Mussolini

10 Key excerpts on "Mussolini"

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  Duce: The Contradictions of Power

  The Political Leadership of Benito Mussolini

  • Peter J. Williamson(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Hurst Publishers

    (Publisher)

  35 What was in relatively short supply was a deep political identification with Mussolini’s radical Fascism, if for no other reason than it was modulated in promoting his personal cult. Looking back after he fell from power he would, as seen earlier, come to question some of the bases of appeal upon which his Fascism was advanced, although Italians in general were held to be essentially culpable. He never sought to reflect upon the contradiction that, while he sought to build a national community, his regime to a considerable extent rested upon responding to particular sectional interests and not others. His intention to build a national community was therefore far from solidly based.

  Some historians regard studies of Mussolini to have exaggerated his influence over what happened during the ventennio at the expense of that of the Fascist movement. Certainly, it is important not simply to lay all that occurred at the door of the Duce. Mussolini sought a legal revolution that left many institutions intact or at least surviving from Liberal Italy. Likewise, many of his economic and social policies can trace their origins and thinking to the pre-1922 period. That said, Mussolini’s rule marked a definite reversal in the broad trend in the twentieth century of democratic and social progress in Italy. His rule entailed the end of any parliamentary government, the creation of a pervasive police state and curtailment of civil liberties, the suppression of the political and industrial organisational power of the working class, a stricter regimentation of society, and ultimately a far more aggressively expansionist foreign policy. Without the cataclysmic wartime and postwar dislocation and strife in 1914–22 it is impossible to imagine the conditions existing for Fascism to come to power then. The earlier inability of Prime Minister Giolitti to secure sufficient support for a coalition around democratic reform, the growing ineffectiveness of the Liberal state, the view of employers (especially landowners) that the state should essentially be their protector, a virulent and prevalent hostility to socialism and the rise of a militant if unrealistic nationalism all set an important context for the rise of Fascism and hence of Mussolini.36

  The Fascists, with Mussolini at the head, were able to ride and ferment these circumstances in rising to power, doing much to set the tenor of the ventennio. If Fascism marked important breaks with the past, outside the comparatively small core of ardent Fascists, those who variously supported his regime displayed considerable self-interest in protecting and expanding private power. Those people and institutions with power did on the one hand sustain Mussolini’s authoritarian, repressive and elitist rule, but on the other guaranteed that the regime had a notably conservative, technocratic and privately acquisitive (not to say corrupt) nature. The Fascist state enabled private power to pursue interests at variance with the ideas of national regeneration for something more prosaic. Acquisitiveness was endorsed by Mussolini. In one of the many contradictory features of his leadership, he saw private wealth as one of the glues to keep party and other leaders on the side of his regime, which claimed solely to be motivated by the collective national interest. Many Fascist leaders became very rich under the regime.37

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  European Dictatorships 1918-1945

  • Stephen J. Lee(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 4 Dictatorship in Italy

  Italy was the first of the major European states to seek salvation in the policies of the radical right, and Mussolini was the first of a succession of fascist dictators. Yet there has always been a puzzling element about Mussolini’s rule. Although his influence was profound, he is often derided as a buffoon. In 1919, for example, the socialist Giacinto Serrati described him as ‘a rabbit; a phenomenal rabbit; he roars. Observers who do not know him mistake him for a lion.’1 In 1961, A.J.P. Taylor called him ‘a vain, blundering boaster without either ideas or aims’.2 ‘Fascism’, he added, ‘was a façade. There was nothing behind it but show and empty rhetoric.’3 There have also been references to Mussolini as a ‘sawdust Caesar’.

  With views like this it has often been difficult to take Mussolini and Italian Fascism seriously. Yet this is precisely what we have to do if we are to avoid trivializing a topic which has as much historical significance as Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany. The key to understanding the Italian dictatorship is not to assume that it was simple but, rather, to accept that it was complex. By avoiding the simplistic, recent analyses have provided plenty of lines which can be pursued. This chapter aims to look at some of them.

  THE RISE OF Mussolini TO 1922: AN OUTLINE From the beginning of his stormy career in journalism and politics until he became Prime Minister in 1922, Mussolini underwent a series of major shifts in the direction of his beliefs and tactics.

  His original radicalism was of the left, not of the right. He leaned towards revolutionary socialism, thought in terms of class struggle and uncompromisingly condemned nationalism and imperialism, particularly Italy’s conquest of Tripoli in 1912. He was a member of the PSI (Italian Socialist Party) and in 1912 was appointed editor of the newspaper Avanti by the party’s militants. Through Avanti

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  Fascism

  Comparison and Definition

  • Stanley G. Payne(Author)
  • 1980(Publication Date)
  • University of Wisconsin Press

    (Publisher)

  Such al- liances sometimes necessitated tactical, structural, and pro- grammatic concessions. The only two fascistic leaders who actually rose to power, Hitler and Mussolini, began their governments as multiparty coalitions, and Mussolini, de- spite the subsequent creation of an officially one-party state, never fully escaped the pluralist compromise with which he had begun. Moreover, since the doctrines of the author- itarian right were usually more precise, clear, and articu- late--and often more practical-than those of the fascists, the capacity of the former for ideological and programmatic in- fluence was considerable. Nonetheless, the ideas and goals of fascists differed in several fundamental respects from those of the new authoritarian right (as will be discussed in WHAT DO WE MEAN BY FASCISM? 19 more detail below), and the intention to transcend right- wing conservatism as well as liberalism and marxism was firmly held, though not always clearly realized in practice. Much of the confusion and ambiguity surrounding the in- terpretation of fascist movements stems from the fact that on- ly in a few instances did they succeed in passing to the stage of governmental participation, and only in the case of Ger- many were the full implications of a fascist doctrine-in the form of its most radical variant-carried out by a regime in power. It is thus difficult to generalize about fascist systems or the fascist doctrine of the state, since even the Italian vari- ant was seriously compromised. All that can be established with clarity is that fascist aspirations concerning the state were unique in not being limited to traditional authoritarian doctrine such as monarchy or corporatism but positing a new radical secular system, normally republican and author- itarian.

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  The Modern State

  Theories and Ideologies

  • Erika Cudworth, Timothy Hall, John McGovern(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • EUP

    (Publisher)

  In place of force, a political edu-cation in fascist ideology, propagated through the PNF, was to bind the individual to the state, just as a religion binds together individ-uals through ritual and doctrine without using force. In this way, because it represented a politicised version of Christianity, totali-tarianismo was moderated. Practical politics Fascism 1918–1945 Only in Italy, after Mussolini formed his first government in 1922, and in Germany after 1933, could it be said that there were Fascist regimes. Even that is debatable. Historians have questioned the extent to which Mussolini’s internally divided regime was genuinely Fascist. Payne has noted that ex-Marxists and syndicalists militated for a revolutionary national socialism, revisionists saw fascism as providing a new elite to command the existing political system, paramilitary groups used terror to establish a dictatorship, and nationalists worked for an authoritarian state under the monarchy. De Felice’s distinction between fascism ‘as movement’ and ‘as regime’ draws to our attention the disparity between the clerical, corporatist, capitalist and conservative Mussolini state and the revolutionary, anti-bourgeois and national-socialist Fascist move-ment (de Felice 1976). To fascist revolutionaries the Mussolini regime represented an imperfect embodiment of the fascist ideals which inspired the movement because of its alliances with the monarchy and the Church and its accomodation of capitalism. Contemporary historians tend to agree that, even at the height of his power, Mussolini was unable to institute a fully fascist regime. As early as 1927, the PNF was widely perceived by revolutionary Fascists as having become conservative (Payne 1980: 68–9). The Italian state before the Fascist seizure of power had been weak, divided and, especially in the aftermath of the First World War, barely capable of governing.

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  Latin Fascist Elites

  The Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar Regimes

  • Paul H. Lewis(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  As plans for the march proceeded he was involved in negotiations with conservative and Nationalist Party politicians to form a new cabinet with Fascist participation. General Emilio de Bono, a latecomer to Fascism, was Mussolini's contact with the army. Italo Balbo, who had done much to impose a military structure and discipline on the squadristi, represented agrarian Fascism. In the end, the March on Rome was less of a revolutionary seizure of power by the Fascists than a bold move by Mussolini to raise the ante in negotiations already underway for him to enter the government. As the blackshirted columns con- verged on the capital, King Victor Emmanuel II wavered, considered declar- ing martial law, and finally caved in when doubts arose as to whether the army would fire on the Fascists. Why resist, when cabinet instability had become so endemic that only with Fascist support could there be a chance of maintaining order? The king sent for Mussolini, who was waiting in Milan, ready to take power or take flight, depending on how the march turned out. On October 30 Mussolini arrived by train in Rome and accepted the king's request that he form a government. Mussolini AND HIS MINISTERS Benito Mussolini became prime minister of Italy on 30 October 1922 and remained in that post until King Victor Emmanuel II dismissed him on 25 July 1943, a period of approximately twenty years and nine months. 22 Latin Fascist Elites: The Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar Regimes After falling from power Mussolini was kept under arrest until the Germans rescued him and installed him at the head of a puppet regime, the Italian Social Republic, that lasted from 23 September 1943 to 28 April 1945. This latter period will not be included in the analysis because Mussolini had no real freedom of action. Before describing trends in recruitment to the Fascist elite, it is first nec- essary to determine which institution in that system can give us the most representative picture.

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  Mussolini and Italian Fascism

  • Giuseppe Finaldi(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In theory anything that purported to further these goals was good, anything that hindered them was bad. It is difficult to see this as an original and novel political doctrine. Rather it was the alive and kicking Vittorio Veneter pro-gramme writ large, and in its essentials the agenda of late nineteenth-century nationalism. What Mussolini rightly defined as new was the level of activism and participation expected of the people: above all, he wrote, ‘The Fascist disdains an “easy” life’ (in Delzell, 1970: 93). For Mussolini to have some-thing to offer, for his Regime to dispel rumours of middle-aged redundancy, ‘going to the people’ meant dispelling the Regime’s and the Duce ’s built-in obsolescence. Even in Mussolini’s own definition of Fascism his greatest fear was a lapse back to liberalism, as if, by default, crises having been overcome and emergencies solved, Italy would, like any civilized country, automatically return to the liberal fold. Mussolini was aware of his own expendability if, as he stated, ‘[liberalism is classified] as outside the judgement of history, as though history were a hunting ground reserved for the professors of Liberalism alone – as though Liberalism were the final unalterable verdict of civilization’ (in Delzell, 1970: 102). 66 Mussolini AND ITALIAN FASCISM The Fascist Regime, 1926 –36 67 In practice, the way in which most Italians understood Fascism as it was fed to them and as they themselves developed it in the 1930s was very much as an activation or an intensification of those agendas of the ‘nationalisation of the masses’ (Mosse, 1975) that had been such a central feature of Italian life since unification. There had already been parades, there had already been uniforms, drill, speeches, patriotic songs and celebrations. There had already been cults of national heroes, the myth of ancient Rome, the construction of national monuments and preparation for war.

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  Mussolini and Fascism

  The View from America

  • John Patrick Diggins(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  Soon there emerged a common characterization of the event and the man. Typical was the treat- ment in Collier's, which began with a description of the postwar chaos in Italy followed by the drama of the Fascist march to power and concluding with a teasing personal glimpse of the disciplining strong man. II Duce represented the triumph of law and order over anarchy and radicalism, and his assumption of government reponsibilities would, it was believed, have a sober- ing influence on his violent imprudenza. "Normalcy" was the catchword of the times, for Italy as well as for America. 13 Despite the reiteration of this triumphant theme, many re- porters admitted that the meaning and direction of Fascism re- mained obscure. Their uncertainty revealed itself in the questions they posed: did the March on Rome signify a simple coup d'etat, a bloodless, hence "glorious" rebellion; was it a dress rehearsal for civil war, or was it the familiar ministerial game of musical 12 "Mussolini: Garibaldi or Caesar?" LD, LXXV (NOV. 18, 1922), 17-18; Carter, pp. 14-15. 13 The reaction of the international press is briefly described in Alan Cassels, "Some Reflections on Mussolini's Cult of Public Opinion," a paper delivered before the annual meeting of the American Association of Public Opinion Research, May 1965, New London, Conn. Cottier's, Lxxn (Sept. 15, 1923), 7-8, 33. 30 AMERICA, ITALY, & THE RISE OF Mussolini chairs; or could it be a new kind of revolution—a revolution of the Right? However the event was interpreted, most writers shared Arthur Brisbane's conviction that Fascism sounded the awakening of a viable middle-class political life in Italy.

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  The United States and Fascist Italy

  The Rise of American Finance in Europe

  • Gian Giacomo Migone, Molly Tambor(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  . . Leninism. But in Britain we have not yet had to face this danger in the same poisonous form . . . but I do not have the least doubt that, in our struggle, we shall be able to strangle communism.” (Corriere della Sera, Jan 21 1927). 36 R. W. Child, “Preface,” in B. Mussolini, My Autobiography, London: 1928. 37 The Literary Digest, vol. 75, November 18, 1922, p. 17. 38 The Boston Evening Transcript, October 30, 1922, p. 14. 39 Ibid., November 1, 1922, section II, p. 2. 40 The United States and the Rise of Fascism in Italy Although a dictator and the leader of a successful coup, Signor Mussolini has shown no disposition to remain indefinitely as a dictator, nor to rely permanently upon the Fascisti to keep him in office. His coalition government was proof of this claim, according to an editorial the following day, which praised the conservative character and patriotism of the Fascist movement and predicted that it would not show such folly as to pursue imperialist expansion. 40 The qualities attributed to Fascism and to its “duce” were by now characterized by normalcy – that is to say by the ideology of normalization that dominated American politics after the war, when a wave of anti- Wilsonian restorationism swept the country. Mussolini’s energy would frequently be compared to that of Theodore Roosevelt. 41 The essentially conservative and restorationist character of the Fascist seizure of power corresponded well with the orientation of the incumbent Republican administrations during the twenties. Equally reassuring were Mussolini’s business-oriented proposals and his “frank patriotism,” especially in the eyes of the industrial and financial interests that also happened to control a large section of the U.S.

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  Routes Into the Abyss

  Coping with Crises in the 1930s

  • Helmut Konrad, Wolfgang Maderthaner(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Berghahn Books

    (Publisher)

  C HAPTER 4 F ASCISM IN I TALY BETWEEN THE P OLES OF R EACTIONARY T HOUGHT AND M ODERNITY Karin Priester Introduction In his work ‘A Brief History of Fascism in Italy’ Brunello Mantelli summa-rizes the key structural problem of the Mussolini Regime as follows: ‘Even if one were to take the official data and statistics of the “Achievements” and workings of the Fascist Regime in Italy as genuine, it becomes appar-ent that the will of Mussolini and his cohorts was to create the illusion of “Modernity” while not actually “Modernizing” the nation at all.’ 1 Modernity without Modernization – in this and similar paradoxes, the researchers of Fascism have tried to identify the ambivalent character of Fascism as a reactionary, populist trend. Jeffrey Herf labelled National Socialism as ‘Reactionary Modernism’; Ralf Dahrendorf described it as an intended thrust into Modernity; Timothy Mason spoke of the social policies of the Third Reich as being structured around the idea of ‘Mod-ernization without Modernity’; and Nicola Tranfaglia described Italian Fascism as being ‘contradictory modernization’. On the other hand, when interviewed by the British Sunday Times in May 2008, the new mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, of the neo-Fascist Alleanza Nazionale Party, claimed that Fascism had played a positive role in the modernization of Italy. As examples, he cited measures against malaria, the reclaiming of swampland (bonifica integrale) and the partial 56 Karin Priester erection of the EUR (Eusposizione Universale Roma) quarter in south-west Rome, meant to be completed for the 1942 World Fair (but never completed due to the Second World War). 2 Alemanno not only reassessed Fascism historically with his view, but conscientiously masked and glossed over historical fact.

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  What History Tells

  George L. Mosse and the Culture of Modern Europe

  • Stanley G. Payne, David J. Sorkin, John S. Tortorice, Stanley G. Payne, David J. Sorkin, John S. Tortorice(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • University of Wisconsin Press

    (Publisher)

  Most ominously, nationalism, the basic force that made fascism possible in the first place, not only remains but is growing in strength—still the principal integrative force among peoples and nations. Those ideals of mass politics upon which fas- cism built its political style are very much alive, ready to absorb and exploit the appropriate myths. The danger of some kind of authoritarianism is always pres- ent, however changed from earlier forms or from its present worldwide manifes- tations. Speculations about the future depend upon an accurate analysis of the past. This essay is meant to provide a general framework for a discussion of fascism, in the hope of leading us closer to that historical reality without which we cannot un- derstand the past or the present. 154 To Conclude: Not Just Culture I hope I have retraced the development of Mosse’s concept of fascism with a sufficient degree of impartiality. I believe that his concept of fas- cism is on the whole persuasive and that it stands, in many respects, as a definitive contribution to the historiography on fascism. There are, how- ever, some aspects, both specific and general, of Mosse’s interpretation and methodology that raise various problems, and these will have to be thoroughly discussed in another venue as part of a broader critical revi- sion of Mosse’s interpretation, because they are essential for understand- ing fascism. I have in mind, for instance, the relationship between fascism and modernity, the role of World War I, the relationship between the leader and the movement, and the problem of the political system of fas- cism. A critical revision of his ideas, by the way, is what, in my view, Mosse would appreciate as the best recognition of the value of his work, since he himself has been a constant critic of his own ideas.

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