W. Leroy Nichols

Fascism and It's Founder

Fascism is a twentieth century political idea, forged from its' nineteenth century
Syndicalist and Social Darwinist roots in the fires of opportunism following the end of
World War I. It has its' own appeal as a popular mass government system, drawing upon
the elements of the irrational and the emotional to stir the majority of a country's
population into supporting the fascist party in power.

The founder of fascism was Il Duce (The Leader) Benito Mussolini. He ". . . was
born in Dovia di Predappio [near Forli, in Romagna](1), Italy, on July 29, 1883. He was
named Benito for the Mexican revolutionary Juarez.(2) As a teenager, Mussolini entered
into politics as a socialist. His father, Alessandro Mussolini, was a blacksmith and a
fervent socialist. His mother, Rosa, was a schoolteacher; and at age eighteen (1901),
Benito Mussolini became eligible to be an elementary schoolmaster. The next year, he
moved to Switzerland looking for work. Mussolini was expelled from Switzerland when
he could not find a permanent job, and returned to perform his military service in the
Italian army.(3)

In 1908 Mussolini joined the staff of a newspaper in Trent (in the Austrian held
Italian province of Tyrol) and wrote a novel, later translated into English as The
Cardinal's Mistress. He was expelled by the Austrian authorities, so he continued his
newspaper career with the socialist newspaper, La Lotta di Classe (The Class Struggle )
in Forli. Although his socialist ideas were being modified by the philosophy of Friedrich
Nietzsche, the revolutionary doctrines of Auguste Blanqui, and the syndicalism of
Georges Sorel, the young man still became the Socialist party secretary in Forli.(4)

Opposite his later record as a warmonger, in Italy's 1911 war against Turkey,
Mussolini was jailed for his pacifist newspaper work. He moved to Milan after he
became the editor of Avanti, the official paper of the socialists. From this position,
Mussolini rapidly became one of the most important leaders among labor, advocating " . .
. that the proletariat should unite in one formidable fascio (bundle), preparatory to seizing
power."(5)

Mussolini experienced a sudden change of heart in the early days of World War I,
first opposing the war and threatening to lead a proletarian revolution against both the
war and the Italian government, then later changing his stance about fighting. He gave up
his membership in the Socialist party and abandoned his editorship of the Avanti
newspaper.(6)

Fascism is Born

The birth of fascism is a dramatic example of the one true guiding principle of
fascism: seize the moment, take a chance on the opportunity at hand, and if the
opportunity needs a bit of encouragement, then give violence a chance. Having suddenly
switched his position on Italy's entry into the war, Mussolini founded a pro-war group,
the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria, and a new newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia. "He
evidently hoped the war might lead to a collapse of society that would bring him to
power. Called up for military service, he was wounded in grenade practice in 1917 and
returned to edit his paper."(7)

Mussolini started the Fasci de Combattimento in 1919, but failed to win a seat in
the elections to parliament. In 1921 Mussolini won a seat in the Italian parliament, in
part due to the armed squads of Fascisti that spread terror among his socialist rivals.

Voting Blocks in Italian Parliament of 1921

Extreme Nationalists 10
Fascists 35 Government bloc (184)
National Bloc (Gioletti) 139

Radicals (Liberal Democrats) 68 Potential centrist
Popolari’ 107 opposition (175)

Reformists 29
Socialists 123 Left opposition (176)
Communists 15 Total seats (535)
National minorities 9

After making a deal with a group of the nation's top industrial leaders and
landholders about strikebreaking, Mussolini had sufficient strength to help form a
government on the right. In little more than a year, after a series of increasingly
ineffective prime ministers, Mussolini was finally invited to form his own Fascist
government.(8)

Suddenly the Fascist party needed to provide leadership, yet by the longest
measurement the movement was only seven years old. While Mussolini was an excellent
propagandist (thanks in part to native ability and in part to his training as a
newspaperman), the intellectual roots of his party suddenly had to bear fruit. For
organizational purposes, the syndicalist idea of the corporate state was adopted, merging
the state, industry, and labor into a number or corporations. Ideas espoused by a handful
of philosophers hostile to the western, liberal democratic ideal formed the rest of the
veneer of respectability that fascism claimed: such notions including the heroic
leadership of Friedrich Nietzsche, and the Social Darwinism of Henri Bergson and
George Sorel. (9)

"The intellectual roots of Fascism can be traced to the voluntaristic philosophers who argued that
the will is prior to and superior to the intellect or reason.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher who held that the will is the
underlying and ultimate reality and that the whole phenomenal world is the only expression of will.
Human beings have free will only in the sense that everyone is the free expression of a will and that
we therefore are not the authors of our own destinies, characters, or behavior, he wrote. He
theorized that space, time, and causality were not absolute principles but only a function of the
brain, concepts parallel to the scientific discoveries of relativistic physics two generations later.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher and poet best known for "Thus
Spoke Zarathustra." He theorized that there were two moral codes: that of the ruling class (master
morality) and that of the oppressed class (slave morality). The ancient empires grew out of a master
morality, and the religions of the day out of the slave morality (which denigrates the rich and
powerful, rationalism, and sexuality). He developed the concept of the "overman" (superman) which
symbolized man at his most creative and highest intellectual capacity.

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was a French philosopher of Jewish parents who was the leading
rejectionist of the concept that scientific principles can explain all of existence. He asserted that
metaphysical principles also apply. He found credence in applying the biological theories of Darwin
(which pointed to the "survival of the fittest" in biological systems) to social theory.

George Sorel (1847-1922) was a French social philosopher who had a major influence upon
Mussolini. Sorel believed that societies naturally became decadent and disorganized, and this
inevitable decay could only be delayed by the leadership of idealists who were willing to use
violence to obtain power. His anti-democratic, anti-liberal views and pessimistic view about the
natural life-cycle of a society were antithetical to most of his contemporaries. "(10)

As an anti-democratic movement, Fascism still relied upon popular support from
a large segment of the population. Where Communism made a similar appeal for support
from the masses of the laboring class, Fascism turned to the lower middle class and the
middle class for the broad public support; backing that up with the alliance with the top
industrial and agricultural leaders.

Turning away from the rational thought of the western tradition, fascism made its'
appeal to the irrational and the emotional. Mussolini, with the help of Italian philosopher
Giovanni Gentile, wrote the following, which is excerpted from an article on Fascism
(Italian Encyclopedia, 1932). In the following paragraphs, Mussolini attacks pacifism,
Marxian socialism and the class-war, democratic ideology and liberalism. He goes on to
glorify warfare and imperialism in the old fashion conquer and control mode.
Antagonizing all of your potential rivals by publicly criticizing their method of doing
things, and backing that up by talk (and eventually the action) of war is not the mark of a
rational philosophy. It does show evidence of a belief in the heroic ideal of the ascendant
leader who can always come through with a victory at the end, irregardless of how long
the odds are against the victory.

Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of
humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither
in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of
Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the
face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and
puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other
trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have
to make the great decision -- the alternative of life or death....

The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he
rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, but above all for others -
- those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those
who will come after...

Fascism [is] the complete opposite of…Marxian Socialism, the materialist
conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the
conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and
development in the means and instruments of production.... Fascism, now and
always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by
no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic conception of history
be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and
fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their
control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war
is also denied – the natural progeny of the economic conception of history. And
above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the
transformation of society....

After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic
ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical
application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a
majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by
means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and
fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the
mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage....

Fascism denies, in democracy, the absur[d] conventional untruth of political
equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth of
"happiness" and indefinite progress....

... given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism,
and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must
also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass,
but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of
authority...a century of Fascism. For if the nineteenth century was a century of
individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and
hence the century of the State....

The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and
its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all
individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the
State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding
the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but
merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the
Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may
be called the "ethic" State....

The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to
the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom,
but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the
individual, but the State alone....(11)

It should be noted in closing that not all fascist states practiced the same variety of
fascism. In Germany, it took the much more racialist overtones of National
Socialism, or Nazi ideology. In Japan, the militarist form of fascism combined
Emperor worship with racism for an uniquely Japanese version of the philosophy.
In other countries, most especially across Europe and Latin America, differing
degrees of success occurred in instituting fascist governments of one form or
another.

It is a popular misconception that World War II bought an end to fascist governments
with the defeat of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Nothing could be further from the truth,
with Francisco Franco having a successful long rule in Spain as a fascist dictator until his
death in the 1970's. Dr. Salazar's government in Portugal also survived into the seventies
in a fascist form, while perhaps doing the best job of actually implementing the
Syndicalist corporate state into actual practice. Nationalist party-led South Africa, during
the long time of apartheid, had a limited, and within its' own group of whites, more
democratic form of fascism in place until very recently. Military type fascist states have
only recently gone out of style in much of Latin America, including the two giants, Brazil
and Argentina. Whether fascism makes a comeback in any of these places, or anywhere
else, is one of the hidden questions for the next century.

NOTES

1. Denis Mack Smith Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University
http://www.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_mussolini.html

3. Denis Mack Smith Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University

4. Ibid

5. Ibid

6. Ibid

7. Ibid

8. Ibid

9. http://www.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_mussolini.html

10.http://aleph.lib.ohio-state.edu/www/FACTS_ROOT_NAZI.HTML