Putinism Displays All 14 Characteristics Eco Said Fascism Has, Yakovenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 9 – “Putinism is fascism,” Moscow commentator Igor Yakovenko says. It displays 14 characteristics of fascism leaders and regimes elsewhere in the past and present; and however difficult and unpleasant it may be, “it is time [for Russians and the world] to recognize the obvious” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5EDFAA62D27CC).

            The term fascism is used in three ways, narrowly as a description of Mussolini’s regime in Italy, most broadly as a term of abuse against anyone one dislikes, and most usefully, as Umberto Eco does in his 1995 essay “Eternal Fascism” in which he argues that if a regime has even one of the 14 characteristics of fascism, that country is in trouble. (For the text, see interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fascism.html).

            Tragically, Yakovenko says, “in Putin’s Russia in one form or another are present all 14 of them, more than almost any other contemporary regime. But also tragically, other regimes elsewhere display some or even many of them.  But the Russian commentator usefully presents a list:

·         The cult of tradition

·         The rejection of liberalism

·         Suspiciousness toward the intellectual world

·         Unwillingness to tolerate criticism

·         Struggle with those defined as alien

·         Reliance on the frustration of middle classes who have suffered from an economic and political crisis

·         Attachment to conspiracy theories and to the idea that the country is a besieged fortress surrounded by enemies

·         A belief that the enemy is unjustly well off but inherently weak and therefore it will lose

·         Struggle is not for life; instead, life exists for the struggle.

·         Elitism covered by populism

·         A cult of heroism and a cult of death

·         A cult of “manliness” which grows into homophobia

·         Fascist populism which stands against “the rot of parliamentary democracy”

·         The debasement of language through new speak.