I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Umberto Eco is among my Gods.
Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
Just one of the examples that he cites of the cognitive dissonance that plagues this administration and their adherents.
I remember seeing this in Utne years ago! It still hits home. Thanks for finding it!
Mine too, underwhelm.
Everyone should own a copy of his Travels in Hyper-Reality
Actually the whole of the article was shit.
All he seemed to be doing was going in circles with his arguments while never getting to the points.
Alot of what he said contradicts established commentary about fascism and it's history.
I intend to ignore it.
MYOB'
.
you can find the full text in his book Five Moral Pieces pubished by harcourt
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obido...=glance&
s=books
By the way, in the book the piece is titled Ur-Fascism
Yep. Great article.
"Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference."
"Towel-heads", etc. How many turbaned cab drivers have paid the price for their difference lately?
"...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..."
Relieving the tax burden of the middle class with all those tax credits? Constant appeals to the nebulous "Middle America"? Oh I dunno...
"...at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged."
LOL Well, we all know where to draw the analogies with this quote!
"...pacifism is trafficking with the enemy."
-and this one.
"...the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses..."
-or their apathy, perhaps.
"The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."
The mythologizing of the final actions of the (admittedly brave) passengers of Flight 93 is a great example of this sort of thing.
"...the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality)."
"Gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman."
-Arnold Schwartzeneggar
"Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People."
Fos News, Wolf and Lou and their online polls, LGF, Freepers, Clearchannel and their "pro-war" rallies -- need I say more?
"Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism."
Well, we all know about those out-of-touch liberal elitists and their tax-and-spend lackeys in Washington.
"...we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show."
"The spin stops here."
"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 Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares." "
Yep.
This changed my day.
Oh wait, MYOB says it's bullshit, so I guess I will ignore it.
FWIW, I discuss this piece in "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism," especially in Parts 2 and 3. I disagree that it contradicts the known discussions of fascism; if anything it tends to complement them. However, its logic and typology are only partially helpful; its description of fascism is built around a summary of characteristics, many of which it shares with other forms of totalitarianism, while some are unique to fascism. Eco neither makes these distinctions nor explains them.
However, the traits he cites are in fact largely accurate, particularly the "cult of tradition," "life is permanent warfare", "irrationalism," "contempt for the weak" and "action for action's sake" (you can find discussions of these characteristics, for example, in fascism studies by Stanley Payne, Roger Griffin and Harald Ofstad).
Oops. Missed the links:
"Rush, Newspeak and Fascism"
Part 2
Part 3
A plug is due. Folks interested in this subject really need to go the the previous poster's web site. It should be required reading for all of us.
Hey, they're 14 for 14!
I read this piece in Utne reader back in 1995 and have been keeping it in the back of my mind since. Whenever anyone throws out the word Fascist, I do a quick rundown of the 14 points, as a checklist to see if their correct or just using the word for the thrll of letting it roll of the tongue. Thanks, Atrios for linking to it and thanks, David for expanding and including it into your essays.
Reading these points, it's pretty easy to see where the phrase "Islamofascism" comes from, too.
Some of his points, like #8 ("followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies") and #11 ("everybody is educated to become a hero") don't really fit with anything in the West, but do fit nicely with what we're told about the latest crop of anti-western terrorists.
WOW!
MYOB is smarter than Umberto Eco!
Where do you teach, dude?
I'm ready to sign up for your class.
You can start by taking a reading class.
I thought the article was extremely obscure and lacked focus on the points he was trying to make.
In other words, it just seemed like he was rambling on.
MYOB'
.
yes, make it simpleler man. can somebody call an editor?
Note: The original in Italian was sent to me by an Italian friend. In it he tells how he grew up under fascism and was an eager student who accepted the world view of the authorities and how the scales fell off his eyes when he saw a news kiosk after the war chock-a-block with newspapers of all different viewpoints. It is a beautiful essay, that gains rather than loses from personal reminiscence. Eco's definition of fascism is rather impressionistic (I think there are some books on the topic that do it better -- for example the association of the occult with fascism, is I think less clear cut than he makes it out to be.
I highly recommend Eco's book "The Search for the Perfect Language" -- wonderful.
Speaking of the New Deal, this item from FDR at the end still can function as a rallying cry:
If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.
The Eco text is great... but the small type at the bottom of the page is one of the best I've ever seen, too. Quite unexpected.
Some of his points, like #8 ("followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies") and #11 ("everybody is educated to become a hero") don't really fit with anything in the West, but do fit nicely with what we're told about the latest crop of anti-western terrorists.
You don't watch American television, particularly the news, or pay to see films made in Hollywood I take it?
Eco quotes Roosevelt:
"If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force...fascism will grow in strength in our land."
Ha! Roosevelt did every thing he could to put the economy under fascist control. The National Recovery
Administration (NRA) was a creature of the politically well connected segment of Wall Street. At the NRA's top sat the "Three Musketeers", the heads of GE, Standard Oil, and Filene's of Boston. Gerald Swope of GE authored the plan that was a blue print for a corporate state. (the Swope plan) He warned of the "harmful effects" of allowing "rampant competition from small concerns to threaten America's pillar companies" The NRA became a tool of oppression against small and medium sized buisness.( and in some cases large buisnesses with out proper political connections).
For a detailed look into the current thinking about fascism, check out the following:
International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus, edited by Roger Griffin,
and
Fascism, the Oxford Reader, also edited by Roger Griffin
You might also want to check out The Italian Dictatorship, written by RJB Bosworth.
A thanks to David Neiwert for his intriguing article, "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism", which turned me on to Roger Griffin and the whole subject of how to define fascism.
Opinion requires argument if it is to have any validity, MYOB.
"I didn't like that movie 'cuz it sucked," doesn't really hold water, in other words.
Perhaps you will now enlighten us as to the intellectual deficiencies contained in Eco's argument?
I await your treatise with baited breath.
See: Wall Street and FDR by Antony Sutton. Also, for an account of the big business initiators of the Progressive era see the very interesting "Triumph of Conservatism"
by Gabriel Kolko. "Conservatism" in the title refers to big business not any ideology. The thesis is that the economy at the start of the twentieth
century was in fact trending towards growing competition and decentralization and giant businesses sought to establish control over the economy and protect themselves from competition via progressive legislation.
If it walks like a Fascist, quacks like a Fascist, acts like a Fascist, it's probably a Republican!
See: Wall Street and FDR by Antony Sutton. Also, for an account of the big business initiators of the Progressive era see the very interesting "Triumph of Conservatism"
by Gabriel Kolko. "Conservatism" in the title refers to big business not any ideology. The thesis is that the economy at the start of the twentieth
century was in fact trending towards growing competition and decentralization and giant businesses sought to establish control over the economy and protect themselves from competition via progressive legislation.
Rick Barton:
Anyone accusing FDR of promoting fascism is parading their own manifest and profound ignorance. The man did more to combat fascism than any person in history.
Perhaps you mean to say "totalitarianism," of which fascism is but a species. The kind of totalitarianism to which you refer, however, is more commonly known as "communism."
And FDR, of course, was constantly assaulted from the right -- and particularly by the fascists -- of being "communist." McCarthy was fond of making this accusation too.
After awhile, it becomes pretty clear where you're coming from. But calling him "fascist" instead of "communist" is a handy way of disguising that, isn't it?
Sorry, that was the Eco Echo effect.
David Neiwert,
"The man(FDR) did more to combat fascism than any person in history."
But, he promoted it at home. The NRA was a profoundly fascist economic plan and with out opposition would have yeilded even more corporate-state control.
David Neiwert,
"The man(FDR) did more to combat fascism than any person in history."
But, he promoted it at home. The NRA was a profoundly fascist economic plan and with out opposition would have yeilded even more corporate-state control.
David Neiwert,
"The man(FDR) did more to combat fascism than any person in history."
But, he promoted it at home. The NRA was a profoundly fascist economic plan and with out opposition would have yeilded even more corporate-state control.
Jeepers, I hope none of the dKozians read #13, I mean, Abenakis have to get behind the program (or else what, we get worse than nothing?) and the "grassroots" thingee (seas of white hands) is overthrowing the Union/Minority/... special interests of the post-68 Democratic Party, and "grassroots" is wholesome and pure and blather.
Funny thing is, I figured the Deanies for White Shirts, not Black Shirts. Maybe because black is a traditional color for us, like ribbon shirts, and has no European resonances.
Well, Eco is always fun.
David Neiwert,
"The man(FDR) did more to combat fascism than any person in history."
But, he promoted it at home. The NRA was a profoundly fascist economic plan and with out opposition would have yeilded even more corporate-state control.
Rick Barton:
You clearly have no clue what constitutes fascism.
FDR was a soviet jew in league with the pope, who used the colored people to destroy the white race, leaving earth open for the tauren invasion and subsequent enslavement by frankenstein computer one world gangster god!
David Neiwert,
In reading your first responce to my post it's obvious you don't. Besides, if you did your arguments might now go beyond just nay-saying.
Fascistic economics is characterized by government control of the production and allocation of goods but ownership is left in private hands. Read the rationale offered by FDR's NRA in the Sutton volume: "Wall Street and FDR" and compare it to section of the Nazi party platform on the economy. The similarities are striking.
Rick Barton:
May I suggest you actually try to understand what fascism is first? Nazism is not fascism per se, but a species of it. Comparing FDR's platforms to the Nazis' is about as useful as the old John Birch rants comparing Ike's policies to the Communist Party's.
Here are some places to start:
Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism
Stanley Payne, Fascism: Comparison and Definition
Walter Laqueur, Fascism: Past, Present and Future
Harald Ofstad, Our Contempt for Weakness: Nazi Norms and Values and Our Own
Robert O. Paxton, "The Five Stages of Fascism," Journal of Modern History
Or you can just read "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism" for a quick roundup of these works.
There is, by the way, no single "fascistic economics."
You seem to be working from a dictionary definition of fascism, which is where you are most likely to encounter the criteria you mention. But these definitions are, of course, not only incomplete, but in many cases they are wholly inaccurate.
Most of the economic systems in fascist societies varied, but they all featured a close integration of corporate interests with state control. In essence, corporations controlled the government (what controls did exist were primarily for the benefit of the existing corporations), not the other way around -- as FDR's schema tended.
David Neiwert,
"Comparing FDR's platforms to the Nazis'..."
No. Now read carefuly, David. What I said was the similarties between what FDR's NRA wrote and the Nazi platform were striking. No big surprise though, since they were both facsist economic plans.
David, Everybody can go back and read the your first post in response to mine and it will be quite evident that
you new nothing of fascism then. I don't believe that you have read one of those books you cited so quit BSing!
Heres a hint actually read the book I cited. It adresses what we are discussing: The FDR NRA and Wall Street.
Something titled: "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism" obviously would not "round up" the books you cited.
What FDRs NRA intended was to controll
economic activity for the benifit of the businesses that were behind it. It oppressed other businesses and hampered economic growth. It would not have mattered if the whole thing sprang up on it's own. It still would have been fascist and still harmful.
I can see that at least this has gotten you to look up something about
fascism, so thats progress. Check out also: "The Road to Serfdom" by Hayek. He won a nobel prize in economics!
David Neiwert,
"Comparing FDR's platforms to the Nazis'..."
No. Now read carefuly, David. What I said was the similarties between what FDR's NRA wrote and the Nazi platform were striking. No big surprise though, since they were both facsist economic plans.
David, Everybody can go back and read the your first post in response to mine and it will be quite evident that
you new nothing of fascism then. I don't believe that you have read one of those books you cited so quit BSing!
Heres a hint actually read the book I cited. It adresses what we are discussing: The FDR NRA and Wall Street.
Something titled: "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism" obviously would not "round up" the books you cited.
What FDRs NRA intended was to controll
economic activity for the benifit of the businesses that were behind it. It oppressed other businesses and hampered economic growth. It would not have mattered if the whole thing sprang up on it's own. It still would have been fascist and still harmful.
I can see that at least this has gotten you to look up something about
fascism, so thats progress. Check out also: "The Road to Serfdom" by Hayek. He won a nobel prize in economics!
Zzzzzzzzzz . . .
Rick Barton:
You're hopeless. If you're not going to bother consulting the serious texts that are specifically about fascism I've cited -- while you continue to refer to texts that are in no way serious studies of the issue -- why bother even discussing this? Please feel free to keep swimming in your ignorance.
For what it's worth, I've been studying and writing about fascism for about 10 years now, and have been dealing with its real-life manifestations (aka the Aryan Nations) even longer.
Obviously, you think fascism is primarily an economic program. It is not, and never was. Its agenda is almost entirely sociopolitical.
David Neiwert,
You started out this dialog with insult and now, with out ever confronting my contentions, you end it with with insult. The thread is here for every one to read. At least, I hope, you know something more (a little) about fascism now then when we started. From your last sentence it's quite evident that you have a long way to go. You will have to get past your political blinders, I'm affraid, to understand the fascist nature of FDRs NRA. Of course you will have to actually read something about it first. You might try the Sutton volume. Just a hint...
David Neiwert,
You started out this dialog with insult and now, with out ever confronting my contentions, you end it with with insult.
How Rick Barton started out this dialog:
Ha! Roosevelt did every thing he could to put the economy under fascist control.
How David Neiwert started off his dialog to Rick:
Anyone accusing FDR of promoting fascism is parading their own manifest and profound ignorance. The man did more to combat fascism than any person in history.
Perhaps you mean to say "totalitarianism," of which fascism is but a species. The kind of totalitarianism to which you refer, however, is more commonly known as "communism."
Then, Rick accuses David of, "end[ing] it with with insult." I have to assume that would that be the part where David said, "You're hopeless."
Sorry Rick, that's not an insult, that's an exacerbation. This is an insult: You, sir, are a pea brained shithead who doesn't have the brains to understand that quoting verbatim from two of the three texts you've ever read doesn't make you smart. You use your smug condescension and verbose nomenclature to attempt to hide the fact that the only thing you're really capable of doing is mimicking intelligence. The light's on but there's nobody home. Million dollar arm, five cent brain. A bore, a blowhard and an ass pretending to talk like an adult and playing the besieged, wounded victim when called to account. A socialized sociopath. Just because it's an ad hominem doesn't mean you're not a moron.
See a difference?
David Neiwert,
After reading the thread over at Reason, I decided to jump over here and check this out.
"Most of the economic systems in fascist societies varied, but they all featured a close integration of corporate interests with state control. In essence, corporations controlled the government (what controls did exist were primarily for the benefit of the existing corporations), not the other way around -- as FDR's schema tended."
This appears to be a key fact in dispute, and I believe Rick Barton has it right. In fact, if you read the analysis of, say, G. William Domhoff, the pre-neocon Ronald Radosh, or Thomas Ferguson, you'll find that large, capital-intensive, export-oriented corporations were the main force behind the New Deal. It was Big Business acting through the State to cartelize the economy through regulations, and to socialize parts of the cost of reproducing labor-power.
And it's pretty obvious to me that Rick doesn't "really mean" Communism when he says fascism. The New Deal allowed the commanding heights of the corporate economy to extract monopoly profits from the State. Guaranteed profits for organized capital, I would think, is about as far from "communism" as you can get. Certainly not something that, say, Rosa Luxembourg could get behind.
And it's pretty obvious to me that Rick doesn't "really mean" Communism when he says fascism.
I think it's pretty obvious to me that Rick doesn't really know what he's talking about, but he sure talks as if he thinks he does.
Let's assume that, "large, capital-intensive, export-oriented corporations were the main force behind the New Deal. It was Big Business acting through the State to cartelize the economy through regulations, and to socialize parts of the cost of reproducing labor-power." Was it not also a large part of the New Deal to protect much of the working classes against runaway monopolies and unregulated cartels? Wasn't a large part of the New Deal also to provide certain social safety nets that the ruling corporations wouldn't be bothered with? Wasn't FDR also hounded and hated by the same groups that you use to paint this quasi-fascist picture with? These are all complicated systems with many overlapping characteristics. To use the term "fascism," a highly loaded word at that, this casually and against someone who was so far removed on the political spectrum from fascism as FDR immediately strained Rick's credibility (his insufferable attitude when corrected knocked off the rest). You, additionally, do your credibility no favors by selectively applying capitalistic elements of fascism, pasting them on FDR and saying, "Oh look, Rick was right." He wasn't and you're not, no matter how well you articulate your argument.
Thumb,
Rick Barton's allegation was that the New Deal was an initiative on behalf of big business. David Neiwert, in suggesting that Rick really meant communism, since big business was instigator rather than victim under fascism, struck down a straw man pro-big business interpretation of Rick's argument.
There is a major segment of libertarians who see the main function of State intervention as underwriting the operating costs of big business and subsidizing its accumulation, so there's no reason to doubt that Rick's aversion to big business domination of the government is sincere. People who believe, with Rand, that big business is an "oppressed minority," seldom quote Gabriel Kolko.
At the very least, I don't think the "insufferable attitude" was all on one side. Unfortunately, despite some areas of agreement and the potential for reducing or at least reducing the areas of disagreement, this argument quickly degenerated into a dick-waving contest.
Regarding your own comments on the New Deal:
"Business" was by no means a homogenous group. Attacks on the New Deal came disproportionately from the companies represented in the National Association of Manufacturers.
For capital-intensive manufacturers, in contrast, labor costs were a relatively small part of the total cost package; at the same time, as G. Kenneth Galbraith argued, the long-term nature of their production process required stability and predictability. Such firms were therefore willing to negotiate significantly higher wages in return for stability in the workplace and a free hand in managing production.
The "pro-labor" Wagner Act was the basis of just such a Taylorist/Fordist social contract. It brought the genuine rank and file revolution of the Detroit sitdowns and the West Coast longshoremen's strikes under the discipline of union bureaucrats, and enlisted the federal courts and union establishments in enforcing contracts and suppressing wildcat strikes.
"It's not by accident" that GE's Swope was one of the leading business supporters of FDR's labor agenda. The industrial unions, by providing a single bargaining agent per employer instead of a host of craft unions, served much the same interest of stability as the old company unions. It's also not by accident that the revival of wildcat strikes in the 1970s caused organized capital to reassess its strategic alliance with the labor establishment, and return to large-scale union busting.
The same goes for social welfare measures (see, for example, Piven and Cloward, "Regulating the Poor"). They externalized a major part of the cost of reproducing human capital (the unemployment risk portion of wages) on the State, helped to prop up aggregate demand, reduced the danger of homeless and starvation on a scale that might be politically destablizing, and brought easily radicalized elements under the supervision of an army of social workers. And all at taxpayer expense! Any
Any big business howling about this, I expect, is about as genuine as Brer Rabbit's pleas not to be thrown in the briar patch.
But even assuming that some of the complaints from the monopoly capital sector were genuine, does not detract from the New Deal's service to the corporate economy as a whole. The State serves as an executive committee on behalf of organized capital, even when it harms the interests (real or perceived) of some individual capitalists.
Those are valid arguments, and it would have been nice to have them introduced earlier in this thread for further discussion, but I still agree with David that Rick's use of "fascism" and his statement that, "Roosevelt did every thing he could to put the economy under fascist control" was at minimum sloppy and needlessly inflammatory. IMO he fully deserves the pummeling that followed.
Just as an afterthought: Rick's not the first person to use the term "fascism" in the sense of a corporatist economic system, stripped of the virulent ideological associations of blackshirtism. Bertram Gross' "Friendly Fascism" comes to mind. FWIW, in reading Rick's post, I took this as him meaning--verbal shorthand for the corporatist elements common to the New Deal and Germany, not for fascism as a programmatic ideology.
To put it mildly, he took as much smugness and condescension as he gave. From his initial response on, Mr. Neiwert's attitude seemed to be "Come back when you've read as many books as me, you little worm": i.e., a combination of semantic quibbling and a deliberate misunderstanding of anything Rick said except to interpret it in the most ignorant and unflattering light possible.
Kevin Carson,
It seems to me that both the following are true: State intervention underwrites the operating costs of big business and throttles it's competition. AND; Big business is an "oppressed minority" Both are true because, as you pointed out, big business is not a homogenous group. The key distinction here being that some big businesses are politically favored while others are not. An illustrative episode occurred in the 70's when Nixon ushered in the EPA. Exxon oil had been a prime mover behind the new Agency and the company had also been the number one funder of several prominent environmental groups. Why? The Company sought to limit domestic oil and gas production because it had most of it's holdings internationaly. Texaco, another giant oil concern, was on the opposite side of this fight as they had most of their holdings in the states. There were other huge oil companies on both sides in this episode.
To put it mildly, he took as much smugness and condescension as he gave.
But the problem is that he opened up this way. What did you expect the reaction would be?
Rick,
Good point. But I'd say that bigness on the scale of a Fortune 500 Company is mainly the result of past State intervention. Given the existence of a corporate economy created largely by the State, it is no less true that specific policies may benefit some corporations at the expense of others. Robbers often fall out among themselves.
Some government policies, like antitrust actions, are definitely harmful to specific interests. Antitrust certainly wasn't kind to Standard Oil or AT&T.
But such actions reflect the interests of the corporate economy as a whole. As Baran and Sweezy pointed out in "Monopoly Capitalism," it is in the interest of big business in general that no industry have profits too far above the average rate of profit (hence antitrust actions when centrally important industries in the areas of natural resources or infrastructure extract monopoly profits at the expense of other corporations), and that none have too low a rate of profit (hence subsidies to agribusiness). Antitrust actions play the same role in the U.S. that nationalization does in European-style mixed economies.
"But the problem is that he opened up this way" (with smugness and condescension)
Ok Thumb, I'll help you, now go back and carefully read... 
No really; read my first post, I didn't. Didn't show any respect for old FDR either but thats a different attitude then smugness and condescension.
"IMO he fully deserves the pummeling that followed."
I got pummeled?
I got pummeled?
So what was your word for it?
And if I had opened up on a board that I knew to be ROC with "Ha! Reagan did every thing he could to put the economy under fascist control," if that isn't smug and condescending then what is it? Hint, I wouldn't be complaining about other people's attitudes and reactions (insults!?!?) to me after opening like that.
"So what was your word for it?"
That assumes "it" happened.
So, You think my ripping into FDR on this board was inappropriate? What you are saying is that this venue made what I issued, smug and condescending. Double Ha (Also known as Ha Ha) Thumb, I hope you never become head of a PC police.
I rip into Bush all the time on more Republican oriented boards and still get civil (if heated) discourse.
If you think I should watch how I open
don't hold your breath.
So, You think my ripping into FDR on this board was inappropriate?
Ripping into FDR on this board was not inappropriate. Taking umbrage at the response you got was.
"Ripping into FDR on this board was not inappropriate"
and you said:
"And if I had opened up on a board that I knew to be ROC with "Ha!... if that isn't smug and condescending then what is it?"
There for: "smug and condescending" is
not inappropriate. QED
Didn't take offence. I just wanted to point out that part of the response was in the form of insult and not rebuttal to what I said.
No hard feelings Thumb.
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