Vanguard News Network
VNN Media
VNN Digital Library
VNN Reader Mail
VNN Broadcasts

Old March 10th, 2014 #1
RickHolland
Bread and Circuses
 
RickHolland's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Jewed Faggot States of ApemuriKa
Posts: 6,666
Blog Entries: 1
Default What is Fascism?

In 1932 Mussolini declared that the 20th century would be the "Fascist century" by stating:

"If it is admitted that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth must also be the century of Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority, a century of the "Right," a Fascist century."


WHAT IS FASCISM:
IS THERE ANY FASCISM LEFT?


by
Paulo N. Correa, M.Sc., Ph.D. & Alexandra N. Correa, Hon. B.A.



TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What's in a word like 'fascism'?
2. The fasces as metaphor of society and the 'problem of war'
3. Fascism and the rise of populist Imperators
4. Fascism as utopia secreted by the Left: civil strife, popular revolutions
and the party-police apparatus
5. The fascist need for a mythical saviour
6. The corporativist veneer of fascism
7. The suicidary and genocidal sociopathic nature of fascism
8. Is the Left also fascist?
9. The final decomposition of the Left: from two to many
10. The controversy surrounding islamic fascism
11. The new European consent to islamic fascism
12. The victory of fascism: its molecularizing and its unconscious basis
13. Are there no more fascists left, or has everyone turned fascist?

http://www.aetherometry.com/Electron...-06_index.html


Fascism Part I: Understanding Fascism and anti-Semitism

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...ng_fascism.htm


Fascism Part II: The Rise of American Fascism


http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...an_fascism.htm
__________________
Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.
 
Old March 21st, 2014 #2
RickHolland
Bread and Circuses
 
RickHolland's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Jewed Faggot States of ApemuriKa
Posts: 6,666
Blog Entries: 1
Default

Though in academic discourse, we can surely find differences, in real terms, the political, economic and social systems of Mussolini’s Italy were virtually indistinguishable from those of Hitler’s Germany. However, it has been lodged that racialism was not a part of Mussolini’s Fascist doctrine. I would offer that this is false. That famed quote, often framed as a criticism of Hitler, which reads “national pride has no need for the delirium of race” is rarely presented in context. The full quote reads like this:


Race! It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today. [...] National pride has no need of the delirium of race. Only a revolution and a decisive leader can improve a race, even if this is more a sentiment than a reality. But I repeat that a race can change itself and improve itself. I say that it is possible to change not only the somatic lines, the height, but really also the character. Influence of moral pressure can act deterministically also in the biological sense. -Benito Mussolini, 1932


We see here that though Mussolini, at this point, clearly had a view of race which differed with that of Adolf Hitler, he did not deny its existence. Earlier in his life, Mussolini apparently held a view more similar to that of Hitler, having said the following on the topic:


The nation is not simply the sum of living individuals, nor the instrument of parties for their own ends, but an organism comprised of the infinite series of generations of which the individuals are only transient elements; it is the supreme synthesis of all the material and immaterial values of the race. -Benito Mussolini, 1921


We may also note that the NSDAP had a rather specific view of race, with various party members at times drawing rather strict lines between various members of the White race (something which I myself don’t tend to do). Though he certainly saw allies in the Arabs – just as Adolf Hitler did – Mussolini clearly made a point of drawing racial lines between the root races when he passed a series of laws regarding the administration of his African colonies. James Mayfield, Chairman of the European Heritage Library, in his essay Changing and dictated meanings of Italian identity under Mussolinian Fascism, offers the following on Mussolini’s race laws:

After the imposition of the race laws, the Fascist regime imposed stricter racial segregation in the colonies. In Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia […] the segregation was far more pervasive. Local administrators announced, “we must ban natives from any access to our cities unless we can force them to pass through a sort of station of human reclamation.” As part of Italians’ new racialized worldview, the Fascist state increasingly concluded that the very presence of non-Italian races on Italian national space was equated with being almost sacrilege. New administrative policies maintained through local Fascist governors and councils regulated marital and sexual congress, and those Italians engaging in interracial miscegenation were fined and/or arrested. Injunction No. 880 imposed sentences of one to five years in prison for race mixing. Mussolini even personally banned an increasingly popular novel that depicted a beneficent Italian colonist civilizing and eventually falling in love with a tribal Amhara from Ethiopia.

It appears that Mussolini drew a line with the Africans, who he viewed, generally, as too different to be capable of full integration into Italian society. His desire to maintain a degree of racial purity among Italians is also evidenced here in no uncertain terms. That said, he did allow those Africans who he viewed as having adapted to his people’s culture rights within his mother country as well as military rank, but so did Hitler.
Italian racialist and antisemite Baron Julius Evola was fully endorsed by Mussolini.

Italian racialist and antisemite Baron Julius Evola was fully endorsed by Mussolini.

Ultimately, whatever Mussolini’s views might have been – they clearly did not remain static – the idea that Nation can be separated from Race is completely nonsensical. Genius as Mussolini was, it is likely that he didn’t fully grasp the concept of racial differences until he was faced with the situation in Africa, given that Italy at the time was at least semi-homogenous, racially, and whatever small portion of non-Whites were there would have integrated into the culture, as tends to happen when numbers are small.

http://www.totalfascism.com/regardin...nal-socialism/





Though Italian Fascism was less outspokenly racial in orientation than German National Socialism, race was indeed an important aspect of the former doctrine.

The following is a collection of quotes by the great Benito Mussolini addressing the topic of race.

***

“Well we, Fascisti, want to bring into every city, into every part of the country, even the most remote, the pride and passion of belonging to the most noble Italian race; the race which has produced Dante, which has given Galileo, the greatest masterpieces of art, Verdi, Mazzini, Garibaldi and d’Annunzio to the world, and which has produced the people who won Vittorio Veneto.”

-Speech in Ferrara, April 4, 1920

“Italy had twenty-seven million inhabitants in 1870, she has now fifty million; forty million of whom live in the Peninsula, and represent the most homogeneous block in Europe, because, compared with Bohemia, for instance, where five millions of the Czecho race govern seven millions of other races, Italy has only 180,000 German subjects on the Upper Adige and 360,000 Slavs, all the rest forming one compact whole.”

-Speech in Trieste, September 20, 1920

“In the first place she (the Italian nation) has a sure foundation, and that is the vitality of our race.”

-Speech in Trieste, September 20, 1920

“I have an unbounded faith in the future greatness of the Italian people. Ours is, among the European peoples, the largest and most homogeneous. … Unlike the pessimists who believe that everything is great in other people’s houses, while everything is too small in their own, we have pride in our race and our history.”

-Speech in Trieste, February 6, 1921

“How then was this Fascismo born… it was born of the profound and perennial need of this our Mediterranean and Aryan race…”

-Speech in Bologna, April 3, 1921

“…we feel those bonds of race to be alive and vital which bind us, not only to the Italians of Zara, Ragusa and Cattaro, but also to those of the Canton Ticino and Corsica, to those beyond the oceans, to all that great family of fifty million men whom we wish to unite in the same pride of race.”

-Speech in Bologna, April 3, 1921

“Italy is not a State, she is a nation, because from the Alps to Sicily there is the fundamental unity of our race, our customs, our language and our religion.”

-Speech in Milan, October 4, 1922

“It must not be forgotten that, besides the minority that represent actual militant politics, there are forty millions of excellent Italians who work, by their splendid birth-rate perpetuate our race…”

-Speech Delivered in the Chamber, November 16, 1922

“We, here and everywhere, are ready for any battle so that we may uphold the foundations of our race and of our history.”

-Speech in London, December 12, 1922

“Let me first of all say how happy I am that we should have met in these magnificent rooms which furnish evidence of the strength and beauty of our race.”

-Speech in Rome, January 2, 1923

“It is obvious that the problem of Italian expansion in the world is a problem of life or death for the Italian race.”


-Speech in Milan, March 30, 1923

“I have looked you well in the face, I have recognized that you are superb shoots of this Italian race which was great when other people were not born, of this Italian race which three times gave our civilization to the barbarian world, of this Italian race which we wish to mold by all the struggles necessary for discipline, for work, for faith.”

-Speech in Sassari, June 10, 1923

“…Fascism, representing an irresistible movement for the regeneration of the race, was bound to carry with it this island where the Italian race is manifested so superbly.”


-Speech in Cagliari, June 12, 1923

“Rome is always, as it will be tomorrow and in the centuries to come, the living heart of our race!”


-Speech in Rome, June 25, 1923

“It is therefore necessary to take great care of the future of the race, starting with measures to look after the health of mothers and infants.”

-Speech of the Ascension, May 26, 1927

“I thought that he (Franz Ferdinand) always underestimated our race. He was not able to sense the heart throbs of the people of Italian blood still under his flag. He could not weigh the power of race consciousness. He was cherishing the dream of a monarchy melting three races together. Races, I know, are difficult to melt.”

-Autobiography, 1928

“The entire white race, the Western race, can become submerged by other races of colour that multiply with a rhythm unknown to our own. Blacks and yellows are thus at the door? Yes, they are at the door, and not only because of their fecundity but also because of their race consciousness and their future in the world.”

-Preface to Decline of Births: Death of Peoples by Richard Korherr, 1928

“Peace with honor and justice is a Pax Romana…a peace in conformity with the character and temperament of our Latin and Mediterranean race which I wish to exalt before you because it is the race which has given to the world, among thousands of others, Caesar, Dante, Michelangelo, and Napoleon; a race of creators and constructors, ancient and strong, determined and universal, which has given the keynote to the world three times in the course of the centuries.”

-Speech in Florence, October 23, 1933

“This is why the racial laws of the empire will be rigorously observed and that all who sin against them will be expelled, punished, imprisoned. Because for the empire to be preserved the natives must be clearly and forcefully aware of our superiority.”

-Speech in Rome, October 25, 1938

“Our rural policy follows this course…to preserve and pass on the intrinsic virtues of the Italian race…”

-Speech at the Argentina Theatre in Rome, January 22, 1939

“Our capacity to recuperate in moral and material fields is really formidable and constitutes one of the peculiar characteristics of our race.”

-Speech to the Blackshirts of Rome, February 23, 1941

http://www.totalfascism.com/mussolini-on-race/
__________________
Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.
 
Old March 21st, 2014 #3
RickHolland
Bread and Circuses
 
RickHolland's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Jewed Faggot States of ApemuriKa
Posts: 6,666
Blog Entries: 1
Default

“The fight which Fascist Italy waged against Jewry’s three principal weapons, the profound reasons for which may not have been consciously understood (though I do not believe this myself) furnishes the best proof that the poison fangs of that Power which transcends all State boundaries are being drawn, even though in an indirect way.

The prohibition of Freemasonry and secret societies, the suppression of the supemational Press and the definite abolition of Marxism, together with the steadily increasing consolidation of the Fascist concept of the State – all this will enable the Italian Government, in the course of some years, to advance more and more the interests of the Italian people without paying any attention to the hissing of the Jewish world-hydra.”


Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf (Murphy translation)



Adolf Hitler, the great statesman and liberator of Germany from the chokehold of International Jewry, stated in his book Mein Kampf:

“At that time - I admit it openly - I conceived a profound admiration for the great man beyond the Alps, whose ardent love for his people inspired him not to bargain with Italy’s internal enemies but to use all possible ways and means in an effort to wipe them out. What places Mussolini in the ranks of the world’s great men is his decision not to share Italy with the Marxists but to redeem his country from Marxism by destroying internationalism.

What miserable pigmies our sham statesmen in Germany appear by comparison with him. And how nauseating it is to witness the conceit and effrontery of these nonentities in criticizing a man who is a thousand times greater than them. And how painful it is to think that this takes place in a country which could point to a Bismarck as its leader as recently as fifty years ago.”








"It was also in Berlin and at about the same time, that I heard the news of the huge Fascist eruption: the march on Rome and Mussolini’s victory. I rejoiced as much as if it were my own country’s victory. There is, among all those in various parts of the world who serve their people, a kinship of sympathy, as there is such a kinship among those who labor for the destruction of peoples.

Mussolini, the brave man who trampled the dragon underfoot, was one of us, that is why all dragon heads hurled themselves upon him, swearing death to him. For us, the others, he will be a bright North Star giving us hope; he will be living proof that the hydra can be defeated; proof of the possibilities of victory. “But Mussolini is not anti-Semitic. You rejoice in vain,” whispered the Jewish press into our ears. It is not a matter of what we rejoice in say I, it is a question of why you Jews are sad at his victory, if he is not anti-Semitic.

What is the rationale of the worldwide attack on him by the Jewish press? Italy has as many Jews as Romania has Ciangai [a quite minor ethnic group] in the Siret valley. An Italian anti-Semitic movement would be as if Romanians started a movement against the Ciangai. But had Mussolini lived in Romania he could not but be anti-Semitic, for Fascism means first of all defending your nation against the dangers that threaten it. it means the destruction of these dangers and the opening of a free way to life and glory for your nation.

In Romania, Fascism could only mean the elimination of the dangers threatening the Romanian people, namely, the removal of the Jewish threat and the opening of a free way to the life and glory to which Romanians are entitled to aspire. Judaism has become master of the world through Masonry, and in Russia through Communism. Mussolini destroyed at home these two Judaic heads which threatened death to Italy: Communism and Masonry.

There, judaism was eradicated through its two manifestations. In our country, it will have to be eradicated through what it has there: Jews, communists and masons. These are the thoughts that we, Romanian youth in general, oppose to Judaic endeavors to deprive us of joy in Mussolini’s victory."


Read the most important book of your life: Corneliu Zelea Codreanu – For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936)


__________________
Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.

Last edited by RickHolland; March 21st, 2014 at 08:22 AM.
 
Old March 21st, 2014 #4
RickHolland
Bread and Circuses
 
RickHolland's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Jewed Faggot States of ApemuriKa
Posts: 6,666
Blog Entries: 1
Default

Mussolini on the Jewish Role in Communism

Quote:
[Translator's Note: I was unable to translate this entire article because it is long, but here are the best parts of an early and very important article by Benito Mussolini titled 'The Accomplices', published in Il Popolo d'Italia on June 4, 1919. In the article the soon-to-be Duce speaks of how Leninist Communism is a negation of true socialism, and also discusses the role of western Jews in the Russian Revolution. The article was very significant for its time, as very few people had the insight and courage to address these issues in western Europe at that date. To put things in perspective, The Protocols of Zion were not published in English, German, or French until 1920, a year after this article was published.

The Duce also makes two correct prophecies in this article; first when he speaks of Jews making use of Communism only to prepare the way for capitalism; and second when he speaks of Communism coming to an end whenever the Jews decide to end it, as they are the ones who fund and control it. This is precisely what happened 25 years ago when, one by one, each Communist country in Europe suddenly collapsed (as if by design) and anti-communist forces 'miraculously' managed to take control, paving the way for new democracy and international capitalism.]
http://www.dailystormer.com/mussolin...-in-communism/


The Accomplices

By Benito Mussolini

The developed and conscious proletariat is shouting “Long live Lenin!“, thinking that they are shouting “Long live socialism!“. They do not realize that they are actually crying “Down with socialism!“. The false shepherds are deceiving the masses, who are ready to swear by and die for the new and distant ideals, believing that what has been established in Russia is socialism. This is a colossal lie! The government which has been established in Russia is only a fraction of the socialist party. The proletariat in Russia is labouring just as before, and they are being exploited just as before… We understand perfectly well that some writers coming from bourgeois circles have sympathy for Communism. In Russia there is a State, a Government, an order, a bureaucracy, a police force, militarism, and hierarchies. But socialism is not to be found. There is not even the beginnings of socialism; there is nothing resembling a socialist regime. Leninism is the perfect negation of socialism. It is the government of a new caste of politicians. That is why it is very difficult to find apologists of Leninism among the talking heads of Russian and Western socialism. The most violent reactions against Leninism did not come from the bourgeois, but from the very men who fought and suffered for the redemption of the working masses. These men are Plekhanov, the master of the Russian Marxists, and Kropotkin, the apostle of anarchy.
[...]

We reaffirm that Leninism has nothing to do with socialism, yet the official Italian socialists, with threatening shouts, are calling for aid to save Russia. But Russia does not need to be saved, because it is no danger whatsoever.
[...]

If Petrograd (St. Petersburg) does not fall, if Denikin marks time, it is because the great Jewish bankers of London and New York so desire, linked up as they are by racial ties with the Jews who, in Moscow as in Budapest are taking revenge on the Aryan race which has condemned them to dispersion for so many centuries. In Russia 80% of the Soviet leaders are Jews. In Budapest 17 out of the 22 people’s commissars are Jews. Might it not be that Bolshevism is the vendetta of Judaism against Christianity? It is a subject certainly worth pondering. It is entirely possible that Bolshevism will drown in the blood of a pogrom of catastrophic proportions. World finance is in the hands of the Jews. Whoever possesses the nations vaults controls their politics. Behind the puppets of Paris stand the Rothschilds, the Warburgs, the Schiffs, the Guggenheims, who are of the same blood as the masters of St. Petersburg and Budapest. Race does not betray race. Bolshevism is defended by international plutocracy. That is the essential truth. International plutocracy, dominated and controlled by the Jews, has a supreme interest in hastening all of Russian life through its process of molecular disintegration to the point of paroxysm. A paralyzed Russia, disorganized and hungry, will tomorrow be the place where the bourgeoisie—yes the bourgeoisie, my dear proletarians—will celebrate its spectacular abundance. The kings of gold believe that Bolshevism must live now, to better prepare the ground for the new business of capitalism. American capitalism has already obtained a great “concession” in Russia. But there are still mines, springs, land, workshops, which are waiting to be exploited by international capitalism.
[...]

The fate of Leninism does not depend on the proletariat of Russia or of France, much less that of Italy. Leninism will live for as long as the kings of finance so desire; it will die when the same kings of finance decide to kill it. The anti-Bolshevik armies, which from time to time are affected by a mysterious paralysis, will become simply overwhelming at a given time which will be chosen by the kings of finance. The Jews of the Soviets precede the Jews of the banks. The fate of St. Petersburg is not determined on the icy steppes of Finland, but in the banks of London, New York, and Tokyo.

To state that the international bourgeoisie now wants to destroy the Soviet Regime is to state a gross lie. If, tomorrow, the plutocratic bourgeoisie decides to destroy it, they will have no difficulty whatsoever because their “accomplices”, the Leninists, already sit and work for them in the Kremlin.
__________________
Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.
 
Old March 21st, 2014 #5
RickHolland
Bread and Circuses
 
RickHolland's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Jewed Faggot States of ApemuriKa
Posts: 6,666
Blog Entries: 1
Default




If I advance, follow me;
if I retreat, kill me;
if I die, avenge me!
It is better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep!

– Benito Mussolini


1. Like every sound political conception, Fascism is both practice and thought; action in which a doctrine is immanent, and a doctrine which, arising out of a given system of historical forces, remains embedded in them and works there from within. Hence it has a form correlative to the contingencies of place and time, but it has also a content of thought which raises it to a formula of truth in the higher level of the history of thought. In the world one does not act spiritually as a human will dominating other wills without a conception of the transient and particular reality under which it is necessary to act, and of the permanent and universal reality in which the first has its being and its life. In order to know men it is necessary to know man; and in order to know man it is necessary to know reality and its laws. There is no concept of the State which is not fundamentally a concept of life: philosophy or intuition, a system of ideas which develops logically or is gathered up into a vision or into a faith, but which is always, at least virtually, an organic conception of the world.

2. Thus Fascism could not be understood in many of its practical manifestations as a party organization, as a system of education, as a discipline, if it were not always looked at in the light of its whole way of conceiving in a spiritual way. The world seen through Fascism is not this material world which appears on the surface, in which man is an individual separated from all others and standing by himself, and in which he is governed by a natural law that makes him instinctively live a life of selfish and momentary pleasure. The man of Fascism is an individual who is nation and fatherland, which is a moral law, binding together individuals and the generations into a tradition and a mission, suppressing the instinct for a life enclosed within the brief round of pleasure in order to restore within duty a higher life free from the limits of time and space: a life in which the individual, through the denial of himself, through the sacrifice of his own private interests, through death itself, realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies.

3. Therefore it is a spiritual conception, itself the result of the general reaction of modern times against the flabby materialistic positivism of the nineteenth century. Anti-positivistic, but positive: not skeptical, nor agnostic, nor pessimistic, nor passively optimistic, as are, in general, the doctrines (all negative) that put the center of life outside man, who with his free will can and must create his own world. Fascism desires an active man, one engaged in activity with all his energies: it desires a man virilely conscious of the difficulties that exist in action and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle, considering that it behooves man to conquer for himself that life truly worthy of him, creating first of all in himself the instrument (physical, moral, intellectual) in order to construct it. Thus for the single individual, thus for the nation, thus for humanity. Hence the high value of culture in all its forms (art, religion, science), and the enormous importance of education. Hence also the essential value of work with which man conquers nature and creates the human world (economic, political, moral, intellectual).

4. This — positive conception of life is clearly an ethical conception. It covers the whole of reality, not merely the human activity which controls it. No action can be divorced from moral judgment; there is nothing in the world which can be deprived of the value which belongs to everything in its relation to moral ends. Life, therefore, as conceived by the Fascist, is serious, austere, religious: the whole of it is poised in a world supported by the moral and responsible forces of the spirit. The Fascist disdains the “comfortable” life.

5. Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his immanent relationship with a superior law and with an objective Will that transcends the particular individual and raises him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. Whoever has seen in the religious politics of the Fascist regime nothing but mere opportunism has not understood that Fascism besides being a system of government is also, and above all, a system of thought.

6. Fascism is an historical conception, in which man is what he is only in so far as he works with the spiritual process in which he finds himself, in the family or social group, in the nation and in the history in which all nations collaborate. From this follows the great value of tradition, in memories, in language, in customs, in the standards of social life. Outside history man is nothing. Consequently Fascism is opposed to all the individualistic abstractions of a materialistic nature like those of the eighteenth century; and it is opposed to all Jacobin utopias and innovations. It does not consider that “happiness” is possible upon earth, as it appeared to be in the desire of the economic literature of the eighteenth century, and hence it rejects all teleological theories according to which mankind would reach a definitive stabilized condition at a certain period in history. This implies putting oneself outside history and life, which is a continual change and coming to be. Politically, Fascism wishes to be a realistic doctrine; practically, it aspires to solve only the problems which arise historically of themselves and that of themselves find or suggest their own solution. To act among men, as to act in the natural world, it is necessary to enter into the process of reality and to master the already operating forces.

7. Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State, which is the conscience and universal will of man in his historical existence. It is opposed to classical Liberalism, which arose from the necessity of reacting against absolutism, and which brought its historical purpose to an end when the State was transformed into the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual. And if liberty is to be the attribute of the real man, and not of that abstract puppet envisaged by individualistic Liberalism, Fascism is for liberty. And for the only liberty which can be a real thing, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State. Therefore, for the Fascist, everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State. In this sense Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State, the synthesis and unity of all values, interprets, develops and gives strength to the whole life of the people.

8. Outside the State there can be neither individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, syndicates, classes). Therefore Fascism is opposed to Socialism, which confines the movement of history within the class struggle and ignores the unity of classes established in one economic and moral reality in the State; and analogously it is opposed to class syndicalism. Fascism recognizes the real exigencies for which the socialist and syndicalist movement arose, but while recognizing them wishes to bring them under the control of the State and give them a purpose within the corporate system of interests reconciled within the unity of the State.

9. Individuals form classes according to the similarity of their interests, they form syndicates according to differentiated economic activities within these interests; but they form first, and above all, the State, which is not to be thought of numerically as the sum-total of individuals forming the majority of a nation. And consequently Fascism is opposed to Democracy, which equates the nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of that majority; nevertheless it is the purest form of democracy if the nation is conceived, as it should be, qualitatively and not quantitatively, as the most powerful idea (most powerful because most moral, most coherent, most true) which acts within the nation as the conscience and the will of a few, even of One, which ideal tends to become active within the conscience and the will of all; that is to say, of all those who rightly constitute a nation by reason of nature, history or race, and have set out upon the same line of development and spiritual formation as one conscience and one sole will. Not a race, nor a geographically determined region, but as a community historically perpetuating itself, a multitude unified by a single idea, which is the will to existence and to power: consciousness of itself, personality.

10. This higher personality is truly the nation in so far as it is the State. It is not the nation that generates the State, as according to the old naturalistic concept which served as the basis of the political theories of the national States of the nineteenth century. Rather the nation is created by the State, which gives to the people, conscious of its own moral unity, a will and therefore an effective existence. The right of a nation to independence derives not from a literary and ideal consciousness of its own being, still less from a more or less unconscious and inert acceptance of a de facto situation, but from an active consciousness, from a political will in action and ready to demonstrate its own rights: that is to say, from a state already coming into being. The State, in fact, as the universal ethical will, is the creator of right.

11. The nation as the State is an ethical reality which exists and lives in so far as it develops. To arrest its development is to kill it. Therefore the State is not only the authority which governs and gives the form of laws and the value of spiritual life to the wills of individuals, but it is also a power that makes its will felt abroad, making it known and respected; in other words, demonstrating the fact of its universality in all the necessary directions of its development. It is consequently organization and expansion, at least virtually. Thus it can be likened to the human will which knows no limits to its development and realizes itself in testing its own limitlessness.

12. The Fascist State, the highest and most powerful form of personality, is a force, but a spiritual force, which takes over all the forms of the moral and intellectual life of man. It cannot therefore confine itself simply to the functions of order and supervision as Liberalism desired. It is not simply a mechanism which limits the sphere of the supposed liberties of the individual. It is the form, the inner standard and the discipline of the whole person; it saturates the will as well as the intelligence. Its principle, the central inspiration of the human personality living in the civil community, pierces into the depths and makes its home in the heart of the man of action as well as of the thinker, of the artist as well as of the scientist: it is the soul of the soul.

13. Fascism, in short, is not only the giver of laws and the founder of institutions, but the educator and promoter of spiritual life. It wants to remake, not the forms of human life, but its content, man, character, faith. And to this end it requires discipline and authority that can enter into the spirits of men and there govern unopposed. Its sign, therefore, is the Lectors’ rods, the symbol of unity, of strength and justice.

http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html
__________________
Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.
 
Old March 24th, 2014 #6
RickHolland
Bread and Circuses
 
RickHolland's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Jewed Faggot States of ApemuriKa
Posts: 6,666
Blog Entries: 1
Default

__________________
Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.
 
Old March 30th, 2014 #7
RickHolland
Bread and Circuses
 
RickHolland's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Jewed Faggot States of ApemuriKa
Posts: 6,666
Blog Entries: 1
Default

Italian Fascism: An Interpretation

By James B. Whisker

Quote:
When the Grand Council of Fascism on July 25, 1943, removed Benito Mussolini from his position as head of government, fascism ended in Italy. Its ending was as surprising as its beginning, when, on October 28, 1922, some 300,000 Blackshirts under Mussolini's command seized the Italian state. The events between those dates can be chronicled. The explanation of what had transpired is much more elusive. Fascism was touted by Mussolini as a unique combination of thought and action, yet fascism was still seeking an ideology after the Second World War was over.

The roots of fascism are many and complex.[1] The fascist leadership, notably Mussolini, admitted the multi-faceted influences of liberalism, marxism, syndicalism, risorgimento, socialism, catholicism and nationalism on their ideology.[2] Their speeches and writings were replete with quotations from Schopenhauer, Hegel,[3] Sorel, Saint-Simon, Pareto, Mosca, Mazzini and a hundred other writers. They admitted fascism was a unique blending of all of these and much more, yet they were never able to wholly explain it to their own satisfactions.

Italian fascism was the first application of what would become a generic ideology encompassing, or allegedly encompassing, movements of the political right in every nation of Western Europe, the United States, the British Commonwealth nations and even Japan.[4] It was believed by Italian leaders to be highly exportable, yet it carried strong Italian nationalistic overtones. It was essentially non-racist, yet in Italy it preached the gospel of the coming Italian race of "overmen."

Italian fascism had at least four principal phases. Until 1925, it was political action seeking an ideology. Mussolini had himself been variously a socialist, a pacifist, an internationalist, a war hawk, an anarchist, a statist, and, most of all, a pragmatist.[5] When he sought an ideology he found none to satisfy him. When he came to power after the 1922 March on Rome he found himself in charge of the state but without a guiding and inspirational system of thought. The first phase lasted until the first fascist state was founded in 1925.

From 1925 until 1938 the first fascist state operated. Its primary theoretician was Alfredo Rocco.[6] As he conceived it, the state was to be a strong, modern nation-state, accepting both the ideas of capitalism in the socio-economic sphere and a syndicalist state which brought about a forced union of labor and capital. Rocco encouraged the tendency of the fascist-sponsored capitalism to form monopolies and cartels because he believed that this increased productivity and thus encouraged the growth of state powers. The new elites of modern society -- labor unions, industrialists, party bureaucracy and civil servants -- were to be placed under the authoritarian control of the state. Indeed, the state became the single value to which all other values, including the fascist party itself, were to be subordinated.

Rocco conceived of creating direct channels of communication between the masses and the party hierarchy. He demanded that a hierarchical arrangement of capitalism be created, one in which the masses would be supportive of the regime because the regime would guarantee them full employment and higher wages. The party would provide the mechanism for mass communication with the leaders of the state. The combination of workers, industrialists and the omnipresent party representatives would ensure full and peaceful cooperation which would benefit all while strengthening the power of the Italian state.

In this second period of fascism, the Italian electorate still played a major role. The 400 candidates for the legislature had to be approved by the voters. The workers played a larger role in the selection of their representatives and the people at large had some role in the nomination of the 400 candidates for the legislature.[7]

In the third phase of fascism, Mussolini had come under the spell of Adolf Hitler and his national socialist state. He was increasingly influenced by the anti-Semitic wing of the fascist party led by Farinacci and Preziosi. From 1938 until he was relieved of command by the Grand Fascist Council in 1943 Mussolini became the victim of his own propaganda efforts. He dreamed of wars of conquest, wars that were far and away beyond the industrial capacity of the state to sustain. He involved the state in wars of colonial conquest, perhaps the last of the great imperialistic wars of Europe.[8]

In 1938 a change was made in the Italian government which separated the people from the decision-making process entirely. The list of parliamentary candidates was no longer offered to the masses for their approval. Mussolini merely emulated Hitler by creating the totalitarian state while removing basic democracy.[9]

During the final years of the second phase of fascism[10] Alfredo Rocco had fallen into disfavor as had the quadrumvir Balbo,[11] the party leader Starace, the syndicalist thinker Rossoni and former party secretary Giuriati. Mario Palmieri[12] had a brief career as party theoretician and Mussolini[13] had attempted himself to create a theory of fascism. Generally, the third period of fascism had produced neither the prescriptions for an ideology Rocco had offered earlier nor the descriptions of fascist procedures that marked the attempts to explain fascist doctrine in the later stages of the second fascist period.

After Mussolini's fall from power and his heroic rescue by German paratroopers, a proto-fascist state with Mussolini nominally at its head was created under the watchful protection of nazi troops. Precious little time remained to develop a theory. Mussolini was wholly preoccupied with staying alive and with dealing with his protectors. Valuable time was spent in dealing with the traitors within the party who had fired the Duce in 1943. A show trial and subsequent executions of these traitors took place. Mussolini's son-in-law Count Ciano was among those executed.

Giovanni Gentile had been among those competing with Rocco for Mussolini's favor in earlier periods of fascism. He had held positions of minor consequence in the fascist state, culminating in his ministership of education. Now, with the Italian fascist state crumbling around him, and without a direct charge from Mussolini, Gentile created the last Italian fascist theory.[14] Properly enough, it was more philosophical than the earlier attempts at creating an ideology were.

Gentile's theory had its descriptive moments, but, in the large, he offered a wholly philosophical oversight into pure fascism. It had little in the way of a call to arms. It was not the usual post facto justification for what had transpired. It was a highly exportable theory of the state set against a fascist state background.

Each man is unique because of his own individual experiences. He forms other associations which become unique because of the collective group experiences; these group experiences, in turn, bear on the individual. The highest association an individual can form is with all his fellows in the state mechanism. The state is the ultimate association and it has its own collective experiences which mark it different from all other states which have existed, do exist or can exist. The state, like all other human associations, profits from both its own collective experiences as a state and the individual experiences of its component parts, that is, both the individuals and the subservient associations which are merged into the organic state. The state, the individual and all human associations thus have life, conscience, and will to achieve. The uniqueness of the state experiences then bend back upon each and every citizen who fully cooperates within the state to enrich these lives and add to their individual memories and experiences.

The state is thus given a real, organic life. It is necessarily supreme. All that is, within the state, is brought to fulfillment in the state. Nothing that is, within the state, can be permitted to exist beyond the reaches of the state. Nothing that is, within the state, can be permitted to go against the state. The state is the culmination of all human endeavors. It is the final resting place of all that man has created. The state knows, sees, participates in, profits by all that man does. Man is because the state is. Man lives because he has the state wherein to live. Without the state man is nothing, can become nothing.

It is thus the natural destiny of man to be linked with the state. The corporate state gives man the schema wherewith to associate himself with other men. The corporate state provides the forum for discussion of problems. It is the conduit with which man communicates with the natural leaders of the state. It is also the pipeline which the state uses in communicating with individual men or corporations or groups of men who are employed in industries. Without the corporate framework man could not associate with the state. He would be separated from the state and from his fellow men. He would be isolated and devoured by the nameless and uncontrolled masses who would be without form, substance or discipline.

By the time Gentile had completed his Genesis and Structure of Society, fascism was dead as an ideology. The proto-fascist states such as Spain, Argentina and Portugal were, at best, minimally interested in having a philosophy of fascism articulated for the use of the leaders. The final stage of fascism is, thus, largely an artificial construct of political scientists and historians. Mussolini apparently was even unaware of Gentile's work and Gentile could hardly have been expected to have been especially interested in the German occupation government nominally headed by Mussolini.

Fascism operated as a reasonably efficient statist system with admitted strong totalitarian overtones until it became interested in wars of colonial conquest. It had come to power because of the decaying social, economic and political conditions of post-World War I Italy. It had brought order out of chaos. Indeed, order was its strong selling point when, after a series of crippling strikes sponsored by the socialists, it had managed when the liberal democratic state could not manage. Fascism bragged of its accomplishments in areas such as making trains run on time and draining swamps. With agencies not unlike those found in the American New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, it tried to use state power to combat the economic catastrophes of the great depression.[15]

The great irony of fascism is that it taught that the highest form of the state is found in the nation at war. No matter how great the state may be in normal times it takes on even greater dimensions, greater self-fulfillment, greater attributes as a result of a national war. Of these national wars, the most significant in the life of the nation was the war of imperialistic conquest. A state for fascism grows or it dies. A vibrant and dynamic state is constantly seeking new areas of conquest. It seeks to grow at the expense of those states which are dying, hence contracting, and it grows at the expense of those states which have never matured and become great nations. Wars are the duty of the truly modern, organic state.[16]

Where fascism had grown, even flourished, in peacetime, it faltered in war. While it is true that the Italian state had grave problems in trying to support the war machinery when engaged against the Western Allies, it is equally true that Italy had grave problems even against backward, non-industrial powers before the beginnings of the Second World War. Only with the greatest difficulties had Italy defeated Ethiopia and Albania. Its ill-fated expeditions against Greece were saved from defeat only by the ultimate, but reluctant, involvement of the German war machine. Of course, later, Hitler was pulled into North Africa in an attempt to aid the failing Italian armies of his ally, Mussolini.

The interest of Mussolini in re-establishing the Roman Empire, or at least a portion of it, illustrates the point made above that, after a decade and a half of propaganda directed at the masses, Mussolini and much of his sub-leaders had become themselves victims of fascist propaganda. Had he not sought colonial expansion, Mussolini might have ruled indefinitely. European leaders made little attempt to discredit Italian fascism. As late as the mid-1930s, most European leaders seemed to have supported the fascist state as merely an expression of rightist political reaction to socialism and bolshevism. The Communist International did not really begin to see fascism as a competing ideology until its Sixth Congress in 1928.[17] Still, it was to the Comintern mostly a reactionary state which defended big business while offering nationalistic slogans to the workers. When it failed to control the workers by propaganda it was, as a typical reactionary capitalist political form, willing to use force, murder, terrorism and coercion to work its will.

Fascism shared with bolshevism a common Marxian heritage.[18] Both were formally rooted in socialist tradition, both scientific and utopian.[19] Several modern analysts have suggested that Mussolini was at heart a Marxist. It was largely an academic dispute on how Marx was to be read and interpreted that kept Marxists and fascists apart ideologically. It was a question of whose Marxism one accepted as true belief that separated fascism from bolshevism. Fascism accepted, in the large, the unorthodox renderings of Marxism as transmuted by Georges Sorel whereas Lenin accepted his own and other Russian interpretations of Marxism.

Sorel[20] added to Marxism a belief in myth. Social phenomena were to be studied through an image of irrational force, and not pragmatically as Marx had stated. Sorel had found Marx to be impractical in terms of solving the problems of the workers. Rather than concluding that a broad and sweeping revolution to destroy the old capitalist state and create a new communist state was necessary. Sorel concluded that rational and planned activity was useless in the face of irrational nature. He had fathomed natural and irrational forces that could be understood and assailed only by mythical means. The dissatisfaction of the proletariat was essentially irrational and emotional. The solution to the problems had then to be irrational and mythical, harnessing irrational and mythical nature. Once fathomed by the working class, or at least by their leaders, this irrational nature could unleash such mythical forces as the world had never seen before. The emotional needs and drive of the workers could only be directed by myth.

For Sorel the force which accompanies a drive by a people is always and necessarily accompanied by violence. Irrational power, the consequence of working with irrational nature, is especially violent. One then must accept violence as a fact of life, a necessary condition of mankind moving and changing and achieving. It is in effect the price one must pay for progress. But unless the violence is understood it can be as destructive to the mover as to the intended object of the violence.

Marx had offered rational explanations for reality as Sorel saw it. But rational explanations imply the existence of rational problems. Indeed, the problems of the proletariat were natural, hence, for Sorel, irrational, hence, mythical. Thus Marxism had failed and would continue to fail as an explanation of reality because it sought only rational reasons, rational means and rational explanations. Sorel's philosophy was essentially a philosophy of myth, irrational and natural. It would succeed because it was irrational and offered man a belief and not a logic.

Political solutions, in the normal sense of politics, were worse than useless; they were misleading. Offer instead, Sorel taught, new beliefs, new myths to men. Ask them to believe, not to reason and the solution to the proletarian dilemmas were at hand.[21]

The proletarian problem was, first, a professional, not a political, problem. The frustrations of the proletariat were professional in nature. Professional problems implied professional remedies, including strikes and trade unionism. Action must be violent professional activity to be most effective. One must have or develop faith in the natural, irrational but professional capabilities of the proletarian class. One must follow the basic worker impulses to action. These impulses will be mythical visions of the better world, but not blueprints designed to lay out in specific terms the design of the new city. The road to the new city would clearly be dotted with incidents of physical violence. One must be prepared for such violence or its occurrences will shock and delay.

As with every problem there is a solution. Cooperation within a state sponsored framework will provide an answer. This came about through an unusual, Italian conception of Hegel's dialectic.[22] In the writings of Italian Hegelians, the conflicting and mutually exclusive thesis and anti-thesis do not disappear completely as they do in Hegel's pure dialectic. Rather, in the synthesis, formed by the clash of thesis with antithesis, the individual elements of both thesis and antithesis are still evident. While the synthesis may indeed be a higher and better idea than its progenitors, the thesis and the antithesis, it still shows separately each of its sires. Thus, in Italian Hegelian philosophy it is possible to see labor and management, that is, proletariat and bourgeoisie, existing together, although diametrically opposed to one another, in the synthesis.[23]

The practical application of this doctrine is seen in syndicalism.[24] Within the syndicate one finds both labor and management. They are joined there by the fascist representative, that is, the representative of the omnipresent state mechanism. In the co-joining of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie one has a new synthesis, the others being respectively the thesis and the antithesis. The new synthesis is the syndicate and it has recognizably within it the heretofore diametrically opposed classes of the workers and management. Hegel's law of "negation of the negation"[25] wherein the worst or most negative elements of each of the dialectically opposed thesis and antithesis cross one another out is at work. The most negative, the most mutually exclusive, the most hostile elements of management and labor are negated. Under the beneficent eye of the fascist representatives this frozen dialectic, this syndicate, operates to the good of state, labor and management.

With the introduction of the syndicate would also be created what French utopian writer Saint-Simon[26] called a national-industrious class, what Sorel called a producer class. Within the group were all those who were productively engaged in bettering the state. It was, in turn, opposed by those indolent souls who contributed nothing to the well-being of the state, what Saint Simon called the anti-national class.

Sorel did not trust the workers and the industrialists to come up with such a cooperative arrangement on their own. Indeed, even after the syndical arrangement was fixed one might reasonably expect neither would wholeheartedly support it or work within it. This then was the reason for the fascist party. It would be given the coercive power by Mussolini not only to control the syndicalist structure but to force creation of it in the beginning. Without the use of force, violence if necessary, syndicalism could neither be created nor maintained.

One can see in the willingness to use state coercive power to achieve an end the, general will philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his Social Contract[27] he had spoken of a general will, that is, of a set of values which had to be created and then authoritatively allocated for the masses, even if they did not consent to such allocation. There was a general will, that which represented the greatest good for the masses, a distillate remaining from the individual wills of all men after their own petty desires had crossed one another out. This was really a political program that carried with it quality of moral necessity. It had to be enacted, once recognized, for the good of all men in the state. Where men could not or did not recognize what was in their own best interests the state was obliged, in order to justify its existence, to step in and guarantee that the provisions of the general will be carried into execution.

The fascist state then could justify its actions both in creating syndicalism and in enforcing compliance with its requirements under good, liberal Rousseauist philosophy. Creating a general will and carrying it into execution is correct liberal philosophy.

The general will of course could be expressed in natural, irrational terms in order to make that compatible with Sorel. The fascist party was able to sustain its claim to legitimacy by assuming a guardianship over the contents of the general will. The myth, in turn, was legitimate because it was recognized, sustained and articulated by the fascist party. The myth became whatever the fascist party saw it being at any given time. It was ultimately enforced by legitimatized violence and the power of the totalitarian state mechanism.

In fascism there was a reciprocity established with the producer class. Production, full employment, wages, prices, distribution and the like were guaranteed by the state. In turn, both management and labor gave up the right to have strikes, lockouts, and disorders which would interrupt the production processes. Since they could not legally act independently, they would only act together, not as capital and labor, but as the producer class. Outside fascism such a class was not held to be possible.[28]

Since only fascism could provide the essential union of workers and management into the producer class, it was logical that the state should have a monopoly of power. Power and coercion go hand in glove for Sorel. Fascist theoreticians had no reason to change this when they were required to articulate an ideology of fascism. No rival power was to be permitted. The state's monopoly on power and coercion effectively translated to a monopoly for the fascist party since no other party was permitted. This exclusiveness is also based on an obvious logic. The fascist party had conceived the fascist state. One could not think of a "corporate state" or a "syndicalist state" without thinking of the fascist party. Fascism was inseparable from corporativism or syndicalism. If one removed the one concept, he necessarily removed the others. The fascist party, not the state, was the guardian of the fascist ideals, especially including syndicalism and the corporate organization of the state. The orthodoxy of syndicalist ideas was safeguarded in the fascist party. Hence, the highest value in the fascist state was syndicalism-corporativism. All force must be available to ensure its purity and its continued existence. The fascist party then is able to exercise in the name of ideological orthodoxy the state's power.

The fascist party had a special mission to the world as well as to the Italian people in keeping the ideology orthodox. Initially, fascism was conceived as an Italian movement, the natural byproduct and the logical culmination of the emerging Italian nationalism and its cultural risorgimento.[29] Little thought was given to its potential exportability. By the middle of the 1930s Mussolini had come to the conclusion that fascism represented the new dynamic driving force that would conquer the world and take the place of the faded liberalism of the nineteenth century.

Giuseppe Mazzini,[30] philosopher, revolutionary, soldier-of-fortune, patriot and nationalist leader of the nineteenth century had sought in vain a set of Italian principles wherewith Italy could re-establish her intellectual leadership and philosophical pre-eminence in Europe. One or two great ideas, ideas that would motivate mankind to abandon the false premises of French liberalism, that was all Mazzini wanted. His own search for ideas or revolutionary zeal failed. Nonetheless, he was quite convinced that the rebirth of Italian philosophy and culture, the risorgimento, would indeed be ultimately productive to the extent the Italy would once again be the birthplace of some new idea wherewith the world would become enticed away from liberalism.

When the nineteenth century ended without producing such an awe-inspiring idea many Italian patriots were heartbroken, but the dream was not vacated. After Italy's catastrophic betrayal at Versailles, after so many promises made and broken by England and France, after her dreams of territorial acquisitions had been betrayed, after so much loss of life, the dream seemed lost forever. But with the post-war rise of fascism some few fascist supporters saw the fulfillment of Mazzini's dream. Fascism was to be the single inspiration point for the Italian nationalistic dream of cultural and spiritual leadership. All that remained was to export the idea, the idea that was to supplant liberalism, to others civilized nations.

By the time of the great depression, other fascist movements had arisen in Europe. Even in Southern and Eastern Europe fascist movements and parties had been founded.[31] The rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany was the culmination of Mazzini's idea. Germany, a mighty culture producing nation had seemingly accepted an Italian idea. England was on the brink of discovering fascism with Oswald Mosley[32] a mighty leader at the helm.

It soon appeared that the fascisms that grew up in the remainder of Europe bore only little similarity to that of Italy, excepting notably Mosley's British party. Germany's Nazism was based not on Italian ideals but on German myths, on racism grounded in a Nordic-Aryan race. The movements in Eastern Europe remained mystical-religious movements for the most part, excepting anti-Semitic ideals accepted especially in Poland[33] and Romania.[34] These movements were decidedly anti-foreign and extremely nationalistic. They had little interest in the syndicalist-corporativist state that lay at the heart of Italian fascism. They shared common features more of national socialism than of Italian fascism, although each was based in the nationalist sentiments and frustrations of the particular nationality involved.

Fascist movements in general had certain distinguishing features.[35] They opposed parliamentary governments as being impotent to handle such worldwide crises as the great depression of 1929. They distrusted the laissez-faire economic system of capitalism as associated with the French liberal philosophy of the nineteenth century, for the system had collapsed in 1929. They preferred authoritarian governments which they felt alone were powerful enough to deal with crises without failing. They looked for collective social security against the social atomism of the liberal society. Liberal value systems grounded in utilitarian and value-relativism had failed to provide basic morality for society.

In seeking collectivist alternatives to the socially disintegrating systems of liberal philosophy, fascist movements rushed toward the deification of the state. They reacted collectively to problems of society and the state. Fascism was thus able to attract followers by offering class solidarity against individual isolationism. The groups found, discovered or fabricated common ethnic heritages and found the enemy within to be those who did not share these characteristics. The community was sewn together with the fabric of tradition, custom, language, religion and culture. Those not possessing these group characteristics were different, hence evil, the cause of the problems of state.

The fascist movements exhibited essentially lower-middle class values. They viewed the upper strata of society as being run by those who shared other, often foreign, values. They found that the values that the upper classes created were foreign, non-traditional, liberal-value relative, and removed from their kind. Where foreigners made up a goodly portion of the upper strata, or where natives were socialized to foreign, internationalistic or non-traditional value systems, the lower and lower-middle class groups were treated as merely tributary classes in their own nation.

Fascist movements as nationalistically oriented parties were most distrustful of international communism. The short-lived Bela Kun regime in Hungary had, through its excesses, put real fear in the hearts of many. Fascism often became a convenient stopover point for militant anti-communists. Communism was often associated with Judaism because many of the communist leaders were Jews. Thus, traditional Christian anti-Semitism was combined in fascism with political anti-Semitism in anti-communist crusades.

Fascism often offered elitist movements which spun off the ordinary fascist parties and which were dedicated strongly or exclusively to fundamentalist religion. Such movements lost virtually all ties with the real world of politics and spent their time and effort on frequently quite bizarre religious practices. The tie here is most clear in Roumania and in Hungary, but such elitist fascist religious organizations were known to exist on the fringes of most fascist movements.

Many fascist movements looked fondly backwards to a former period of alleged accomplishment. The members had liked simpler times with less demanding schedules and ideals. Fascism often became a kind of telescope through which one could look behind him and enjoy the blessings of medieval society. The prospects of a highly industrialized society frightened many fascists, especially in Central Europe. Fascism there often offered a lower class rejection of the fragmentation of society brought about by modernization of industry. A kind of emotional revivalism was presented against archaic medieval backgrounds, with primitive displays of symbolisms being offered almost as a rejection of anything modern.

Against this varied background Italian fascism stood out as a nearly unique movement. It had no special longing for the past, for its leaders pointed the way to modernity as the desired road to be traveled. Italy's future greatness was indeed predicated upon past greatness, but the future offered a mission quite different than that performed by Rome. The only similarity was to be found in the fact that in both the case of Rome and in the case of fascism, Italy was predestined to lead other nations.

While it would have been more than possible for Italy to have spent much time and effort on the past, it had no inordinate preoccupation with past glories. To be certain, the symbol of the fasces had Roman roots, but the doctrine that stood behind Mussolini's fascism was thoroughly modern. Mussolini gloried in past cultural and artistic accomplishments, with Italy's role as creator of art types, but he sought futuristic fascist art as the way of the future.

Anti-Semitism was virtually unknown in fascist Italy, at least before the Second World War. Italy as a nation before fascism was one of the least anti-Semitic nations of Europe. It had little racial prejudice of any type. In the third phase of fascism there was some anti-Semitic literature associated with the regime, but that was never incorporated into the ideology in the way racism became a part of Nazism or many of the East European fascist movements. While there was ample reason why anti-foreign sentiments might have developed, given Italy's long occupation by a variety of foreign powers and her late achievement of nationhood, this did not become an important integral part of the ideology.

Religion did become an important consideration in Italian fascism, but, again, in a way unlike other fascisms. The Roman Catholic church was dominant in Italy. Mussolini reached an important accord with the papacy, ending a struggle that had gone on since Italian reunification. After that the conservative papacy, seeing in fascism a bulwark against communism, transferred its loyalty from aristocratic conservatism to fascism. Mussolini had no plans for a fascist religion as did many of Nazi Germany's leaders. He was generally content to accept the recognition of the papacy and had no good reason to break the generally quiet accord.

Fascist found in several papal encyclicals apparent justification and support for fascist doctrines. The denunciation of liberalism in Rerum Novarum (1891) seemed to justify subsequent fascist doctrine. Pope Leo XIII[36] and Pope Pius XI[37] had both denounced communism,[38] and, generally, socialism, while praising the interventionist state and capitalism. They had called, especially Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno (1931), for control over the unions and moral responsibility in the application of economic laws and principles. The call by Pius XI for worker-employer confederations seemed to justify the corporate state. The call for rebuilding society along the lines of harmonizing social-producers classes again seemed directed at the syndicalist organization of fascism. Superfluous income could be redirected by the state. The intervention on behalf of the very poor according to principles of charity but by the state and not just by individuals again seemed tailor made for fascism's practices. With socialism proscribed by papal decree fascism offered one viable alternative for the proletariat to the liberal state which had failed it.

The great enemy of Italian fascism was liberalism. There would, of course, have been no fascism without liberalism, but nonetheless fascism found in liberalism the antithesis of the needs of the working class. It was nineteenth century laissez-faire liberalism that was objected to, not the contemporary interventionist liberalism. Since liberalism had originated in France there was a certain measure of Italian national pride involved in the out of hand rejection. Still, there were other, far graver errors associated with liberalism that caused the fascist state to regard it so bitterly. Virtually every evil modern society was associated with it.

Liberalism offered no place for the individual who wished to join with his fellow men in fraternal association. Liberalism was atomistic, meaning that it isolated men from one another, forbidding cooperation and association. Liberalism placed man higher than the state so that the state ultimately was subordinate to the individual. It denied the organic nature and structure of the state.

Liberalism supported democracy. It was thought that a liberal democracy was inherently the most unstable form of government that man could create. The Italian flirtation with democracy had been short and it had been a very unfortunate experience. The majority of Italians were not enfranchised; among those who were there existed, for the formative years, a papal prohibition on political participation owning to the fact that the papacy was most displeased at the seizure of papal lands and other properties during the unification. Democracy had been blamed for all the failures of the infant republic. It had never served the agrarian interests of the Southern rural poor. It had become the seat of state capitalism, serving large industry and corporate monopoly. It had failed to accomplish tangible results in the first world war, even after the machinations of secret diplomacy. And it had collapsed during the workers strikes in the immediate post-war period, opening the door for the march on Rome and the institution of fascism.

Liberal democracy was seen as an anachronism, an unfortunate vestige of a past epoch. It was impotent to deal with crises of the modern world. It was made up of many political parties, none of which could serve the worker, each of which could argue endlessly over trivial matters without ever reconciling even the pettiest matters. It functioned satisfactorily so long as there was nothing to be done and so long as the state was not involved in crisis. once crisis came the leaders crawled away and the parliament failed. Such was the political legacy of liberalism.

Liberalism not only fragmented society into isolated individuals, it encouraged the fragmentation of industry into bourgeoisie and proletariat. Rather than seeking closer cooperation between classes in society it acted as a separating agent. The Marxian analysis of the two classes is nothing more than natural observation of the consequences of liberalism. Marx had thought it necessary to wholly reconstruct society after the liberal state. That was because he was a victim of liberal ideology. Outside a liberal state a reconstruction of society was possible without undergoing a Marxian revolution. Thus, Marx was himself entrapped by the same liberal society he chose to try to overthrow. Marxism was a product of liberalism, as was any doctrine which taught the class struggle as culminating in revolution.

Liberalism was universalist whereas fascism was nationalistic. The various worldwide movements such as the League of Nations were the stepchild of liberalism as were pacifist movements. The spirit of nationalism would be freed only when the liberal state was destroyed.

Liberalism encouraged monopoly and international cartels. While fascism was monopolistic itself, it found the same practice in liberalism to be quite objectionable. The laissez-faire economy of liberalism produced only monopoly while bringing about none of the benefits consequent to fascist monopolies.

The romantic spirit that was part and parcel of liberalism had its counterpart in fascism. Indeed, the romanticism of such writers as Rousseau find much in the way of fulfillment in fascism. Still, fascism criticized the romantic spirit as being too rational, not mythical enough.

Perhaps the most objectionable feature of liberalism, in fascist terms, was its value relativism. While fascism entertained some elements of value relativism, it preached, by and large, value absolutism. In many areas of ethics this meant a return to Roman Catholic teachings. In other areas the state merely granted values authoritatively by virtue of its supremacy. In any case the pragmatic or utilitarian values of especially English liberalism were rejected. An idea in the fascist state was absolute today, yesterday and tomorrow. Truth was not an event that happened to an idea; it was a necessary part of that idea. There is a paradox here, for fascism was the value of the twentieth century -having superseded liberalism, the value of the nineteenth century. Hence, the value of ideologies came to them in their own epoch and not in another epoch, certainly a relativist concept.

Fascism sought to create an idea that would be as lasting and as influential in its own time as liberalism was in its time. First and foremost it wished to achieve the quality Mazzini had posited of any system: it must necessarily represent the unity of thought and action. Action without some sort of doctrine was useless; and, conversely, doctrine alone without consequent action was useless. The thought need not be too specific. A general idea, some sort of dream of the future, some picture of the new and better world had to precede action. After the action commenced, a goodly portion of the thought could be made up along the way. Better to begin action before the ideology is completed than miss the opportunity for action.

Mussolini expanded that idea of creating while practicing to include the individual and the nation. The nation need not exist before nationalist fascism begins to forge the state. Indeed, he thought of the state as most generally preceding the creating of a nation. The state could, on its anvil, forge the people of that state into precisely what it wished them to become.

The contrast with Nazism is obvious. Only with satisfactory materials could a nation be built, according to Nazi ideology. Inferior races could never be forged into anything worthwhile, no matter how great the effort. The national spirit in Nazism exists within the people, albeit latently. Nazism can only reawaken that spirit; in could not create it. Only Nordics could ever realize the Nazi racist dream.[39]

In fascism there is no suggestion of either recruitment of suitable subjects or of the exclusion of unsuitable ones. The fascist state could take people as they were given to it and then make them over according to the desires of the power elite. While there might still be within the population those who dreamed the Roman dream and could identify with the Roman spirit of the past, it was far more important what they should become rather than what they were at the time of fascist ascension to power.

Since nothing eluded the fascist state its power must necessarily extend to the creation of a superior race. It was the ideology, the doctrine of fascism, that would make of the race a people fit to control a substantial share of the earth. The vitality of the race would be shown by its works and deeds rather than by its genetic purity and its physical characteristics. A manufactured nation would enjoy power and prestige; one that had not been properly articulated could not enjoy the fruits of expansionism. If the state has done its job properly its race will show an aggressive foreign policy. Its art, drama, music and literature will show an ideologically motivated vitality that can be appreciated only if observed.

The people inhabiting a given geographical area are a nation after they have been motivated and inspired by the ideological fascist state. Their nationhood is then not a natural but an artificial construct, one superimposed on them from above by a charismatic leader and his fascist party. Thus the state is fully empowered to educate its people, to offer them propaganda, to indoctrinate them fully, and to persuade them by force if necessary. It is charged with maintaining ideological purity and with spreading that orthodoxy. This is the civilizing mission of the state.

The state must provide enriching experiences for its members. Inasmuch as each individual is unique he must be fulfilled by offering him opportunities to develop his unique nature. The state must make him subservient to the state, its party and its leaders, but it must also enrich his life. While in the final analysis the individual lives to serve the state, it is equally important that the fully socialized citizen be given as many opportunities as he can utilize. Without individualizing experiences as offered by the state there would be no meaningful way for the individual to be differentiated from all other persons in the state. The uniqueness of the fascist state is to no small extent dependent upon the gathering in of the unique and individualizing experiences of its various members.

By offering him help in self-fulfillment, the state has helped to create the individual. By indoctrinating him with the ideology with which to approach outside phenomena, it has made him in its own image. For the fascist, the state has the obligation, while performing its social, political, and economic functions, to create the individual person. It must teach him the values established authoritatively by the state. It must strengthen the virtues of man. It must provide him with a world view. It must teach him to reject such alien values as move him from the state. He and every other individual must be inside the state, not against it nor outside it. He and all other persons make up the living body of the organic state.

The state is properly viewed as a real organic being.[40] It is not only like any other organic being; it is a living organism. It has a life all its own. It undergoes various experiences, including happiness, sorrow, joy, melancholy, ecstacy and the like. It is born out of the ideas of men and their courage in culminating the act of creation. It matures to adulthood. It can become ill and it can die. All other beings living within the state help to comprise it. Some parts die and others are born to replenish the needs of the state. The state can show courage, especially in an aggressive foreign policy; it can also show cowardice in the face of its enemies. Since the state is primary its life is far and away more important than the lives of the individuals who are its component parts. Like individuals it can create art, drama, poetry, music and literature as a national characteristic.

There is a spirit, a motivating factor, placed in the state much like the soul is for man. One can really speak of the "Italian national spirit" as being something actual, real and existing. Take away the spirit and the body public dies. Give the state a healthy spirit and its accomplishments can be almost without limits.

The organic analogy offered by fascism is very important because it tells something of the individual's role in the state. Ideally, the individual cannot consider himself independent of his fascist state. He is completely immersed in his state. It would be unthinkable, inconceivable to be outside the state. When an individual posits his existence, he is positing the existence of his state simultaneously. The fascist state offers the only possible existence for him. The individual without the state would not exist. The individual and his fascist state are inseparable.

Fascist ideology articulates the reason for the individual's being. It is his source of legitimacy. It is his home, his patria, his source of thoughts and ideas. An anti-state thought is impossible.

When his state accomplishes something he is proud. When his state suffers so does each individual. Creations of the state give the individual national pride which is itself inseparable from pride in self. The state's ideology is his own. He accepts no other state or ideology. The fascist party is legitimate because it is interconnected with the state. It guards the ideology and offers an orthodoxy which makes the individual orthodox.

The party is supreme and allows no competition. As the bearer of the ideological orthodoxy[41] it has an historical mission. It cannot tolerate public factionalism or party disputes. It cannot legitimately allow power to pass out of its hands, say, to the army or the bureaucracy. The fascist party is the sole agent of secular redemption; it is the guardian of the future and the protector of the past. It thus has an unquestioned right to an absolute monopoly of power. The party monopoly of power is not a part of fascist ideology, but it is the most important inference from it.

Since the fascist state remained Roman Catholic and did not attempt to eradicate organized religion it did not create a rival religion. To be certain, as a carryover from the days of the reunification there was some anti-clericalism, but its effect was negligible on the ideology. Therefore, the fascist party's role as the agent of secular redemption and secular salvation was not nearly so important as it was in Nazism. The emphasis on a perfect society was less than that of Nazism. It wished to produce the good society, but disdained the possibilities of the perfect society. The inordinate emphasis on the perfect society was one of the fallacies of communism. There was no teleology in fascism as there was in Nazism and communism.

Fascism did propound a theory of a nearly infallible leader. The cult of the personality was as well developed in Italy as it was in Germany. The word Duce was roughly the equivalent of Führer. It was this charismatic figure who had created the fascist movement and who was destined to lead it to the final victory. He was the choice of the deity, the man of destiny. Through his personal intervention history had been changed and given a new direction. His movement was one of the great accomplishments of mankind. In Italy this rhetoric failed to find deep roots, for Il Duce was fired by his own Grand Fascist Council when his movement collapsed along with the Italian army on the field of battle.

As long as the leader remained in power he spoke with a single voice of authority for his nation. Fascism never conceived of an oligarchy or a democracy governing. It is rather pointless to speculate about what the death of Mussolini might have brought, provided fascism lived after him, for every fascist movement has risen and fallen with its single leader. Surely another leader would have risen to the position of Il Duce. Fascism required that the party be led by a single individual who could, by sheer force of will, decide all disputes and right all wrongs. Only a single individual was considered to be the rightful spokesperson for an entire nation; no combination of individuals could accomplish this. Where fascist movements have not come to power they usually die with their charismatic leader. Where a fascist movement might outlive its leader because he has brought the movement to power is just a matter of guesswork.

Fascism, as noted above, accepted the idea of violence as a political tool; indeed, it was one of the most useful tools available to those seeking political power and those already possessed of political power. We also noted that fascism rejected the idea of the class struggle that would culminate in revolution. The doctrine of violence and the idea of revolution require additional qualification and explanation.

Mussolini rejected the notion of the warfare between opposing classes. Following Gaetano Mosca,[42] he did not reject the possibility of warfare between segments of classes, as between, say, socialist workers and fascist workers, or between socialist workers and reactionary strikebreakers hired by industrial management. These portions of classes were less guided by ideological considerations than by a natural, irrational, and generally incomprehensible determinism. Most frequently portions of classes would clash because they were seeking identical goals through identical means than because they were conscious of differences between them.

The determinism of Marxism was found in the class struggle whereas Mosca[43] and Mussolini found it to be unrelated to any social struggle. Whatever struggles there may be in society were determined beyond the powers of man to change or alter. Men became the pawns of deterministic fate. In the long run, the politicized portions of all classes struggled with one another in a predetermined manner for control over the rest of the men in that state. Hence, fascists could expect, as one political element or fragment of the classes in Italy, to have to meet socialists, anarchists and communists, these being other politicized fragments of the various classes, in open combat. Violence was thus fully justified, indeed, determined, long ago and by powers beyond the pale of men to control.

This leads us to the ideas of Roberto Michels.[44] Michels formulated a hypothesis known as the Iron Law of Oligarchy.[45] He believed that there would necessarily and inevitably be competition among elites for political control of all states. Political leadership is then recognizable only in small groups, fragments of society, never in larger organizations. Leadership is always in the hands of the few who compete with other small groups for control. Stated simply, society requires organization; organization requires leadership; and leadership in inevitably oligarchic. To Mussolini, this meant that Mosca's politicized fragments of society were nothing more than oligarchic groups who were competing for power. The socialists, the anarchists, the communists and the fascists were all oligarchies. The competition was necessarily accompanied by violence. The most prepared and the most violent would win. The fascists had to be ever vigilant because no victory was final. The competing fragments of society were always waiting in the wings, ready to rotate power to themselves. Hence, another of Michels laws comes into play. Because of the threat to the oligarchy in power from other potential rivals the ruling elite becomes obsessed with the maintenance of power rather than the application of programs.

If the proposition that action and thought should always go together was to have meaning the fascist party had to both maintain power and develop programs. Without power, programs were useless. Without doctrine, the maintenance of power was nothing but an exercise in futility. Mussolini theorized that the threat of an opposition party ready to seize power would stimulate fascism to increasingly superior acts on behalf of the state and its people. Without the agitation of a bit of sand inside its shell the oyster does not produce a pearl and its value is naught.

Violence is necessarily produced by an irrational act, but, then, fascism was an irrational ideology. It was not an ideology of violence, but it was a doctrine that found violence useful. The violence was to be directed at its enemies. Both fascists and their enemies were predetermined to use violence or fail.

The revolution, since it involved only competing elites, was superimposed on society from above. Fascism rejected completely the Marxist doctrine of whole class struggles as we saw above following Mosca. Thus the idea of a mass revolution, a popular revolution involving the masses of men rising up spontaneously from below, this was unthinkable in fascism. All revolutions were elitist and involved only small fragments of all classes. By many standards, these titanic struggles Could not be called revolutions since they presume the seizure of the state by the few, classically called coups d'etat. The bulk of the fighting would be done in the underworld of society, much like two giant sea monsters fighting in the depths who only occasionally surface enough to show us that a struggle is going on.

Fascism never claimed that it would necessarily win all such struggles the way communism claimed inevitable and final victory. The determining features of nature offer only determined struggle, not determined outcome. No fascist victory was necessarily final. While fascist states could cause by their own efforts final victory, they could as well by errors of omission and commission cause the battle to be lost.

Since no victory was final, violence would never disappear in the state. Violence was the means to come to power and it was the means of most successfully maintaining power. Violence was seen to harden the individual. Life after fascism was not to be the proverbial bed of roses. Fascism promised neither a milenium nor utopia.

The heart and soul of fascism was the corporative state. Its great concern was the syndicalist organization of industry through the worker-management cooperatives. This was and remains its most exportable element. Mosley recognized this in Great Britain. Few other fascists have seen this fact. The racist fascism of contemporary fascism is more kindred to Nazism than to fascism, and even it has generally lacked the basic understanding of Nordic volk and Aryan racism.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p--5_Whisker.html
__________________
Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.

Last edited by RickHolland; March 30th, 2014 at 12:46 PM.
 
Old April 23rd, 2014 #8
RickHolland
Bread and Circuses
 
RickHolland's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Jewed Faggot States of ApemuriKa
Posts: 6,666
Blog Entries: 1
Default

Life in Fascist Italy

Life in Mussolini's Italy was little different from other dictatorships which existed between 1918 and 1939. Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia were to use (and expand) on developments that had been in existence in Fascist Italy since the 1920's. People had little control over their personal life and the state controlled as much of you as they could. Those who opposed the state were suitably punished.

Dealing with opposition

ll Italians were expected to obey Mussolini and his Fascist Party. Authority was enforced by the use of the Blackshirts – the nickname for the Fasci di Combattimenti. Those men in this unit were usually ex-soldiers and it was their job to bring into line those who opposed Mussolini. It was the Blackshirts who murdered the socialist Matteotti – an outspoken critic of Mussolini. The motto of the Blackshirts was "Me ne frego" (I do not give a damn")

Though they were probably less feared than Hitler’s SS, the Blackshirts did maintain an iron rule in Italy. One favoured way of making people conform was to tie a ‘troublemaker’ to a tree, force a pint or two of castor oil down the victim’s throat and force him to eat a live toad/frog etc. This punishment was enough to ensure people kept their thoughts to themselves. The murderous tactics used by the Gestapo and SS in Germany were rarely used in Italy.

When Mussolini said:

"Italy wants peace and quiet, work and calm. I will give these things with love if possible and with force if necessary."

the message was clear – those who wanted to rock the boat would be suitably dealt with.



Italy did have a secret police under Mussolini. It was called the OVRA. It was formed in 1927 and was lead by Arturo Bocchini. The death penalty was restored under Mussolini for serious offences. Yet up to 1940 only ten people had been sentenced to death. Only 4000 people were arrested by the OVRA and sent to prison. This figure was massively overshadowed by the actions of the Gestapo and SS in Nazi Germany.

Prisons were set up on remote Mediterranean islands such as Ponza and Lipari. Condition for those sentenced to the prisons here were crude and many anti-Fascists simply left Italy for their own safety.

Education in Fascist Italy

Adults who opposed Mussolini were dealt with harshly. However, the children were the Fascists of the future and Mussolini took a keen interest in the state’s education system and the youth organizations that existed in Italy. Hitler used the same approach in Nazi Germany.

Mussolini wanted a nation of warriors. Boys were expected to grow into fierce soldiers who would fight with glory for Italy while girls were expected to be good mothers who would provide Italy with a population that a great power was expected to have.

Children were taught at school, that the great days of modern Italy started in 1922 with the March on Rome. Children were taught that Mussolini was the only man who could lead Italy back to greatness. Children were taught to call him "Il Duce" and boys were encouraged to attend after school youth movements. Three existed.

Organisation / Age Group / Uniform

Sons of the She Wolf / 4 to 8 / Black shirt

Balilla / 8 to 14 / Black shirt, black cap, shorts, grey socks

Avanguardista / 14 to 18 / Same as Balilla except knickerbockers instead of shorts.

Boys were taught that fighting for them was a natural extension of the normal male lifestyle. One of the more famous Fascist slogans was "War is to the male what childbearing is to the female." Girls were taught that giving birth was natural – while for boys, fighting was the same – natural.

Children were taught to obey those in charge. This was not an unusual move in a dictatorship. Once the OVRA had dealt with those adults who challenged the authority of the state, all future adults of Fascist Italy would be model civilians and not a challenge to those in charge.

Boys took part in semi-military exercises while members of the Balilla. They marched and used imitation guns. Mussolini had once said "I am preparing the young to a fight for life, but also for the nation."

Members of the Balilla had to remember the following:

"I believe in Rome, the Eternal, the mother of my country……I believe in the genius of Mussolini…and in the resurrection of the Empire."


The glory of the old Roman Empire always lurked in the background of much of what children did. A child in a youth movements was a "legionary" while an adult officer was a "centurion" – a throw back to the days of when the Ancient Roman army dominated much of western Europe.

Women in Fascist Italy

As in Nazi Germany, women were seen as having a specific role in Fascist Italy. The task of young girls was to get married and have children – lots of them. In 1927, Mussolini launched his Battle for Births.

Mussolini believed that his Italy had a smaller population than it should have. How could it possibly be a power to reckon with, without a substantial population and a substantial army? Women were encouraged to have children and the more children brought better tax privileges – an idea Hitler was to build on. Large families got better tax benefits but bachelors were hit by high taxation.

Families were given a target of 5 children. Mothers who produced more were warmly received by the Fascist government. In 1933, Mussolini met 93 mothers at the Palazzo Venezia who had produced over 1300 children - an average of 13 each!

Mussolini wanted Italy to have a population of 60 million by 1950. In 1920, it stood at 37 million so his target was a tall order. However, the Battle for Births was a failure. Though the population grew as people were living longer due to better medical care, the birth rate actually went down between 1927 and 1934.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...cist_italy.htm
__________________
Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.
 
Old April 23rd, 2014 #9
RickHolland
Bread and Circuses
 
RickHolland's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Jewed Faggot States of ApemuriKa
Posts: 6,666
Blog Entries: 1
Default



Nicola Bombacci: from Lenin to Mussolini


By Erik Norling (from the book «Revolutionary Fascism», pages 35-46)

On 29th April 1945 the main fascist leaders were assassinated at the hands of communist partisans. And between those fascists we find, curiously, Nicola Bombacci, former maximum figure of Italian communism, founder of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), a personal friend of Lenin with whom he was in the USSR during the years of the Revolution, nicknamed the "Red Pope" by the bourgeoisie and finally unconditional follower of Mussolini, whom he joined in the last months of his regime. Is his history a story of betrayal or conversion? Or perhaps, the natural evolution of a national-bolchevik?...

A young revolutionary

Nicola Bombacci is born within a Catholic family (his father was a farmer, a former soldier of the Papal States) from Romagna, in the province of Forli, on 24 October 1879, a few kilometers from Predappio, where four years later would be born the future founder of Fascism.
It is a region marked by fierce worker struggles and by peasants accustomed to rebellion, a land of extreme passions. By father imposition he joined the seminary but quickly abandons when his father died.
In 1903 he joined the anticlerical Socialist Party (PSI) and decides to become a teacher so he can serve the lower classes in their struggle (again the similarities with Duce are evident, having studying in the same college) but quickly devotes his body and soul to the socialist revolution. His ability to work and his organizational skills got him in the staff of the socialist media outlets, allowing him to increase his influence within the labor movement, then becoming Secretary of the Party Central Committee, where he will meet a young guy: Benito Mussolini, who, let us not forget, was the promise of Italian socialism before becoming national revolutionary.

Opposing the moderate line of social democracy, Bombacci along with Gramsci will found the Communist Party of Italy after the internal break up of the PSI and will travel in the early 20's to the USSR, to participate in the Bolshevik Revolution, where he had previously been as representative of the Socialist Party and was won over by the Soviet cause. There he befriends Lenin who will tell him in a reception in the Kremlin these famous words about Mussolini: "In Italy, comrades, in Italy there is only a socialist that can lead the people to revolution: Benito Mussolini," and shortly after the Duce would start a revolution, but fascist ...

As leader (Antonio Gramsci was the theorist, Bombacci the organizer) of the newly created PCI, he becomes the authentic "public enemy No. 1" of the Italian bourgeoisie, who nicknames him as "The Red Pope". He will brilliantly revalidate his deputy chair, this time in the lists of the new formation, while the fascist squads begin to take the streets facing the communist militias in bloody combats. Bombacci will endeavor to stop the march of fascism to power but he will fail, from the pages of his newspapers he launches tirades against fascism and claiming the defense of the communist revolution. It is a time when blackshirt squads sing irreverent songs such as: "I don't fear Bombacci / With Bombacci beard we will make spazzolini (brushes) / To brighten the bald of Benito Mussolini". Period when communism is full of internal tensions and Bombacci enters into controversy with his fellow party comrades, being one of the friction points the choice between nationalism and internationalism. He had shown nationalist tendencies before, that did portend his future line. While he was still in the Socialist Party and as consequence of the document protesting against the action of D'Annunzio in Fiume, Bombacci rebelled and wrote about him that he was "Perfectly and profundly revolutionary; because D'Annunzio is revolutionary. Lenin said it in the Congress of Moscow".

The first fascism

In 1922 the fascists march over the capital of the Tiber; nothing can stop Mussolini to take the power, even if he is not absolute during the first years of the regime. As a deputy and member of the Central Comitee of the Party, as well as responsible for foreign relations, Bombacci frequently travels abroad. He participates in the IV International Communist Congress representing Italy and in the Comitee of the Antifascist Action he interviews himself with the russian bolshevik leaders.
He has already half of his life dedicated to the proletariat cause and he is not willing to give up his effort to put in practice his socialist dream. He becomes an enthusiastic advocate of an approximation of Italy to the USSR in the comitee and in the communist press, talking securely in the name of and by instigation of moscow leaders, but using a national revolutionary discourse that disturbs the Party, that is in full disbanding after the fascist victory. The relations with the revolutionary Soviet state would be an advantage to Italy as a nation who also is going through a revolutionary process, even if fascist. He is immediatly accused of being heretic and he is asked to rectify his positions. They can't accept that a communist demands, like Bombacci did, "overcoming the Nation without destroying it, we want it bigger, because we want a government of workers and farmers", socialist without denying that the fatherland is "sacred and undeniable right of every person and of all groups of men". It is called the "Third Position" where fascism revolutionary nationalism meets up with communist revolutionary socialism.

Bombacci is progressively marginalized within the PCI and condemned to political ostracism, although he did not cease contacts with some russian leaders and the russian embassy where he worked at, besides that one of his sons lived in the USSR. He sincerely believed in the Bolshevik revolution and, unlike his italian comrades, the russians had a national sense of revolution and never will deny his friendship with the USSR, even after joining permanently to fascism.

With the expulsion from the party in 1927, Bombacci enters a stage that we can qualify as the years of silence that lasts until 1936, when he launches his magazine called "La Veritŕ" and culminating in 1943 in a gradual conversion to fascism. However it is too easy to consider that Bombacci just changed arms and baggage to fascism as those who want to accuse him of being a "traitor". We will see a slow approach, not to fascism but to Mussolini and the left wing fascist movement, where Bombacci feels cozy and within family, near his revolutionary conceptions, corporatism and social laws of this fascism that "all the postulate is a program of socialism", according to what he said in 1928.

This way we prove that Bombacci was not a fascist, but he supports the achievements of the regime and the figure of Mussolini. He did not approach the fascist party - never signed up for the National Fascist Party - despite his acknowledged friendship with Mussolini, he did not accept jobs and neither renounced his communist origins. His independence was worth more. However he became convinced that the state proposed by the Corporate Fascism was the most perfect realization, socialism put into practice, a state superior to communism. He never concealed his ideals, in 1936 he was writting in the journal "La Veritŕ", confessing his adherence to fascism but also to communism:

"Fascism did a great social revolution, Lenin and Mussolini. Soviet and fascist corporate state, Rome and Moscow. Much had to be rectified, nothing we have to apologise, because today as yesterday we are moved by the same ideal: the triumph of labor."

While this was going on, Bombacci has a long epistolary exchange with Duce trying to influence the old socialist in his social policy. The maximum historian of fascism, Renzo de Felice, wrote about this that Bombacci had the merit of having suggested Mussolini more than one of the measures of the 30's. In one of these letters, dated July 1934, he proposes a program of municipal economy (which Mussolini would put in practise) where Bombacci tells the Duce, that this is him showing his "willingness to work more on what now concerns the interest and the triumph the Corporate State ... ", as also from the pages of his magazine where many times he struggles for an autarky that makes Italy an independent country and able to face the plutocratic powers (read the U.S. but also France and England).
Because of that he strongly supports the intervention in Ethiopia in 1935, but not as colonial campaign but as a prelude to the confrontation between the "proletarian" countries (among whom was Fascist Italy) and the "capitalists" that would inevitably happen, that "world revolution which would restore the global equilibrium". The Italian action would be a "typical and unmistakable proletarian conquest" designed to defeat the "capitalist" powers and whose experience "should be taken as really important ... for the redemption of the people of color that were still under the most terrible oppression of capitalism".

Against Stalin


Between the years 1936 and 1945, hard times for fascism because the armed conflicts were initiated, prelude to the defeat, Bombacci adds his ideological adherence to Mussolini. It is a man with almost 60 years, he has seen how many of his socialist dreams have not been realized, but he is an eternal idealist and is not willing to abandon the struggle for socialism, "this work of redemption and economic upliftment of the Italian proletariat that the socialists of the first hour had started".
His publishing is an economic ruin, his biographers have left constancy of the difficulties and hardships that he suffered. It would have sufficed an opportunistic step to integrate into the official fascism and he would have been provided all the aids of the state apparatus but he does not want to lose his independence although sometimes he accepted grants from the Ministry of Popular Culture.

This phase coincides with a profound reflection on his past mistakes and a series of attacks on Russian communism that had been sold to the capitalist powers betraying Lenin postulates. So writes Bombacci in November 1937, relations between the USSR and the democratic countries had only one explanation that would reveal everything else "the reason is only one, frivolous, vulgar, but true: the interest, money, business" so this former communist could openly declare that "we proclaim with a clear conscience that Bolshevik Russia of Stalin became a colony the hebrew-masonic international capitalism...".
The anti-semitic allusion is not new in Bombacci nor the socialist theorists of the beginning of the century, because we should not forget that anti-Semitism had its most fervent advocates precisely between doctrinaire revolutionaries of the late nineteenth century, when the Jew embodied the figure of the hated capitalist. In Bombacci we don't find a racialist anti-semitism but rather social, according to the positions of Mediterranean jewish problem differently from German or French anti-Judaism.

When World War II starts, and especially when it starts on the Eastern Front, Bombacci participates fully in anti-communist campaigns of the regime. As communist leader knowledgeable of the USSR his voice is heard. However not deny his ideals, rather deepens the thesis that Stalin and his henchmen have betrayed the revolution. Writes numerous articles against Stalin, about the real conditions of life in the so called "communist paradise", the measures adopted by him to destroy all the successes of Leninist socialism. In 1943, shortly before the fall of Fascism, concluded Bombacci summarizing his position on a flyer:

"Which of the two revolutions, fascist or bolshevik, will make history in the twentieth century and will remain in history as the creator of a new order of the world and social values?
Which of the two revolutions solved the agrarian problem truly interpreting the wishes and aspirations of the peasants and the economic and social interests of the national community?

Rome has won!

Moscow materialistic and semi-barbaric, with a totalitarian capitalism of a state-boss that wants to join with full force (Five Year Plans), leading his citizens to the blackest misery, the industrialization existent in the countries that during the nineteenth century followed a bourgeois capitalist process. Moscow completes the capitalist stage.

Rome is something different.

Moscow, with the reform of Stalin, portrays itself institutionally in terms of any bourgeois parliamentary state. Economically there is a substantial difference, because, while the bourgeois government is formed by representatives of the capitalist class, here the government is in the hands of bolshevik bureaucracy, a new class that is actually worse than the capitalist class because it has full control of work, production and life of citizens."


The Italian Social Republic

When Mussolini was deposed in July 1943 and rescued by the Germans a few months later, the National Fascist Party had already crumbled. The organic structure had disappeared, the party leaders from the privileged strata of society run away en masse to Badoglio government and Italy was divided into two (in the south of Rome the Allies advance towards the north).
Mussolini regroups his most faithful, all of them old comrades from the first hour or young enthusiasts, almost none high-level leader, who still believe in the fascist revolution and proclaims the Italian Social Republic. Immediately fascism seems to return to his revolutionary origins and Nicola Bombacci adheres to the proclaimed republic and gives Mussolini all his support. His dream is to undertake the construction of the "Republic of workers" in which both he and Mussolini have fought together in the early twentieth century. Just like Bombacci, other known leftist intelectuals join the new government: Carlo Silvestri (socialist deputy, after the war a defender of the memory of the Duce), Edmondo Cione (socialist philosopher who will be authorized to create a socialist party apart from the Republican Fascist Party), etc.

The first contact with Mussolini occurs on 11 October, just a month after the proclamation of RSI, and is epistolary. Bombacci writes Mussolini from Rome, the city where fascism collapsed noisily (the Romans destroyed all the symbols of the regime in the streets), but there are still many fascists at heart there, and this is the moment that he chooses to declare Mussolini that he is with him. Not when everything was going well, but in the harsh moments just like the true comrades do.

"Today I am more with you than yesterday" - Bombacci confesses - "the vile betrayal of the king/Badoglio brought ruin everywhere and the disgrace to Italy but freed her of all the commitments to the pluto-monarchists of 22. Today the path is free and in my opinion we can only resort to the socialist shelter Above all: the victory of the guns. But to assure the victory it must have the adherence of the working masses. How? With decisive and radical deeds in the economic-productive and syndical sector... Always at your service with great affection for already thirty years."

Mussolini was harassed by the military situation, but he was more determined than ever to carry out his revolution now that he freed himself from the ballast of the past, authorizes the most radical of the party to take power and begins a phase called "socialization" (name proposed by Bombacci and accepted by Duce) which will result in the enactment of laws with clear socialist inspiration, in relation to the creation of trade unions, co-management of enterprises, distribution of profits and nationalization of industries of importance.

All this was summarized in the 18 points of the first (and only) congress of the Republican Fascist Party in Verona, document drafted jointly by Mussolini and Bombacci, who would serve as base to the Social Republican State. In foreign policy he will attempt to persuade Mussolini to make peace with the USSR and to continue the war against the Anglo-Saxon plutocracy, resurrect the Rome-Berlin-Moscow axis from the geopolitical thinkers of National Bolshevism of the 20s, proposal that seems to have succeeded in Mussolini who will write several articles for the republican press on this issue even though this proposal had a tenacious opposition from a broad sector of the party, particularly Roberto Farinacci. Bombacci travels to the north and reinstalls himself near his friend Walter Mocchi, another veteran communist leader converted to Mussolini fascism who works for the Ministry of Popular Culture.

If for many the last Mussolini was a broken man, puppet of the Germans, it is surprising the adherence he receives from men like Bombacci, a true idealist, of imposing stature, with a beard and a compelling oratory, allergic to everything that meant accommodating or to become bourgeois, whereas it is not even now accepting a salary or stipend (only in early 1945 his name appears on a list of proposed salaries of the Ministry of Economics and as Chief of the Single Confederation of Labour and Technique). Bombacci will become personal advisor and confidant of Mussolini, to attract again the workers to the bases of the party. Proposes the creation of union committees, open to non-fascist militants, free union elections and travels to factories from the industrialized North (Milan-Turin) explaining the social revolution of the new regime and why he joined it.
The old revolutionary fighter seems to rejuvenate again, after a rally in Verona and several visits to socialized companies he writes the Duce on December 22, 1944: "I spoke for one hour and thirty minutes in a theater open and enthusiastic... the audience composed of mostly workers cheered by shouting: yes, we want to fight for Italy, for the republic, through socialization ... in the morning I visited Mondadori who is already socialized and I spoke to the workers who constitute the Board of Management that I found them full of enthusiasm and understanding for our mission".
While the military situation deteriorated, the communist terrorist groups (the tragically famous GAP) had already decided to eliminate him by the danger that his activity represented to their objectives.

But the war is almost over. Benito Mussolini, advised by former Socialist deputy Carlo Silvestri and Bombacci, proposes to hand over the power to the Socialists, integrated into the National Liberation Committee. In April 1945, the German military authorities surrender to the Allies, without informing the Italians, it's the end. Abandoned and alone.

Twilight of a National Revolutonary

During the last months of the ISR, Bombbaci continued to campaign to recover the masses and to avoid them to join by Bolshevism. In late 1944 published a pamphlet entitled 'This is Bolshevism', reproduced in the Catholic newspaper "Crociata Italica" in March 1945.
Bombacci insists in the criti
cism of the real stalinist communism, deviations that destroyed the true revolutionary syndicalism in Europe with Russian interference. In these last weeks of life of the republican experience Bombacci is alongside those who still believe in a compromise with the enemy so as to prevent the ruin of the country. Loyal to the end, he will stay with Mussolini even when everything is definitely lost.

Prophetically, he talks about this to his workers in one of his last public appearances in March 1945:

"Brothers in faith and fight ... I did not renounce to my ideals for which I fought and for which, if God lets me live longer, I will fight forever. But now I find myself in the ranks of the colors of the Italian Social Republic, and returned again because now it is serious and it is truly decisive to fight for the rights of the workers ... "

Nicola Bombacci, always faithful, always serene, will accompany Mussolini in his last dramatic journey to death. On the 25th of April he is in Milan. The account of Vittorio Mussolini, son of Il Duce, on his last encounter with his father, accompanied by Bombacci, shows us the entirety of him:
"I thought about the fate of this man, a true apostle of the proletariat, at some point staunch enemy of fascism and now alongside my father, without any position or prebend, faithful to two different bosses until death. His calmness served me as comfort."

Shortly thereafter, after Mussolini separated from the column of his last faithful to save them from having the same destiny as him, Bombacci is arrested by a group of communist partisans along with a group of fascists. On the morning of April 28 he was placed against the wall in Dongo, in the north of the country, next to Barracu who was a valiant veteran mutilated of war, Pavolini, the poet-secretary of the party, Valerio Zerbino, an intellectual and Coppola, another thinker.
All of them scream, before the murderous platoon, "Long live Italy!". Bombacci while pelting riddled by bullets from the communists, shouted: "Long live socialism!".






ENGLISH TRANSLATION

1) It's not true that during the twenty years of Regime, fascist economy was capitalist. Any legislative action attests to the continuing aggression by the part of the national state and proletariat on the overwhelming power private. Same corporatism, which has nothing to do with the classist meaning assigned it after by the Marxist dialectics, has been a counter-current experience compared to capitalism, because it focuses on organic unity of society. Capitalism naturally exerted containment against Duce's authoritarian revolution, and although rooted in a logic of action / reaction, the regime still managed to impose on the industrialists relations of harmony between work and capital, between society and individuality. In this logic of harmony developed during that two decades the capital-work relation. That revolutionary work did not stop during the regime. This should be clarified in relation to those who still argue that the regime was bourgeois and capitalist.

2) During the Social Republic the presence of the reaction is low and its specific gravity reduced, so that Mussolini could go further. The capitalist is reabsorbed by the organic social structure, and he remains, except in cases in which this role goes beyond the political sphere, the owner of capital and enterprise. But its role is valid only if it acquires social function, and so that it becomes participating and joint responsible. It is no longer above others, no longer master, but he manages control joint with workers. The marked social vocation is evident. This has a definite economic meaning, but an even more important political issue.

3) Certainly the Social Republic, as he had at birth "meant" to the tragic end, he had to impress more strongly the trace of the true dignity for all the Peoples. As the sun before sunset greets us with a light yet stronger.

4) Socialization (Fascist Socialism) is altruism, is the dignity of Work, and moral and political uprightness of the workers. If you are selfish you will be worse than your masters

5) The enemies of Bolshevism and Fascism were the right wing pluto-monarchist.

6) Capital in the service of work and not work in the service of capital ... The profit in the service of man and not man in the service of profit ...

7) If Lenin, which I have always admired deeply, had he lived, the program of the USSR would have been different. We probably saw Fascism, Nationalism and Bolshevism united against another enemy: the Plutocracy.

8) Dear Comrades *,... I have not changed, are always the same. Comrades! Look me in the face, comrades! You are now wondering if I am the same socialist agitator, the founder of the Communist Party, Lenin's friend that I was before. Yes, I'm still the same! I never denied the ideals for which I fought and for which I will always fight. I was next to Lenin in the beaming days of the Revolution, I believed that Bolshevism was the vanguard of working-class triumph, but then I realized the deception. Socialism shall not be realize by Stalin, but by Mussolini, which is Socialist, even if for twenty years he has been hampered by the high class, who then betrayed him. But Mussolini was freed of all the traitors and he needs you, the workers, to create the new proletarian state!
*words Compagno(communist) and Camerata(fascist) correspond to the same word, Comrade, in english, but they have a very different meaning in italian language!In deutsch: compagno-genosse, camerata-kamerade

9) "I had a great social revolution, Mussolini and Lenin. Soviet and Fascist Corporative State, Rome and Moscow. We have very to correct, but nothing to be forgiven, today as yesterday the same ideal joins us together: the triumph of Work."

10)"Duce, I have already written in "The Truth" - having had a first impression - of what Freemasonry, Plutocracy and the Monarchy were plotting against you. Today more than ever I am with you. The dirty betrayal of the King and Badoglio , which has unfortunately dragged Italy into ruin and dishonour, there has, however, freed you from all the components of a pluto-monarchist right-wing of 1922 ...».

11) To honour a hero like me, the Communist Bombacci, does not need to force to throw into disrepute other heroic figures, however.
__________________
Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.
 
Old April 25th, 2014 #10
Franco
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: USA
Posts: 5,020
Blog Entries: 4
Default

I'm getting tired of revisionist history re: fascism, from all sides of the political spectrum, left and right both.

Fascism was anti-Bolshevik/anti-Marxist, yet, listening to the syndicalist/anarchist oddballs, you'd think that Bolshevism/Marxism was a twin brother of fascism. Nope. No way. For one thing, fascism differs in every country, depending on various factors. ("Fascism" here refers to right-wing socialism with a dictator, or maybe a junta, as ruler). Fascism isn't international in scope.

Maybe Mussolini started out as a Marxist, but he finally saw the light and rejected it.





--------------------------
 
Old June 12th, 2014 #11
RickHolland
Bread and Circuses
 
RickHolland's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Jewed Faggot States of ApemuriKa
Posts: 6,666
Blog Entries: 1
Default Fascist Art




A triptych painting depicting Mussolini and the achievements of Italian Fascist "sintesi Fascista 1935" by Alesandro Bruschetti (Italian 1910 - 19810

http://www.midcenturia.com/2010/12/t...paintings.html

http://weimarart.blogspot.pt/2010/07/mario-sironi.html

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/ARCH/Notes-Fascist.htm

http://www.oberlin.edu/images/Art265b/Art265b.html

http://mosaik.wordpress.com/2006/08/...rt-of-mosaics/

http://defeatingtheideal.wordpress.c...fascist-italy/

http://counterlightsrantsandblather1...urism-and.html

http://daviebrome.blogspot.pt/2011/0...f-fascist.html




The Seeker by Fascist artist De Chirico, a critique of modern man and society


Gerardo Dottori Portrait of the Duce 1933 oil on canvas. Milan, Civiche Raccolte d'Arte












Aero Portrait of Benito Mussolini the Aviator, Filippo Marinetti


Il Duce, Alessandro Bruschetti

__________________
Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.
 
Old June 12th, 2014 #12
RickHolland
Bread and Circuses
 
RickHolland's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Jewed Faggot States of ApemuriKa
Posts: 6,666
Blog Entries: 1
Default


Continuous Profile - Head of Mussolini, Renato Guiseppe Bertelli



















__________________
Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.
 
Old October 11th, 2014 #14
RickHolland
Bread and Circuses
 
RickHolland's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Jewed Faggot States of ApemuriKa
Posts: 6,666
Blog Entries: 1
Default

__________________
Only force rules. Force is the first law - Adolf H. http://erectuswalksamongst.us/ http://tinyurl.com/cglnpdj Man has become great through struggle - Adolf H. http://tinyurl.com/mo92r4z Strength lies not in defense but in attack - Adolf H.
 
Reply

Share


Thread
Display Modes


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 01:04 AM.
Page generated in 2.80887 seconds.