Bret Devereaux

Since the machismo is the core of this narrow-fascism, the performance of strength by the leader, often an absurd farce to outsiders, is actually central to its appeal&function. Those laughable staged photos of the dictator being 'manly' are actually the point. 16/23

Because those laughable displays are precisely what triggers both the emotional gratification of the huckster-leader (whose whole life has conditioned the behavior) and the emotional loyalty-response of the receptive followers, seeking a 'strong' leader. 17/24

And if all of this description so far - the overwrought displays of pseudo-masculinity (in the absence of any real mastery), even in defiance of obvious facts (Eco's #14 of Ur-Fascism) sounds quite a lot a recently hospitalized (and still contagious) leader near you...18/24

...well, yes, at long last, that is my point. Because this form of fascism isn't dangerous because of the laughable machismo, but because of the inevitable logic that machismo entails. Remember where I said that Eco had it backwards? 19/24

See, the cult of the 'hero' (who seeks violent death with enthusiasm, shows his contempt of it), the contempt for the weak and the vision of life as a state of permanent warfare - these are the inevitable rationalization which must arise to sustain machismo's foolishness. 20/24

Not the cause, but the unavoidable result. Machismo of this sort of narrow-fascism, which begins as an emotional impulse, not a rational ideology, cannot help but march down Eco's path of cruelty. Or as Adam Serwer put it, the cruelty is the point: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/ … 21/24

Not for its own sake, but because wanton cruelty, absent reason or purpose, is the ultimate display of power over others which is in turn the ultimate super-normal signal of the kind of cancerous 'masculinity' of machismo. 21/24

If you think "he's not that smart" he doesn't need to be - he just needs to read a crowd and then make mistakes. As Eco says, "Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy." 22/24