ON THE WATER
Ur-fascism is alive, well and coagulating in good old R of SA
Tradition is the stock response to the assault of modernity and enlightenment. It romanticises atavistic rural peasantry, writes Neels Blom
Ur-fascism is what the Italian philosopher and semiotician Umberto Eco names the thing we have to reject, the thing that is the bane of our lives, the enemy of freedom and of justice and of peace, the death of progress, the crime against everything that is warm and fuzzy, the celebration of ignorance, the reign of evil, and so on. Eco’s commentary in a 1995 essay in the New York Book Review resurfaces as a response to the rise of the rabid right around the globe, made especially frightful now that the populist fascist archetype Donald Trump is about to assume control of the world’s most dangerous array of military hardware. Read his essay, Ur-Fascism. Eco may as well have referred to the way South African politics is developing. The obvious narcissistic similarities between Trump and President Jacob Zuma have not escaped the ANC’s critics, even as they invite dismissal on the grounds that the party has led the struggle against the fascism that was apartheid. Apartheid defenders woul...
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