The Construction of the Enemy

Fascism requires an enemy. Eco notes that the enemy is simultaneously terrifyingly powerful (capable of destroying the nation) and contemptibly weak (fit for subjugation). The enemy is defined in opposition to the pure national community: Jews in Nazi Germany, communists and socialists across fascist movements generally, internal "degenerates" of various kinds.

Stanley (2018) shows that the fascist construction of the enemy also requires a betrayal narrative: the enemy is within, operating through stealth, corrupting institutions from the inside. This enables the suspension of normal legal protections in the name of security.

“Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances.”Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism (1995)

Algorithmic content recommendation systems are structurally biased toward outrage and threat content. Internal Facebook research leaked by Frances Haugen in 2021 showed that content provoking anger and fear generated higher engagement than neutral content, and that the recommendation algorithm rewarded this content, often by promoting increasingly extreme content to users who had engaged with milder versions.

Safiya Umoja Noble, in Algorithms of Oppression (2018), demonstrates how search algorithms and recommendation systems encode and amplify social hierarchies, systematically associating marginalized groups with criminality or threat. QAnon functions precisely as a digital scapegoating apparatus: a malevolent "deep state" cabal, simultaneously all-powerful and defeatable, that must be exposed and destroyed before national renewal is possible. This is Eco's Ur-Fascism, implemented as a participatory alternate reality game.