Episode 120
Authoritarianism 101: A Field Guide to the Tactics You’re Seeing
Summary:
I break down Umberto Eco’s 14 pillars of fascism and map them to what we’re seeing in America right now.
If you’ve felt the cultural drift toward extremism but couldn’t quite name it, this episode hands you the vocabulary and the receipts. I use Eco’s framework to decode the tactics, narratives, and power plays fueling today’s authoritarian project, plus what it demands from anyone who still cares about pluralism and democracy.
Chapters:
00:00 — Setting the Stakes: Why the comedic muzzle matters for democracy
03:12 — Billionaires & Theocracy: The money + movement alliance
06:18 — Pillars 1–3: Tradition, anti-modernism, and action-as-virtue
09:25 — Pillars 4–5: Treason in dissent + fear of difference
12:33 — Pillar 6: Social frustration as political fuel
15:40 — Pillars 7–8: Conspiracy obsession & the “strong/weak” enemy paradox
18:45 — Pillars 9–10: No compromise + contempt for the vulnerable
21:50 — Pillars 11–12: Cult of heroism, machismo, and fetishized weaponry
24:58 — Pillars 13–14: Selective populism and Newspeak in practice
28:10 — The Assignment: From ally to accomplice—what we do next
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Music Credit: Good_B_Music
Mentioned in this episode:
Left in Exile Intro
Left in Exile Intro
Transcript
It's important for us to define where we are as a country because the moment that leadership. Starts taking comedians off the air. It should be a signal, one of many signals that we are past the point of no return, and it's critical for the average citizen to start fighting back. I think the irony of all of this is that unsurprisingly, to most of us, the constitutional conservatives are nowhere to be found.
They are in fact cheering along and rationalizing all of these things as the stroke doubt salmon color, save a lot. Stalin continues on his march to do whatever he can to distract and hide what's.
Clearly [:That ideal future for them is a billionaire dominated techno futile society. The billionaires want to consolidate as much [00:02:00] power and as much of the resources as they can. Let's understand the combined wealth of all of these billionaires in the world accounts for $16 trillion. That's more than the wealth of any country that exists in the world today, with the exception of the US and China.
That's not enough for these people. These people want to consolidate even more resources and relegate as many of the population into desperate poverty so that they can have a permanent underclass that they can exploit and discard as they see fit. Pair that with the dreams of organizations like The Heritage Foundation, who want to create a white ethnostate and a theocracy, and you have a recipe for a complete dystopian future where the average person is used and discarded like a piece of gum.
That's what we're marching towards today.
If you think that I'm being [:One where countries and regions are run in a very similar way to how corporations are run with A CEO at the top who has absolute control and decides what happens and what doesn't happen. That's the Curtis Ya win the philosophical foundation of how these tech bros operate. That's what's happening on the one hand.
stian nationalist ethnostate [:And in their context, the left is anyone who is not a Red Hat MAGA supporter. Let's be clear between the tech oligarchs and the religious right, we have the foundation of the modern Nazi party. These are a group of fascists. It's important for us to understand that this is just not a blanket label. We need to be able to define fascist by what they do.
of any fascist, totalitarian [:So who was Umo Echo? Echo was somebody who grew up in Mussolini's, Italy, and what he noted was that there are many different flavors of fascism that can exist, but in order to recognize what they stand for, it's important for us to make sure that we're mapping out the pillars that the ideology is built on. So let's take a look at those 14 pillars.
ond pillar is a rejection of [:The third pillar is that they're a cult of action for action's sake. They've often said that action is beautiful in and of itself, and it must be taken before or without any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Think about that. The act of thinking makes You less manly, is what that says.
ar? Disagreement is treason. [:Disagreement is treason. Creating a community of disagreement is against what fascism stands for, so in effect, fascism wants a backwardness in society so that it can thrive. Fear of difference. The first of peel of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders.
the different, but it's also [:The belief that anybody that isn't a white Christian male is subhuman. That's the root of today's fascist movement in the us. The sixth pillar is the 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.
eir largely uneducated voter [:That is part and parcel, the Republican playbook, which is at this point, a carbon copy playbook of what the failed Austrian painter put into place to take over Germany. That is what we're looking at this past election. What were all the red hats saying, oh, we want cheaper eggs?
y is worse off. GDP has been [:Somebody who's had six bankruptcies. this is a conman who convinced the population that they should be more concerned about what bathroom people are using than the fact that this guy is a bought and paid for asset in control by several foreign countries, allegedly, and that you should pay zero attention to what he did the first go around.
al one. The followers of the [:You ever notice how red hats fall for every conspiracy theory under the sun? You remember how J six was a deep state plot that was organized by Nancy Pelosi. You remember how the first go around the deep state runs everything and he's gonna clear the swamp. The reason why you're poor and broke and barely surviving is because the deep state did this to you.
Remember how billionaires are gathering together at pizza parlors to bathe in kids' blood? How many plots? How many plots? Have these red hats believed migrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Does that ring a bell? This is why we call the voter base of these people the dumbest voter base in history because they will believe anything that they're. Stroked out salmon colored save a lot. Stalin tells them
s both strong and weak. By a [:You have this all powerful deep state that is controlling everything and yet. This guy and his regime control everything and the economy is worse. Everything is worse since he's taken over and. The entire rationale for this regime's existence is built on a bunch of contradictions. These are the people that say, you better not keep pushing us because we're gonna go to Civil War.
nd at the same time, they're [:Nevermind that the vast majority of political violence that's been committed in this country have been committed by the far right.
That is an example of how they're twisted and backwards thinking. You can't present reason to them because on their face on its face, they reject reason and everything makes sense in their own minds. This is why I consistently say that these people live in an alternate reality.
ever concede their positions [:It's a binary solution for them. It's purely a question of survival. In order for them to survive, everyone else must die. They fundamentally do not believe that anyone else has a right to exist. Let's clearly state what they stand for. This is what they believe, and this is why it is near impossible to have these people see reason and that belief system has its roots.
Christians. Believe that the [:They believe empathy is a sin because they don't think it's actually worthwhile. They see no purpose in the world of today existing. Their goal is to usher in this rapture where Caucasian space, Jesus comes back and saves all of them and leaves all of us heathens to burn in a lake of fire. That's what these people believe, and when you look at the furthest depths of the far right spaces, that's why these people are so nihilistic.
s do whatever is possible so [:The fact that they're rooted in seeing pacifism as collaborating and trafficking with the enemy, that's where the connection exists. , The 10th pillar, contempt for the weak. This ties in again with the broader philosophy that most MAGA have.
And when you tie that into contempt for the weak as em echo says el elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology. Let's drill that down. When you look at contempt for the weak and the lack of empathy that the right and fascist movements have, and particularly MAGA has. This is why they reject all of the things that Jesus said.
uccessful in monetary terms, [:Pull yourself up by the bootstraps. That is what this is rooted in. Contempt for the week is a hallmark of fascist movements, and you see that on display within Red Hat circles. These are the people that are cheering that brown people might get fed to alligators. Contempt for the week shows up all over the place in MAGA circles, and you saw a recent example of it on Fox News. Brian Kilmeade in their morning show said that the way to solve the homeless problem is involuntary lethal injections. He, couple days later, after he caught f flack over it.
a couple days after he says [:Who wants to bet that person probably caught that broadcast? Something to think about. The 11th pillar, everybody is educated to become a hero. According to echo. He states that one of the goals of fascist societies is to make a hero out of everybody, and it creates a cult of heroism that's tied directly with a cult of death. This is when we talk about ingroups and outgroups, if you're part of the ingroup of the fascist movement, everybody else is an enemy and it's incumbent on you to exterminate the enemy.
And if you exterminate the enemy, you're the hero. This, again, ties in with some of those other pillars, and this again ties into our experiences in trying to talk to these people where they. Will not yield because they see you as an enemy and your only purpose is to be exterminated by them.
o you think these people are [:These were people that were involved in the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. It's the same cloth. This is the Confederacy, which spawned the Nazis, which has spawned maga. It's a straight line. These are all rotten fruit from the same poison tree of white supremacy.
The 12th pillar, machismo and weaponry. So according to Echo, machismo implies both disdain for women in intolerance and condemnation of non-standard sexual habits from chastity to homosexuality. Now, depending on where in the far right you are, some of this gets a little fuzzy if you're talking about the Drapers and Nick Ententes.
oom certain members of their [:Anytime something happens, what do you see on social media platforms? You see these gravy seals and couch commandos make cringey ass videos talking about, I'm coming for you. It's absolutely ridiculous. Their obsession with having more weaponry than some countries is really telling.
ip from their couch to their [:How does that work exactly?
When you think about how far off on the machismo scale these people go, let's understand what it is.
At some level, they recognize how weak and pathetic they are. That's why they have to put on this cosplay as if they're superior to anybody else. Their entire persona. Is rooted in the idea that they're a supreme, but what are they reacting to? They're reacting to a world where it's becoming increasingly more and more difficult for them to compete on an even footing.
race, largely uneducated and [:That's at the base of what's going on here. 13th Pillar of Umberto's. 14 Pillars of Fascism, selective populism. This again ties in with Ingroups and outgroups. If you're part of the ingroup of this fascist movement.
Your positions are framed as you're the voice of the people. Let's think about it from a historical perspective. The failed Austrian painter came to power getting roughly 33% support from the population.
verwhelming victory. It just [:And keep in mind, JD Vance has recently been. Going out on podcasts pretending to be some sort of statistician, tossing out the claim that the vast majority of political violence occurs from the left, when that's clearly not in line with the facts. It's so unsupported by data that the regime had to pull down their own study, which showed that the vast majority of these instances are pushed by right wing nut jobs.
The 14th pillar is newspeak. All the Nazi or fascist school books made use of an improvised vocabulary in elementary syntax in order to limit the instruments for complex or critical reasoning.
se they don't want people to [:It's not real. It was ai. This is a deeply uncritical, unserious, stupid and dangerous group of people. So when you think about umo Echo and his 14 pillars of fascism, you can check every box. When it comes to the red hats that are running around, we are far along the road where we're almost at the point of no return.
And the faster we get away from sugarcoating where we are, the better off we're gonna be. We have seen every week since this regime took over, we've seen another step getting us closer to a totalitarian state, and it's gonna be critical for all of us to speak up and become louder and more aggressive in pushing back against us.
c that needs to do this, the [:Because the regime wants to massacre anyone that isn't white, so it's gotta be led from those of you who call yourself allies. You need to actually be accomplices and lead this from the front. As I've said before, if we're not at the point of no return, we're pretty damn close.
You gotta get off the couches.
