dagblog - Comments for "Eco Chamber: what is Fascism?"

Her early dancing looked

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 08:03:12 +0000

In reply to I appreciated getting your

Her early dancing looked really silly - kind of the "vamp me" stuff out of Charlie Chaplin silents that was supposed to be funny, not artistic. I think all the mountain movies were just as bad, but hey, so was Cheers yet it enthralled a huge mass of people. What can you say about popular culture that hasn't been said.

all bets are off on the T

artappraiser — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 07:39:13 +0000

In reply to Also (and maybe not entirely

all bets are off on the T-hormone causing road rage, big tall male actually the cool one:

https://nypost.com/video/road-rage-turns-into-brutal-beatdown-at-a-traffic-light/

I appreciated getting your

artappraiser — Tue, 03 Jul 2018 17:49:29 +0000

In reply to good reading, but I'd say

I appreciated getting your input. as, truth be told, Riefenstahl's stuff never mesmerized me so much. I've always felt I've seen a lot better propaganda skills, it's more like a shrug for me. But that's really just different sensory operation on the viewer's part, it's not a judgment. Sontag didn't exactly have a dull eye for potent messages in photography, to say the least.

good reading, but I'd say

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 03 Jul 2018 09:15:39 +0000

In reply to Strange you should post this

good reading, but I'd say Riefenstahl's sports coverage stands a chance of being innovative in the way of Vertov's (underwater cameras, moving track cameras...) though I don't know exactly the state of the art at that time.

But I remember being mesmerized by the Nuba book for a while, and slowly discovering the dishonesty it covered - once again a master at propaganda until her death. Sontag gives much more detail than I knew (the Polish filmng for example), though I think leaves out that one of the charges was she arranged to use gypsy extras out of Czechoslovak concentration camps to film her Blue Light. But of course "I didn't know", that most impenetrable of Nazi excuses, even from Hitler's personal friend for a decade.

The Umberto Eco article is an

moat — Tue, 03 Jul 2018 01:44:30 +0000

In reply to Eco Chamber: what is Fascism?

The Umberto Eco article is an important document on many levels. Thanks for linking to it, PeraclesPlease.
It deserves more than a cursory summation. A couple of things caught my immediate attention that I will natter upon.

I have long been tortured with the way "populism" is employed in expressions used in very different cultural/political spaces. I have been mostly focused on the differences between the sense of "nationalism" as it used in the U.S.A. and other nations. Eco provides a clear explanation of its use based upon direct representation. No need to be the genius that figures out all the different forms of self identification. As Wittgenstein said, shoo the fly out of the bottle.

The remarks about the mix and match quality of various ideologies not preventing an authoritarian regime from forming is both a warning and an encouragement. Being against Fascism doesn't require a lot of rhetoric to get started.

I'm going post-news. Maybe it

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 22:30:00 +0000

In reply to Strange you should post this

I'm going post-news. Maybe it's my T hormones acting up, found myself humping the masthead earlier. Have to check on that. Or maybe it's from watching Triumph of Will once too many. Strange times we live in...

Writing in 1995, @ #13, Eco

artappraiser — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 19:25:53 +0000

In reply to Eco Chamber: what is Fascism?

Writing in 1995, @ #13, Eco the seer says

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.

Prefaced with

Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view—one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium.

Which got me thinking it might actually be good to bring back Nixon's phrase "the silent majority" but with a new definition. Passionately opining pundits, whatever the political passion (or intended manipulation) and whatever venue they choose to use, are still a minority.

Also that ideal of boring factual objective journalistic reporting, without appeal to emotion, is an ideal that should still be highly supported rather than dissed as it often is these days. And it should be taught as important in school, to be able to recognize it, as difficult as that may be to accomplish, since everyone wants to inspire passionate learning in children.

Also (and maybe not entirely

artappraiser — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 18:15:11 +0000

In reply to Eco Chamber: what is Fascism?

Also (and maybe not entirely unrelated?!) this current piece over there is absolutely the best article on testosterone as "the he hormone" that I have seen:

The Masculine Mystique of T

She covers all the recent theorizing and a lot of the past, with links, and very well at that.

Strange you should post this

artappraiser — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 18:04:07 +0000

In reply to Eco Chamber: what is Fascism?

Strange you should post this because I was thinking of you when I ran across this yesterday @ same site:

Fascinating Fascism:Susan Sontag on Riefenstahl

(BTW, neither is "News" but I've decided not to cause a scene about that. We can make this the "past avant-garde intellectuals on fascism" thread. And one could actually get into the semiology of the title of the section, it's not "News" but "In the News.")