FASCISMO: IL POTERE
FABBRICATO
INTRODUCTION
Fascism as a program, a model, did not begin from a set
doctrine and text. Rather it evolved as a pseudo-science from a model of state
developing from, in the case of Italy, post First World War discontent. Able to
breed in a socialist environment, Fascism harboured many authoritarian traits;
it became a totalitarian model of state. This essay will investigate the
central claims of Italian fascists that were applied in the first half of the
twentieth century. There will be little discussion about the differences
between the Nazi and the Italian models as they were very different regimes.
There will be a comparison of the ideologies rejected by Fascism in Italy
compared with those claimed and adopted by liberal democracies.
Fascist idealism pre-existed
Benito Mussolini’s application of it, in fact it dates from the Roman era.
Eccleshall and others find that the modern Italian revolution began in the late
nineteenth century through the evolution of social Darwinism. Socialism and
Darwinism combined to reach a belief that people, as political animals, were
intrinsically restricted to a set pattern of ideology. And that this, once
found or reached, would be the sum-total of political paradigms, and this would
be enough to satisfy and control the masses. It was utopian in concept and
totalitarian in practice.
Mussolini and his co-actor
Giovanni Gentile found that their catch cry for the masses was entirely
representative of what their fascisms would come to mean. For them, and
consequently a majority of Italians, ‘Everything for the State; nothing outside
the State’ was what it was all about. There was to be for a short period in
history, no acceptance of individualism; the result being a dictatorship
rejecting liberal ideas such as individuality within the state. This meant that
Mussolini was forging a state of unitary movement that supposedly was accepted
by a majority; or at the least, he hoped would be accepted.
Essentially, fascism was a
movement, a prelude to a state model that embraced authoritarian manners and
methods. It was not about to let any individual determine his or her destiny
within the state. Once it began to grow, people began to accept the dictatorial
paradigms, and for some, the attraction of power over others was a cause not to
be abandoned. The movement (or program) owed its very existence to this fact,
that the cause for seeking power, was power itself. Thus follows the euphemism:
‘power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely’. In this the seeds of
fascism are sown, and: ‘The very existence of an authoritarian mass movement
like fascism depends on the desire of
many persons to submit and obey’, says Ebenstein.
Fascism does, however, seem
to have embraced some of the desires of many contemporary theorists from the
enlightenment era. For example in Eccleshall, the finding was that: ‘Equality
was thus supplanted by natural superiority’; perhaps not a bad idea. However,
the movement had it wrong in rejecting liberal and democratic ideals of
equality and replacing them with majoritive force.
This rejection of equality,
says Eccleshall and others, sprang
from the seemingly enlightened theories of a clearly social Darwinist and
Marxist sympathiser named Nietzsche. His grand assessment of the life of
humankind was:
Life
itself is essentially appropriation, infringement, the overpowering of the
alien and the weaker, oppression, hardness, the imposition of one’s own form,
assimilation and, at the least and mildest, exploitation…
His animal analysis was
accepted by many a power seeking oppressive fascist to further the cause of
claims that, in the end, were aimless. It was a power grabbing movement, merely
to express power over another, that was condoned by Mussolini’s fledgling state
itself. Centralised power, via a dictatorship, was thus canvassed upon the
population; it was then, as a secondary application of power, that the populace
exerted individual power over others. A blanket exertion that would not accept
any abstinence. Clearly different from liberal democracy, which seats the power
structure across a broad base. Voting to place individuals in to power seats,
and controlling the application of the power by the force of law applied in a
manner that constrains it.
A
LIBERAL DISCUSSION
Whilst the blanket
application of power can be seen in other models of state and government, such
as communism, fascism did have an express paradigm. It was consistent with
Thomas Hobbes view of the Leviathan
state, overruling all that was within it. It was with the Nietzsche rhetoric
‘Will to power’ that Mussolini bloated and blinded himself with fascist
attitudes. The will launching and ascending him to power. It was the same with
Adolf Hitler too, but his case is far more complex and included Eccleshall’s
1995 assessment of a ‘super man’ era.
It involved super-natural
content with the hunt for a ‘Talisman’ and the supposed power of it. Seemingly,
for the fascist of the era, power was everything; held within the state it was
going to take them everywhere, and there was no dispute about that. They
obviously envisaged a super-state that would fly their power anywhere, vain
gloriousness they did not entertain. Liberals everywhere would have been
horrified at this prospect, that the power of state in the hands of a few was
upheld to be the ideal; the antithesis of liberal democracy in which the power
of state is in the hands of many.
The historian of Italian
state fascism and the era, Renzo De Felice
in discussing it has this to say: ‘Fascism as movement is the “red thread”
that connects’, and ‘it loses hegemony [usually] and becomes secondary; but it
is always present’. This analysis he gives as an indicator of what the process
is all about. As movement, fascism is an ideology; it has attached to it by way
of force, a measure of importance about an ideal state. Utopian theorists would
have been impressed with the progress of this model of state.
Marx for example, seeing his
revolution theory in progress; and any disciple of Rossaeu would have seen the
merits of the irrational application of emotions to create a dream state of
enlightenment. It was in fact an imagined paradise state, not real and imposed
by upholders of the utopian hope. An all conquering ideal that dispels any
imagined (or real) opposition to the need for a power base. The force
ultimately leading to punitive expeditions against the anti-fascists. Any good
liberal democratic judiciary today would be disgusted at the lack of equality
before the law. And what of John Locke, dispirited; in this case his Two Treatise of
Government having been contravened, tabled as tyranny and a way to avoid it.
DeFelice goes on to be more
explicit about the Italian fascists tyranny. He and Michael Leeden (in
interviewing DeFelice) concur that there was fascism as movement and fascism as
regime. This means that there were two fronts in the ideological power
struggle. One was emanating from the middle classes who felt threatened by the
bourgeoisie; consequently they embraced the fascist ways fervently in order to
obtain a power sharing role of their own, where previously there was none.
Leeden assessed: ‘those who had reacted best to the test of war were now
entitled to take their place in the sun and to assume control of the country’.
The main front within the country was the Mussolini regime itself, and his pseudo-scientific imagined state. However, DeFelice refines this point even further: ‘Here the personality of Mussolini enters into the game and it is decisive in understanding fascism’ ‘Mussolini is the unifying thread, the element of synthesis’. Mussolini, according to DeFelice, was the third and intrinsic part of the revolutionary power triangle. Without him and his charisma and force, the regime had no personal drive, and without the regime, the movement had no power and force. Essentially then, in theory, the dynamic force of fascism cannot live without a sum total of these three sides. DeFelice says of Mussolini coming to power that the traditional ruling class chose the man because they were assured he would perpetuate the fascism that was already in place, they were seeking to: ‘reinforce it and “redynamize” it’. The aim was not to subvert it. However, the middle class had other ideas and this cleavage is what led to disaster and the horror of partisan conflict.
The central claims of the
phenomenon, apart from having no set doctrine, are the need for selfish
overbearance that will produce social uniformity, and consequently, in theory,
a condition that will solve social inequity through discipline. The ultimate
aim therefore (theorists might say), was a utopian state rising out of
discipline and uniformity. Liberalism on the other hand would allow the state
to exist through individualism and structured pluralism, a sort of unitary
state for individuals and a pluralism for all; a state of many characteristics.
There various stands held
that the individual within the state should be free, and that sovereignty
should be guaranteed. The fascists were the antithesis of this ideal liberal
state. For them, fascist strength was to be used to exacerbate the inequality that
exists between people. Meaning that the less motivated or physically weak will
be subjugated by the omnipotent presence of ideals that will make it so. Argued
into being and perpetuated by force, a hierarchy of fascist paradigms was
formed. ‘Fascism rejects this [the] Jewish-Christian-Greek concept of equality
and opposes to it the concept of inequality’.
Violence and lies were
opposing foundations on which the totalitarians built their realm; it was a
code of behaviour that defined, then created, friend or enemy. In this
definement came the determination of destruction, for if enemy were found, the
solution was destruction. No final solution such as this can be organised
without a complicit elite. And what better elite than the fascist, with all
manner of meta-physical and super natural personal phenomena, including
conceit, attached to them. Rule from the top with the power of force inspired
to propagate a meta-myth; that of the perplexing fascist state. Ebenstein
finds: ‘the leader is considered infallible, endowed with mystical gifts and
insights’ and acts ‘the way all people would think if they knew what was best
for the whole community’. He suggests that the myth surrounding fascist
leadership, the one that they instigated, is equivalent to Rosseau’s ‘General Will’.
Totalitarian racism and
imperialism gave the whole ‘Will’ substance, without those levers, the
phenomenon had no reason for being, no way of acting and no aloof footing from
which to ground a movement. Finally, Ebenstein sees that an opposition to
international law is the natural and expected outcome of this scenario. To
protect itself as a whole, to prevent a collapse and not allow the system to be
punctured and thus deflate, sovereignty must be present. Sovereignty enacted by
Mussolini for both state and phenomena.
Mussolini himself, writing
in 1932 and contributing to an Italian encyclopedia said: ‘It conceives of life
as a struggle, considering that it behooves man to conquer life for himself
that life truly worthy of him’ ‘The Fascist disdains the “comfortable” life’;
in Cohen.
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 in a spiritual
society… -Mussolini, 1932; in Cohen.
He goes on to say that “happiness” is not producible, theological attempts at this are rejected, as is Liberal theory that aims for economic freedoms. Liberalism and the incumbent claims, which he says were brought into conscious existence after the battle against absolutism, are rejected. Meaning for him that an individual within a state is not really liberated, the notion is a social construction. Therefore, rather, the fascist state is the true reality and realisation of society. It is not, Mussolini suggests, a social construction. Consequently, everything is in the state, the spiritual essence of human-beings is the state. There is no space for religiousness, capitalism, materialism, nor is there multiculturalism. Social constructions such as liberal institutions for the benefit or service of humankind are rejected. Effectively, the normative pluralism of liberal democracy is rejected, replaced with a unitary socialist style omnipotent dream state that exists in space and mind.
Mussolini was brave enough to inform his mind controlled society that: ‘Fascism is opposed to Democracy, which equates the nation to the majority’. How he managed to get that across and have it accepted by the majority is quite amazing, and it is an indicator of the extreme power potential of fascist regimes. Hitler would have been proud, and the social Darwinists would have noted the power of ‘personal magic’ and myth that they think is present in the human animal. Unperturbed, Mussolini argues that democracy debases the constituency by the very nature of equating it; that is, conceiving of the state citizenry in terms of quantity not quality. Fascism as the antithesis however, overpowers this notion with a system of qualitative force of numbers. But he argues against that assessment, suggesting instead that the power of ‘‘One” is enough to drive out democracy, but this can only be so if that state harbours a number of fascists awaiting rescue from democratic power.
However, he makes one point
that seems to be in tune with democratic power, the theorists, and the reality
of state: ‘The State, in fact, as the universal will, is the creator of right’. No theorist today could argue with
that; he asserts that a ‘nation is created by the state’ and that liberty,
independence, and sovereignty all derive from literary discourse (that is, the
state on paper). An active rather than an: ‘inert acceptance of a defacto situation’.
Lubaz believed that originally, the action
was to offer an alternative to Marxist revolutionary ideas instead of a
“mindless reaction against it”. However, as is typical of radical movements, it
became simply a reaction just like it, particularly in Africa. Due to its very
nature it was: ‘an authoritarian dictatorship in which the charisma of the
leader did not become bureaucratized’. Lubaz felt that the compromises
Mussolini had to make is what caused his failure. Had he realised that in a
liberal democracy compromise amongst the bureaucracy is inherent, he could have
forged ahead. Already, the army, Vatican and state administration had endured
compromise of the doctrine, says Lubaz.
The writings, however, of Mussolini and Gentile; while not constituting a doctrine, do indicate the foundations of one. The work first of Gentile in 1925, may have been the background framework for Mussolini’s later writing and regime. Lubaz suggests that when Mussolini put a text into a 1932 encyclopedia, fifty per-cent of it seemed to have been borrowed from Gentile. Unlike liberal democracies, which claim all political documentation to be representative of state structure, the articles do more to disclose the mythical dream state that was to be, rather more than to provide a basis of political agenda, however.
The intention of this,
however, may have been to allow the concrete establishment of an hitherto
undisclosed model of authoritarianism. The state would for a long time exist in
omnipotent limbo until the forces of power could consolidate it. The dialectic
of this then is the liberal democratic model of state. Whereby the state is
tangible and manifest in the materialist realm; this is made known and
published, the state exists for all to know and see. The liberal democracy
claims a solid state, but the fascist resolves to solid rejection, instead
adopting an imagined paradise state.
In an anthology on the
imaginary fascist state Griffin has included over 213 entries of fascist
analogies, the contributors are both contemporary, and from the early twentieth
century era. The evidence suggests that, essentially, the state (a state) was
not denied an existence; but only that the nature of it was in question. To be
or not to be, rational and tangible or fluid and metaphysical, this was the
question. Sociologist Talcott Parsons authored a forerunning social science
essay in 1942. He argued: ‘it can now be clearly seen that this rationalistic
scheme of thought has not been adequate to provide a stably
institutionalized diagnosis of even a
‘modern’ social system as a whole’. He argues that the weakness of the powerful
movement was in its failure to construct common social apparatus.
While this belief is a
common one, he has failed to see the rational argument behind removing the
state from tangible existence; therefore, his view supports the liberal
democratic argument that the state must be structured. It must be a state
attached to realism by materialism. That if this state is not present there is
no liberal democracy. A rational argument, unbiased in its perspective and
indicative of his view of how fascism was polarised: ‘It characteristically
accepts in essentials the socialist indictment of the existing order described
as capitalism, but extends to include leftist radicalism’. The central claim
(he argues) is leftist: ‘penumbra of scientific and philosophical rationalism’.
A
DEFINING CONCLUSION
Asvero Gravelli a fascist
advocate, wrote down potential
philosophical idealism for Europe in an article in 1930. Among his claims were
those that distinguished it from democracy and why it was rejected. He wrote: ‘The
ideas of democracy and liberalism can be seen as temporary stages’. Very soon
after there is a dialectic paradox:
Fascism transcends democracy and liberalism. Its regenerating action is
based on granite foundations: the concept of hierarchy, the participation of
the whole people in the life of the state, social justice through the equitable
distribution of rights and duties, the injection of morality into public life,
the prestige of the family, the moral interpretation of the ideas of order,
authority, and freedom… Gravelli in Griffin.
Liberal democracy in the era was soon to be a
junior partner, a launching pad for the future state that came to exist in time
and space, untethered by materialist threads. The matrix was a web of lies,
deceit and violence. The structured state was rejected because they thought
that it was not representative of the true state, that only the collective of
wills would bring about a true state.
Whereas for a liberal
democratic state, hierarchy is structured in a pluralist manner by way of
elections, or appointment through natural attrition or progressive
qualification. Protected today by universal human rights treaties and the rule
of law, the unique personas of individuals are maintained, and should not be
lost to totalitarian regimes.
Evidence that the fascist
regime was indeed a front for something even more sinister can be found in
Hamilton. There he describes a man who was able to penetrate Mussolini’s inner
circle. Named Malaparte, and editor of La
Stampa, he resigned and moved to France in 1931; his resignation was
perceived as strange. There, by 1932 he had published Technique du coup d’Etat, a book that disclosed methods for
overrunning incumbent governments. He sent a copy to Paris police Chief Chiappe
who replied in writing: ‘it was as dangerous for “enemies of liberty” to
possess the book as it was precious for statesmen'. Malaparte was suspiciously
arrested in 1933 and Chief Chiappe was sacked causing riots in 1934. The book
was banned in Italy and in Germany after Hitler’s rise to power it was burnt.
Carlo Costamagna in Griffin
explained why there was a Second World War. He said that the larger scale Fascio in Europe was a reaction against
the hegemon of European factionalist countries that were seeking a unified Europe
that was represented by liberal democracy. The League of Nations and the
subsequent treaty rights, he suggests, were the political focus of the power
manipulations and shifts in Europe. Both Axis sides were manoeuvring to claim
the new universal state that would emerge out of war. Ultimately, the victors
would get to place their brand name on the new order. This is why, he asserts,
both Axi’ new that a military victory was important. It would be with this that
the vanquished could do no more than act as an opposition. The victor states
would then be able to:
safeguard the autarchy of
the individual nations which represented these peoples within the framework of
a larger communal space, and to impose respect for the new system on those,
both within and without, who inevitably opposed it…Carlo Costamagna in Griffin.
The suggestion
is that the new order propagated itself with efforts already made in the
previous countries, this meaning that war was the tool that would be used to
determine the ultimate victory. Effectively, fascism was the reason why, and
the force behind, a fight that would not be decided democratically.
Mussolini
himself realised the question of where the international power revolution was
heading. Was it to be Right or Left, or some-other undetermined paradigm. He
was certain, there was no doubt, a ‘socialist revolution’ was taking place. By
default he was part of this and backed the movement totally until he was
physically disabled from continuing. If he and his movement could win, he would
inherit the ultimate state of totalitarian power, and this is another reason
why liberalism was rejected. This he had realised because in the 1920 period:
‘the whole of Central and Eastern Europe was in a ferment of political crisis’,
and ‘complicated by the crisis, which we shall describe as socialist’. At this
time, the Italians ‘coro-viveri’ (high cost of living) movement played a major
role in the social stress and is part of the reason why Mussolini and the
fascist movement grew. Mussolini recounts the period of doom as perceived by
politicians and the middle classes that caused them to abandon ideas of
resisting the movement. In so doing this added more mass to the belief that the
socialist revolution was correct, it was showing why it was a better force to
side with than Right liberal democracy which was proving weak. Ultimately,
Mussolini saw (believed) liberal democracy sacrificing itself in the Great War.
With its principles it went to fight, and the result was that of political
suicide. Whittled down by its own principles, in a fight that it could not win
without breaking them. Liberal democracy thus faced, according to Mussolini,
other state perceptions that could not accept such dangerous paradigms as that
of a weak state. And so proceeded Italian fascism.
The fascist
omnipotent movement that existed in time and space claimed liberal democracy as
the precursor for another paradigm. For this reason, democracy was to be rejected
as a state model that had passed a useable era. It was perceived as being weak
when threatened, and so could not defend society. The rationalism required by
liberal democracies was seen as a way of ignoring societies true collective
potential’s. The only way forward for the pseudo-science was with extreme
totalitarian strength and control, something which liberal democracy rejects.
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