“We need an enemy to give people hope. Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards: those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and the bastards always talk about the purity of the race. National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same. Hatred has to be cultivated as a civic passion. The enemy is the friend of the people. You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery. Hatred is the primordial passion. It is love that’s abnormal.”

Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist

Umberto Eco was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and commentator on political and social life. He is best known in English for his 1980 novel The Name of the Rose, which brought together historical mystery, semiotics, biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory. He later wrote Foucault's Pendulum, published in 1988, a novel that explores the history of occultism and how it is interpreted in the modern age. His work moves across scholarship and fiction, often linking ideas about signs, texts, history, and culture.