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Notes -
I found this archive of Scott's LiveJournal, but I'm wondering of there's a list somewhere picking out the most interesting articles to read. https://archive.fo/fCFQx
Ever wonder how the world's bluest person starts engaging with reactionary thought and HBD honestly? It's the power of (strike)rationality(strike) volunteering in Haiti and seeing every western institution replicated in cargo cult form.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150407223525/http://squid314.livejournal.com/297579.html
Excerpt:
"It has proven hard for me to appreciate exactly how confused the Haitians are about some things. Gail, our program director, explained that she has a lot of trouble with her Haitian office staff because they don't understand the concept of sorting numerically. Not just "they don't want to do it" or "it never occurred to them", but after months and months of attempted explanation they don't understand that sorting alphabetically or numerically is even a thing. Not only has this messed up her office work, but it makes dealing with the Haitian bureaucracy - harrowing at the best of times - positively unbearable."
Chicken or egg? The converse is that after spending a few years in east Africa you realize that the dude living in a dirt-floor hut who speaks multiple languages fluently and could run circles around the median ivy-league grad student is the norm rather than the exception because anyone who isn't speaking at least two languages and working three side hustles either emigrated or starved to death decades ago.
Self-deleted original response which expressed the view that cartoonish red tribe's mockery of blue tribe intelligence is seriously challenged by the reality of blue tribe's basically unchallenged rule over red tribe. I apologize for it's boo ?ingroup but not really ingroup...? nature.
It's a common theme with both tribes. My enemy is both incredibly stupid but also somehow also a giant threat. The cognitive dissonance never seems to register.
But only one accused the other of being the only one to think in such a manner. Eco claimed of facists in his 8th out of 14 points:
Reading Eco is good mental exercise. He is quite smart, capable and well-read, not without fault, but still well-read and smart. I think The Prague Cemetery could be something that wold interest many Motte users just for peeking at the sheer amount Eco has read about the 19th century politics to write it. (Never mind the plot.)
Concerning Eco's definition of fascism. If you read the original, it appears that Eco gets that because something fits his definition is not eternally always equal to Mussolini's fascism. Truncated quotes (apologies, but Eco does not write succinctly)
More briefly, I don't think Eco would have had any problem acknowledging that his list does not overdetermine "fascism". He says he is trying to gesture at a syncretic fuzzy ball of ideas but want to argues the fuzzy ball "ur-Fascism" can meaningfully still be called "fascism" in post-Mussolini era. He quite clearly gestures that many of his points are generally unpleasant types of political thought that the free world would be better without and people wearing black shirts do not have a monopoly over them. And what would be "the most innocent of disguises" if not a political ideologue who argues to be antifascist yet deploys the same tactics and ideas?
The uncharitability is more on the people who take a distilled list of his in Wikipedia and choose to apply it like Der Hexenhammer to identify witches they want to identify as witches.
edit. this was intended as a reply to @FistfullOfCrows here edit2 @ not /u/
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TBH Eco can go fuck himself with his uncharitable bullshit. One can be both in a position of political and economic power and still be a spineless coward (in a personal way), with weak morals and not enough "will to power".
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