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Quote by Umberto Eco

“It would be so much easier for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares". Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and point our finger at any of its new instances - every day, in every part of the world.”

Quote by Umberto Eco

Work

Il fascismo eterno

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Author

Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco

Italian essayist, scholar, and critic. Umberto Eco is renowned for his unique literary style and profound academic background. His works integrate history, philosophy, literature, and semiotics, with his most famous novel being 'The Name of the Rose'. more

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“I’m angry at them, but I still see their humanity and don’t wish them ill. I actually feel sympathy for those pulled and brainwashed into antifa’s twisted ideology. They are often exploited and used by a movement that explicitly rejects the value of individuals in favor of the cause.”

“he resented Golz's orders, and the necessity for them. He resented them for what they could do to him and for what they could do to this old man. They were bad orders all right for those who would have to carry them out. And that is not the way to think, he told himself, and there is not you, and there are no people that things must not happen to. Neither you nor this old man is anything. You are instruments to do your duty. There are necessary orders that are no fault of yours and there is a bridge and that bridge can be the point on which the future of the human race can turn. As it can turn on anything that happens in this war.”

“C'è infatti in Germania una quantità di sinceri antifascisti che sono più delusi, più disorientati e più sconfitti di quanto lo siano i simpatizzanti nazisti: delusi perchè la liberazione non è stata radicale come si erano aspettai; disorientati perchè non vogliono solidarizzare con il malcontento dei tedeschi, in cui si trovano a rintracciare troppo nazismo nascosto, nè con la politica degli alleati, di cui osservano con costernazione l'indulgenza nei confronti dei vecchi nazisti; e infine sconfitti , perchè in quanto tedeschi dubitano di poter far valere la loro quota di partecipazione alla vittoria alleata, e allo stesso tempo, in quanto antinazisti, non sono altrettanto convinti di non avere alcuna responsabilità nella sconfitta tedesca.”

“I was taken aback by the expression. How, I wondered, could anyone be a premature anti-Fascist? Could there be anything such as a premature antidote to a poison? A premature antiseptic? A premature antitoxin? A premature anti-racist? If you were not premature, what sort of anti-Fascist were you supposed to be? A punctual anti-Fascist? A timely one? In fact, in the '30s, as the European situation moved inexorably toward war, the British and French governments (the French often under pressure from the British) passed up one timely opportunity after another to become anti-Fascist.”

“Why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanised state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right - or rather, your moral duty - to eliminate this system? - 3rd Leaflet of the White Rose”