By Stephen Smoot
“First of all, a confession. I detest those who take me as a subject for their writings and discourses.”
With this introductory statement the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who styled himself Il Duce and craved press attention, opened the introduction to his biography published in 1925.
One cannot understand Fascism (the actual movement, not the current Left wing use of the term as a catch-all for things and people it opposes) without understanding Mussolini and his ambitions for himself first and country second.
Mussolini served the cause of Socialism prior to World War I, editing the Left-wing newspaper Avanti! Socialism at its very core advocates the elimination of international boundaries, the free market economic system, and the notion of the natural rights of individuals.
Avanti, which means “Forward.” remains the Socialist outlet in Italy today.
He infamously wrote in this period that “the Italian flag belongs planted in a dung hill” to express his disgust with nationalism. Nationalism reflects an individual or collective belief that one’s country, its system, and its traditions are better than those of others, which is an entirely reasonable belief system when combined with self-discipline and restraint.
The Left’s Socialist impulses have labored to erode support for the notions of international boundaries and national loyalty right down to today because elimination of both paves their way more easily to have the power to impose their will.
Mussolini had political ambitions, so he enlisted for the Italian Army after the outbreak of World War I. Despite tales of his courage later on, the extent of his service lay in his bumbling during grenade practice, injuring himself, and never actually going into the field.
There, however, he saw the power of that flag that he had previously disregarded so easily, Even though the Kingdom of Italy had only formed out of smaller states a half-century prior, patriots rallied to the nation, charged into the front lines, and died for King and Country.
Impressed, Mussolini switched gears on a cause he had already started souring on before the war. In 1913, he asked if Socialism was “a thing outworn . . . that cannot lead to any new truth.”
Not long after, he broke from the Socialists and started a nationalist publication called The People of Italy, which evolved into a Fascist newspaper later on.
The symbolism of Fascism comes from Rome, a bundle of sticks bound together at both ends. Behind it lies the theory that if one hits another with one stick, the stick will break. Hit a person with the bundle and the person will break. Strangely enough, the concept is best expressed by the United States national motto E pluribus unum, or “out of many, one.”
In 1919, Bolshevik style Communism appeared in Italy. That movement had already murdered thousands on its way to creating a genocide of 30 million or more under Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Mussolini registered the fear of the people and responded a few months later by launching his first Fascist meeting, which attracted “good, sound fellows for the most part with no particular ability.”
Fascism rose to fight Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyite, and other forms of Communism and Socialism, not as a 180 degree opposite, but as one ambitious brother jealous of another. Communist Leftists try, however, to paint themselves as the freedom loving opposites, rather than those kindred in totalitarian aspirations.
Fascists started out by offering themselves as the answer to the disorders increasingly fomented by the Socialist Party Communists. Neither the constitutional monarchy, nor the elected government could muster the will to impose order, protecting people, property, and commerce. It also had no answers for an economy ruined by war, or a country enraged at its wartime allies for denying it territorial compensation in Dalmatia, a medieval province of the Republic of Venice later taken by the Hapsburg Empire defeated by Italy and others.
Mussolini expanded his movement with military precision and presented himself to the King and the people as the only answer to Italy’s woes. They accepted his offer and allowed him to lead the government.
By 1930, Mussolini had restored order, brought stability to the economy, and, as foreign observers noted, even “made the trains run on time.” This was not entirely true, but they did operate more efficiently than their infamous track record before. (Yes that was a pun!)
Before we go any further, one must make the effort to remove oneself from today back to the opening of the 1930s. Adolf Hitler was still a political outsider in Weimar Germany. National Socialism had not yet seized power or launched its legacy of murder and evil. Many in the Western democracies, particularly many in the United States, looked at him with admiration instead of disgust.
Fascist economics and Communist economics are more similar to each other than either is to a free market or even mixed system. In both cases, the government has total control of the economy.
Communists make decisions directly about production and related issues because they eliminated private sector ownership.
Fascists retain the private sector, but rig the economy so that only the largest and most powerful corporations retain their stake. In exchange for having a stable share of the economy, corporations submit to the will of the government to varying degrees. Laws and regulations weed out the middle and smaller sized businesses because Fascism regards competition as ruinous, not constructive.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt turned to these ideals for inspiration at the onset of his first term. His National Industrial Recovery Act, sold to Americans through propaganda campaigns, tried to establish a similar system in the United States for similar reasons and through a similar onslaught of detailed regulations that controlled businesses and stymied competition. Those businesses supporting the Act displayed an eagle logo (adopted in toto by Philadelphia’s National Football League franchise) and the slogan “we do our part.”
When Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes’ court ruled that FDR and Congress overstepped in 1935, the President launched his campaign to “pack” the Court with friendly justices.
In both cases, the Great Depression had (wrongly) convinced the West that economic expansion in any nation was a dead issue and that (again, wrongly) nations had to limit or end competition to retain what economy they had.
Politically speaking, Mussolini’s statement that “liberty is not the end, it is the means” reflects both the Communist and Fascist idea of how to subvert free societies and elected governments. They abuse the freedoms of speech and assembly to launch public disorder, causing the people to grow fatigued with the strife, the violence, and constant turmoil.
Italian Fascism, though it called itself totalitarian, worked hard to retain its popularity with the people and paid special attention to the youth of the nation. Even those who came to detest Mussolini and his movement remembered with joyful nostalgia the mandatory vacations for children to either the ocean or the mountains, said to be to enhance their health.
Another Blackshirt program was an anti-bullying initiative. If a child reported to any Fascist official that he or she had suffered bullying, a group of Blackshirts would go to the alleged bully’s home to intimidate both child and parents. While a novel approach, it of course invited abuse in many forms.
Fascism looked not avanti, but in dietro, promising to return the middling (a generous description) power of Italy to the imperial glories of Rome. Achievement of a glorious future was given as reason to endure the social, economic, and other straitjackets imposed by the aggressive Fascists.
Yet, Italy remained satisfied with Mussolini and Fascism until the nation edged away from a wise flexible neutrality into the stupidity of falling in the National Socialist German orbit. Italians historically mistrust and hate Germans, remembering their centuries of efforts to control northern Italy. Italians, Fascist and otherwise, also could not fathom the murderous National Socialist obsession with Jewish and other peoples that the Holy See (but not all Catholic Churches at the national level) had historically tried to protect.
Had Mussolini not embarked down this path, he would have lasted likely as long as fellow Fascist, Francisco Franco of Spain.
Fascism thus means social and economic stagnation, the killing of the freedom of initiative at any level except for the government, the intimidation of the people into compliance with legal and extra legal means, and, in extremis, filling the streets with followers to induce disorder and create mistrust in the notion of natural rights and liberties.
To Il Duce, the words that “exercise a more potent fascination . . . are Order, Hierarchy, Discipline.”
It is not the opposite of Communism, Socialism, or National Socialism. Each of these three are sibling ideologies to the other, all slightly different species of the genus Leftism, all dangerous to the cause of liberty.
And none of these invasive species have any place in authority, anywhere in the United States.
