• TheDoctor [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    Umberto Eco completely ignores the material basis for fascism, which is usually the downwardly mobile petit bourgeoisie. Fascism takes advantage of superstructural elements, which is why Eco’s list contains the elements it does in a kind of grab bag fashion. But it still has a material basis, itself being a response to a crisis within capitalism. Would highly recommend The Jakarta Method for further reading on what people are discussing in your replies and in this thread.

    • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      Umberto Eco completely ignores the material basis for fascism, which is usually the downwardly mobile petit bourgeoisie.

      The Nation, 2017: Trumpism: It’s Coming From the Suburbs

      But scapegoating poor whites keeps the conversation away from fascism’s real base: the petite bourgeoisie. This is a piece of jargon used mostly by Marxists to denote small-property owners, whose nearest equivalents these days may be the “upper middle class” or “small-business owners.” FiveThirtyEight reported last May that “the median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000,” or roughly 130 percent of the national median. Trump’s real base, the actual backbone of fascism, isn’t poor and working-class voters, but middle-class and affluent whites. Often self-employed, possessed of a retirement account and a home as a nest egg, this is the stratum taken in by Horatio Alger stories. They can envision playing the market well enough to become the next Trump. They haven’t won “big-league,” but they’ve won enough to be invested in the hierarchy they aspire to climb. If only America were made great again, they could become the haute 
bourgeoisie—the storied “1 percent.”