The Rise Of Fascism Throught Mussilini and The Italian Fasci Party

When Benito Mussolini was first elected to the National Italian Bloc on may 15, 19221 , street fights erupted on the streets of Italy, leaving 105 dead and 431 wounded. A gruesome foreshadowing of the death and corruption later to be induced by his fascist party. What lead to these Fascist actions? What were the plans and reasons for the horrible death that Mussolini would eventually encounter.

Adolf Hitler took turn of the nineteenth century economist Thomas Robert Malthus very seriously. His views were that as the population grew the the current population would run out of “living space”, which Hitler referred to as "lebensraum", and that measures had to be taken to stop the problem. Malthus thought that either nature would bring human populations back into balance by war, famine, disease, and death. A better alternative which he thought up was that "moral restraint" would promote late marriages and infrequent sex, induced by strong religious faith. Hitler did not think that Malthus’ solutions were sufficient, and soon developed the theory of “The Jewish Problem”.

Fascists were tamer versions of Nazis. a fascists' economic view was mainly negative: they were not based on socialism, and they did not believe that the Marxist idea of the nationalization of industry and the seizing of the capitalist class was the right way to run an economy. But they did not agree with the "lebensraum" doctrines of Hitler. They were less anti-semitic and were known to do their killing on more of a retail rather than a wholesale scale.

But fascists were surely of the same ideological genre as Nazis. They recognized each other. It is no accident that Hitler writes of his "profoundest admiration for the great man south of the Alps," Benito Mussolini, the reviver of fascism. It is no accident that Mussolini allied with Hitler during World War II, and no accident that both Hitler and Mussolini sent aid to Francisco Franco's rebels in the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s. It is no accident that Nazis fleeing Europe after the collapse of Hitler's "Third Reich" found a welcome in Juan Peron's Argentina.

The fascists, being the successors of the more than 2,000 years dead Roman republic were a symbol of order and strength. They became a standard symbol of republican prosperity, forming and icon of a revival of republican doctrines and ideals. Even today in the U.S. Treasury building evidence of fascism still lives. The fascist bore a symbol, dubbed fasces. The fasces were bundles of sticks, tied together. They were carried by the bodyguards and attendants of Roman politicians. The message was that one stick could be easily broken, but that a bundle of sticks tied together was very strong. Hence the strength and power of the Roman Republic depended on its unity, and its respect for each of its citizens.

Fascism as a twentieth-century doctrine was the invention of Benito Mussolini, who had been a rising although erratic star (he had previously been arrested over 11 times) in Italy's socialist party before World War I. Mussolini, however, became convinced during World War I of the problems socialism caused to himself: it had no place for the nationalist enthusiasm that he saw during the war, no place for Italys current struggle between nations, and no recognition of the fact that the national community was associated not with one's international class or with humanity in general but souly with solidarity. Mussolini soon became an anti-socialist, this was induced with the fact that socialism had no plan for how a post-capitalist economy would operate. Mussolini was intent on integrating the lessons and appeal of nationalism with the appeal of socialism. The movement he produced he called "fascism."

First supporting Italian nationalism, Mussolini's new movement, emphasized in the need for occupation of regions on the Italian-Yugoslav border. Secondly it was anti-socialism oriented, and in being so they recruiting groups of young thugs and sent them out into the streets to beat up socialists. As well as disrupt working-class organizations, and the supporters of elected socialist officials. Italy's elected politicians, in vain, tried to suppress and to ally with fascism. In 1921, after winning his electoral successes, Mussolini threatened to make Italy ungovernable through large-scale political violence unless he was appointed prime minister. The king named him prime minister. And from there he soon became dictator of Italy, or Duce as he put it.

Although many deny the existence of "fascism," it has been thought to be a ploy devised by Mussolini, simply to give some cloak of ideology to his personal despotion. There is no doubt that fascism was unorganized, self-contradictory, confusing, and incredibly vague. But most political movements are disorganized, self-contradictory, confused, and vague. Although this may seem a wrong approach to leadership, Mussolini new that in forming a coalition or a party the goal is to maintain friendships and alliances by the blurring of differences and the vague reference of concepts inside the group, and not to obtain conceptual clarity, or logical, or correct thought.

But fascism in the twentieth century has too strong a past to be an ideology that is lost in our society, even if many fascists most of the time were clearer on what they were against than what they were for. I count six elements usually found,in Italy and as well as elsewhere, in groups who claimed to be fascist:

A belief in leaders: Good politics is defined, not as representatives voicing the needs of those which they are above but leaders who command; the goals of a country are instigated by the leaders,

A belief in the value of a strong and unified nation: The eager sacrifice of ones individual goals and life to further the strength of the nation, with war and expansion as tests of strength and arenas for heroic sacrifice.

Coordination and propaganda: Advertising, such as ceremonies and festivals, the ruling party may act as an enforcer of discipline and respect for their leader, or Duce.

A belief in at least some traditional hierarchies: Possibly the army, a family, sometimes the church.

A hatred of socialists and liberals: Being opponents of national self-assertion socialist are hated. Liberals as well, seeing as they have views which are unwilling to fight socialists, are thought to be self-absorbed individualists who have little purpose but to weakened the nation, and act as parliamentarians whom do not recognize that the nation holds rights, and not the individual.

A hatred of Jews: Anyone different was viewed as scum, and scum was killed at will.

One of the most dominate themes in the fascist movement was that liberal capitalism had had its chance and had failed in every aspect it had promised, which in turn, made the fascists new outlook seem welcoming.

The first socialist problem was economic failure: They had not granted the high employment and rapid economic growth originally promised.

A second was distributional failure: Socialism did not help out the economics of the population at all, either the rich got richer and the rest stayed poor, or the liberalist formed a capitalism which failed to form an equal income between the educated and the non educated.

The third was moral failure: The market economy eliminated human relationships within business and so forth. Previously most deals were done on a favor system, and never was anything concrete. But no one was comfortable with machines such as a printing press for transforming money into items, or labor time into commission. By ignoring and trying to eliminate the contest and gift-exchange dimensions of economic relationships, the market society dehumanized much of life.

Most of all, Mussolini said that the capitalist order of the liberalisms ignored the fact that the population is in the situation together. This meaning that the inhabitants of his nation had interests in common, those being that there was much more power in a group then there was in the interests of an individual. Therefore the economic policy of a fascist needs to be approached in a "syndicalist" or "corporatist" manner. The state of Italy needed desperately to form a mutual bond between employers and the unions formed in their corporations. They needed as well to inform greatly when necessary to make sure that the employers and unions followed the procedure with care. To set the price of labor and the quantity of employment, the market forces and not the government would regulate the problem.

Not only the liberal economy but also the liberal government was flawed: parliaments were incompetent. Composed either (a) of time-servers with no initiative, (b) corrupt distributors of favors to special interests, or (c) ideological champions who focused not on the public interest but what made their own narrow slice of supporters feel good. Parliamentary regimes were simply incompetent to handle the problems of modern life, and needed to be replaced by leaders who would not "represent" but would lead the people.

If one was an anti-socialist, fascism was the only alternate option. Many believed that once the working class became aware of their voting strength, the socialist movement would only lead to Communism. Previous hierarchal experiences in our history, such as kings, nobles, and priests, were no longer legitimate. So the only alternative Mussolini could take was arbitrary despotic leadership in the service of fighting socialism.

Today in our own society many old aspects of Mussolinis fascism are present in the the governing. In a recent article in the Gazette, The Faces of James by James Gregor, he defines fascism as follows.

“ (Fascism is) characterized by several common elements: intense nationalism and xenophobia; a leadership principle with an all pervasive “cult of personality” ; military aggressiveness; a call to heroic self sacrifice; the subordination of the individual to the collective; extensive government intervention in the economy and society; hegemonic one party rule; complete state control over education, the media and civic life; and the emphasis on national humiliation and the need to restore “lost territories.””

Now think of the way the PQ has recently been handling things, many aspects resemble the above points. Our history is filled with blind fascism, where people have been living under the conditions, and not even knowing it. If you take a look at European and Latin American governments between the World Wars, you could easily see that fascism was the wave of the future.