How many characteristics of Eco's Ur-Fascism does MAGA embody?

From Umberto Eco's, a noted fiction writer and philosophy professor, 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism":

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.”

I mean, is there even one point where you can't plausibly say at least "It looks like heading in that direction"? Keep in mind that a movement doesn't have to hit 14 of 14 to be Fascist.

 

There's also many of these points that ring true of Putin, especially when he refers to Ukraine. Which shouldn't be surprising since he's a fascist.

 

Total Fascist. It's uncanny how closely they cosplay Nazi Germany, while claiming to fight "the Nazis". People are joking that they stole swastika from Hitler, but because of traditional russian drunkenness, bent and broke it in half - resulting in the "Z" symbol they use for the war.

 

Lots of groups stole the Swastika and mucked it about. The Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging - 'Afrikaner Resistance Movement' a Neo-Nazi political party in South Africa, founded in 1973, stole three legs of it - making a triskelion. Pic here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaner_Weerstandsbeweging#:~

I remember seeing some of these guys, in uniforms, 'on parade' on TV news, when South Africa was in the process of cancelling Apartheid. They were against the change. Nasty bunch.
IIRC - Hitler stole the swastika symbol from ancient India. Yeah, he did. Very good account here of origins.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/history-of-the-swastika#:~:

Show me a fascist and I'll show you a person with zero capacity for original thought.

 

Oh yes. One of the more full-throated speakers for the war is apparently a pop singer with stage name Shaman. He looks like this:


I bet if you would try to imagine how his songs sound, you'd be pretty close. Full-on cosplay of the NSDAP.

 

TBH, this is sort of full circle. Third Reich if the 1930ies borrowed a lot of the esthetics and style from 1920ies Bolshevik Russia.

 

That fits the comment I've heard repeatedly over the last 65 years - that "far left" is pretty much like "far right." I first heard it back in Grade 11 modern history. in 1957-8 from our "openly socialist" teacher. Since then I've heard it from factory workers, university professors and lots of "Bar Stool Prophets." So, it must be true, right?

Perhaps the political "right-left" spectrum is a circular continuum. Both extremes are at the same point on the circumference. Then again, I was hopeless at geometry. If kind teachers hadn't cut me some breaks, I'd still be in that class...

 

I would agree, if I knew what you mean by "mirror-identitarian far left". But, yeah, there are many parallels; this is why putin's far right fascism seamlessly includes cult of Stalin and Soviet nostalgia. It's just like in "1984": Oceania's ruling ideology is Ingsoc, notionally far-left, while Eastasia's is a vaguely defined death cult that may be far-right; it's made clear that these are distinctions without a difference on a practical level.

 

Hm... I can see significant faults in the leftist communities, including certain fascination with "revolution" that can put them at a stone throw of some of the 14 traits. But not "placing ethnicity above any other aspect of the individual". That's not what "woke" is.

 

The existence of a radical fringe on one side doesn't necessarily equal the radical base of the other.

 

Radical Hard left and Right both frighten me.

 

This is a false equivalency. Almost all domestic terrorism comes from the Radical Right.