the bloodline of Christ. Does this sound familiar?

Eco probably read all this stuff and found it absolutely hilarious, so he made his own version about these nutjobs… And yet 15 years later comes Dan Brown and his audacity DaVinci Code. Without any sense of shame, he decides to embody the satirised characters in Eco’s Pendulum, publishing his own conspiracy, making it a bestseller, stirring the pot for decades to come. It’s a damn shame because the Templars’ actual history is fascinating in and of itself, they didn’t need bells and whistles added…

It is also, in a way, irresponsible, because one of the lessons of Foucault’s Pendulum is that fiction has power and can affect the real world. Yes, the consequences in Eco’s book are fictional, but we’ve seen far too often how made-up conspiracies become real for some. Just wait for Christmas and ask that InfoWars relative.

Hier auch nochmal in dieser Sprache: #Faschismus ist kein neues Phänomen.

Der italienische #Autor, #Philosoph & #Antifaschist #UmbertoEco veröffentlichte 1995 seinen Text "Der #Ur-Faschismus"

Eine #Übersezung veröffentlichte damals #dieZeit https://www.zeit.de/1995/28/Urfaschismus

Je mehr wir über die Funktionen von Faschismus wissen, desto besser können wir dagegen vorsorgen und #Widerstand leisten.

Und Widerstand ist notwendig.

#Antifaschismus #Philosophie #Autoritarismus

#UmbertoEco’s List of the 14 Common Features of #Fascism

in History, Literature, Politics | November 1st, 2024

"While Eco is firm in claiming “There was only one Nazism,” he says, “the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change.” Eco reduces the qualities of what he calls “Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism” down to 14 “typical” features. “These features,” writes the novelist and semiotician, “cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
7. The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
13. Selective populism. “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.”
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “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.”

https://www.openculture.com/2024/11/umberto-ecos-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html
#DoublePlusUngood #Authoritarianism #Project2025 #TechnoFacism #January6 #CharacteristicsOfFascism #MAGA #ChristoFascism #ChristianCoalition
#ChristianNationalism
#AntiGBLTQLegislation #PressFreedom #SilencingDissent #CriminalizingDissent #StopHR9495

#umbertoeco

#5gennaio 1932

#libri #books #literature #history #IlNomeDellaRosa #ilpendolodifoucault #bompiani #culture #biblioteche #thriller #giallo #saggi #linguistica #semiotics

Jean-Jacques Annaud – „Notre-Dame in Flammen“ (2022)

Als ich zum ersten Male davon hörte, dass Jean-Jaques Annaud einen Film über den Brand von Notre-Dame in Paris drehen würde, war ich mir sicher, dass es sehenswert würde. Auch wenn mir schwante, wir würden eine Held:innengeschichte bekommen. Also einen Handlungsfaden, der eigentlich zu jedem Katastrophenfilm gehört. Doch das hat er zu vermeiden gewusst. (3Sat)