Consumer society

By: Pier Paolo Pasolini (part of an interview with Massimo Fini, "L'Europeo", December 26, 1974)
Translated by: Aurel Plasari

I believe, I believe deeply, that the real fascism is what sociologists have very well called "consumer society". A definition that seems harmless, just indicative.

But no.

If you observe the reality carefully and, especially, if you know how to read around in the objects, in the landscape, in the urbanism and, especially, in the people, you see that the results of this careless consumption society are the results of a dictatorship, of a fascism of real and genuine.

In Naldini's film, we saw the mobilized young people, in uniform... However, with a difference. Then, the young people, one taking off the uniform and one taking the road to their villages, became Italians again like a hundred, like fifty years ago, like before fascism.

Fascism, which is the truth, had made them clowns, servants, maybe partially obedient, but it had not touched them wholeheartedly, in the depths of their souls, in their way of being.

This new fascism, this consumer society, on the contrary, has deeply transformed young people, touched them inside themselves, given them different feelings, different ways of thinking, living, different cultural models. It is no longer a question, as in Mussolini's time, of a superficial, scenographic disorder, but of a real disorder that has stolen and changed their soul.

This means, after all, that this "civilization of consumption" is a dictatorial civilization. In short, if the word fascism means the arrogance of power, the "consumer society" has already put fascism into practice.