<story><title>Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]</title><url>https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TazeTSchnitzel</author><text>QAnon is a sort of syncretism for conspiracy theories. It&amp;#x27;s managed to bring every conspiracy theory into its fold. (And conspiracy theories themselves were already very syncretic!)</text></item><item><author>nebolo</author><text>I returned to this essay when I saw the photo of the Jake Angeli in the Capitol - a Q-supporter wearing an Indian buffalo mask and a tattoo of Odin, storming the capitol alongside evangelical Christians. Relevant quote:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the combination of different forms of belief or practice”; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge—that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Apocryphon</author><text>Conspiracy theories tend to encourage syncretism. It&amp;#x27;s as easy to disbelieve the official narrative on one subject and to substitute it for a theory, as it is to do the same to another. Different theories are but different crimes from the same culprits.</text></comment>
<story><title>Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism (1995) [pdf]</title><url>https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TazeTSchnitzel</author><text>QAnon is a sort of syncretism for conspiracy theories. It&amp;#x27;s managed to bring every conspiracy theory into its fold. (And conspiracy theories themselves were already very syncretic!)</text></item><item><author>nebolo</author><text>I returned to this essay when I saw the photo of the Jake Angeli in the Capitol - a Q-supporter wearing an Indian buffalo mask and a tattoo of Odin, storming the capitol alongside evangelical Christians. Relevant quote:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the combination of different forms of belief or practice”; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge—that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Sharlin</author><text>Basically the premise of the original &lt;i&gt;Deus Ex&lt;/i&gt;. Life imitates art?</text></comment>