Once he showed up at Juan José’s house Sebreli, a journalist, gives an interview for television together with a cameraman. Not only was this person famous for his outrageousness, but the program he was a part of was specifically dedicated to making it Bullying to his interviewees by introducing a despicable custom in which lack of respect and fading of formalities are justified under the slogan of not being hypocrites. Sebreli, who barely watched TV, had no idea who this man was and greeted him as if he were serious. At first the dialogue was normal, but gradually the interlocutor asked slightly ridiculous questions until at some point he looked around the library shelves and suddenly uttered a sentence: “How many decorative books do you have?” These were books by Theodor W. Adorno, not “embellished,” but the scene that was later cut was intended to ridicule the interviewee. Sebreli immediately understood the ambush, stood up and threw them out: “This meeting ends here,” he told them.
It is very contemporary – both for the publication of the posthumous book by Sebreli, Revolutions, tremors of an unfinished history (South America) and the challenges posed by the new global rights – a look back at Adorno, one of the founders of the Frankfurt School, who recognized the totalitarian tendency before anyone else and fled Germany when many considered the danger imaginary or exaggerated. Already in exile in the United States, he focused on the cunning, deceitful nature of the fascist phenomenon. In 1944, at a conference on anti-Semitism in San Francisco, Adorno formulated a detailed characterization of fascism, a lesson useful for understanding how the discourses and propaganda of these movements are organized in their early stages.
The leader A fascist, Adorno tells us, is a lone wolf, an ordinary citizen fighting against supposedly dark forces entrenched in the rafters of society. That’s why he usually appears as the target of possible attacks: he wears a bulletproof vest or simulates attacks that reveal that someone wants to murder him. It must be seen as a stone in the shoe of those who do not want to change it status quo. He is a great little man who is the pantomime of change; small because he is like any other citizen, but at the same time big because he dares to challenge the powerful. A mix of neighborhood men and King Kong. It gives a voice to many people whose ideas have long been despised and who, from one day to the next, feel represented by this extraordinary couple.
These characters never explain exactly what their goal is, the setting Their utopia always remains in the fog, but they value the means they will use to achieve the uncertain paradise they preach. They keep repeating slogans. They say the blame lies with a particular part of society: it could be immigration taking away jobs, crime attacking property, or leeches managing to gain a foothold in their sinecures. Often these problems are real – no one can deny that there was a serious problem with the mafia in El Salvador or that communism degraded Hungary – but the fascist demagogue exploits and abuses this real problem to capture and retain power.
The masses in fascism are anesthetized by the theatrics of the leader and propaganda always remains on an emotional, not argumentative, level. The syllogism is replaced by the cliché, the theatrical effect or the low blow. Fascist propaganda attacks ghosts rather than real opponents: it constructs an image of the Jew, the communist, the criminal or the immigrant that does not care too much about the correspondence between image and reality. There is a mythologization of the enemy.
What the leader achieves is a performance with mystical overtones that breathes life into it. to the movement and inspires the agitators. The hysterical personality of the fascist leader fulfills the function of dissolving inhibiting brakes: he shouts what his audience hardly dares to say in a quiet voice. So break the taboos. In the face of this scream, the audience’s fears disappear and everyone dares to shout out the supposedly censored “truths”. Theodor W. Adorno explains that fascists are taken seriously because they actually take risks. They attract audiences not in spite of their antics, but because of them: an institutionalized form of reparation for a frustrated and fed-up clientele. The table is served.
But this supposed spontaneity has its downsides. Adorno recalls that the most symbolic feature of fascist ritual is something he calls “the insinuation.” What does it mean? That the interlocutor is treated as someone who is able to read the intertext of the speech: When one speaks of “dark forces”, the addressees understand very well who the arrow is aimed at, despite the vagueness. Through this reduced, homeopathic formulation it is also possible to create the identity bridge between the leader and his supporters. No explanation, no footer required. This has a double function: On the one hand, they are not exposed openly because they can defend themselves when criticized by saying that no one was specifically addressed; On the other hand, a kind of brotherhood is organized, a complicity with its followers, as if it were the coded language of dolphins. When the leader wants to denigrate homosexuals in this way, he does not do so directly, but refers to the specific case of a particular couple. gay that he has committed crimes, which gives him an alibi, but at the same time his followers can infer that the message is applicable to a broader universe than this simple example. The suggestion has – to put it in Adorno’s words – two levels: the explicit and what appears from behind.
Another interesting point The special thing about fascist discourse is that it is often in the hands of semi-state agents who are in an undefined zone within the power system. Its function is to radicalize the message in order to gain the loyalty of the most violent clientele. They are snipers. These people do not hold important positions, and once these atrocities become toxic or inconvenient for a government, it is very easy to distance yourself from them. When, for example, one of these propagandists says about the death of “Pepe” Mujica: “One less. We’ll never see each other, old troll,” then the helpers capture very well the threefold hatred against the progressives, against the old and against them gay; But when the scandal comes to the surface, the bosses remain unscathed as these characters have no position. These are usually the backups, the “useful idiots” of all these systems.
For all of this, the publication of the posthumous book is of particular importance. by Sebreli, an essay on 20th century history that powerfully shows how fascism worked in the preparatory phase to dominate Europe and drag the world into a senseless war. The most disturbing point is the hypnotic influence on the psychology of people in general and young people in particular: the replacement of faith by reason penetrates even the most brilliant minds of every age, paralyzed by the mirage. Carl Schmitt, Heidegger and Marinetti are paradigmatic examples.
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