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Had a thoughtful discussion with a friend today. Nothing is quite as valuable as a genuine exchange of opinions, especially with those who do not see eye to eye with you on a topic. An echo chamber is not particularly useful, building bridges is.

Even when we can sort of guess at what someone will say, it can be a surprise to hear the words out loud, and tonight covered, perhaps unsurprisingly, topics of good government. I won’t go into details, because none of it is particularly novel and others are better writers on the topic than myself, but I wanted to note down what struck me most.

In our discussion, my friend came back to the same thought over and over again. he’s not doing that much, he’s not as bad as everyone says he is. Even if he means some of the things he says, they won’t affect me, and those policies that will affect me, will do so in a good way. I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that statement, wasn’t sure how one gets through to another person on this particular point.

I grant, entirely, that we cannot waste life in the pursuit of theoretical objectives to the detriment of practical reality. There are things that are wrong, that need to be right-sized. I disagree strongly with the left-leaning policies in many places, becoming more and more prescriptive in the name of some supposed freedom. Forbidding actions you don’t like is a slippery slope no matter what quadrant of the political compass you are on. (Personally, I could never act with such an assumed certainty as that portrayed by politicians. I suppose it’s meant to portray strength, but we are all human, and I’d much rather have someone who acts like it) 1. I distrust people who act with undue certainty. To be sure, I swing too far to the other side, not enjoying acting on intuition, rather a nice set of research papers and data - but that’s my luxury, as a private citizen. Action for the sake of action, to me that seems like a recipe for disaster. A fascinating one, for sure…

Maybe I am wrong? Maybe the ‘Nothing Ever Happens’ crowd is correct, and nothing will happen. Maybe everything will genuinely be better, healthier, wealthier. Time will tell.

I am not trying to throw accusations around, and I have no interest in gross generalizations, because, well, that would be nonsensical. History is longer than we realize, and more happens on a daily basis than anybody could realize, so we might just blink and miss something of note. Many things blow over, get lost in the winds of time - just like a social media trend. Other events matter, and it is only after the fact, once they have started to have an effect, that we see them for what they are.

What is happening, clearly, is affecting different people differently. Some cheer it on as salvation, others proclaim doom. Time will tell us more, will show us who plays what role in the story of it all. Some people might just surprise us.

There are better writers, more knowledgeable historians out there, so let me leave with this:

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.”

As always, you can email me at

  1. Otherwise, might as well bring on AI-government↩︎

Published on February 5, 2025