What was it then - what is it now!
Fascism was born in Italy in 1917, especially in the young mind of Benito Mussolini, upon his return home as a wounded veteran from the trench-warfare of World War One experience. He and 145 other Veterans gathered together in a small hall in Milano on March 23, of 1919 and as a result formed a veteran’s association known in the Italian language as the Fasci di Combattimento. They and the rest of the Italian Army had fought gallantly in the war, along with their allies the British and the French armies and lost many precious young Italian lives to the war which raged in the Northern mountains of Italy and as a result were promised many post-war rewards for themselves and the Italian Nation as the victors against the German- Austrian Empire. At the Conference of Paris in 1918 they, along with the Italian people, found out the reality that they were not to share in any of the Italian territorial fruits of victory, but instead were to lose former Italian cities and territories in the new political arrangements then announced and established by the main Treaty political powers -- Britain, Russia and France. Italy and Italians now felt betrayed by their former Allies
Fascism was given a prominent role to play in Italian National life due mainly to the war’s devastation upon their land and the nation’s pride After the war the country was suffering from many ills. A host of economic and social problems were apparent in every region of the country. The nation was exhausted by sacrifice, having suffered nearly two million casualties, far greater than anyone had anticipated, and its citizens now faced severe food shortages and disastrous levels of unemployment. Most importantly Fascism became their defender in the many street battles which then raged in their cities and towns of Italy between these war veterans and members of Italy’s Communist party. The country faced the very real danger of becoming another European Communist State under the authority of the new and powerful influence of the Russian Communist International program led by Joseph Stalin and others.
Fascism is a product of the Italian People -- it is as Italian in nature as is Italian grand opera, architecture, art, literature, science, religion, culture and industry. It is not course and brutal but is as intellectual and refined as were the many social glories and civilized qualities of the former golden age of the Italian Renaissance and its many human benefits bestowed upon the world in general.
FASCISM IS A PRODUCT OF THE ITALIAN PEOPLE AND THE ITALIAN ANSWER TO ITALIAN NEED
As Italian Fascist social and economic political successes grew and were being seen and admired and even copied by other nations of the world, Fascism was judged to be too intellectual and dangerous for certain Western nations to comprehend and control. These nations began to gather, as vultures do, to attack and defeat by propaganda every premise, every ideology, every program and every institution of this new social order in Italy. After all, it was they who were running the political affairs of the world, not this young, peasant born, brash upstart in Italy. The Italian people were fortunate enough to have this young brave political genius born into their midst in 1883 in the small hamlet of Predappio, Italy.
Typical of the news from England is the following 1936 report from the Italian Embassy in London: “ The British Liberals, Labourites, etc., especially the latter, are a conglomerate of fanatics, necessarily anti-Fascist, who represent what I call the “historic beast” of England. They are the same fanatics who six centuries ago burned Joan of Arc and four centuries ago beheaded Mary Stuart and later Charles I. Not for nothing was Mary Stuart’s executioner an ancestor of the Cecil family, of which Lord Cecil is the last notorious descendant. A year ago the “beast” almost got the upper hand. But it did not succeed in dragging the British people into a crusade against Italy, although it managed to drag the Baldwin Government… . Anti-Fascist fanaticism had made them (the Labour Party) accept the Conservative’s rearmament programme not as a necessity of defence but as a means of defence against the Fascist threat.”
And now what has it become in today’s world. Fascism in its lower case spelling fascism has become a convenient term to label and describe anyone one or any government in the past as being mean-spirited or a part of a brutal totalitarian regime. It is pinned on whomever, whenever or wherever a writer or a government spokesman wishes to malign a person or a government having no affiliation with any Italian connection either presently or in the past. It is a sign of literary and or intellectual laziness or a predisposed need to continue the hateful assault on the Italian people, Benito Mussolini or the Italian Fascist Government that governed Italy from 1922 to 1943 in the fear that another Il Duce may one day be seen on the political scene. It has become the main media weapon favoured by a phalanx of modern media commentators of all stripes when they wish to demean and demonize anything that does not have the favour and approval of the world’s new breed of Internationalists.
Oxford’s Latin Dictionary has this to say “ fascis, is , m. bundle, parcel; fasces, pl. bundles of rods, carried before the highest magistrates of Rome, usually with an axe bound up in the middle of them; the power or office of a magistrate.
A rebirth, or a renaissance of Benito Mussolini’s concept of a prosperous well governed State, in its truest Italian form, still scares the daylights out of today’s main centres of political power and influence, and as such these vicious attacks against the person and the programs, institutions and government of Mussolini must continue and be maintained at all costs. The political and social Italian ideas of Il Duce are still too intellectual, too fundamental and too powerful for most Western minds to comprehend or deal with.
The Persistence Of Fascism is remarkably analogous to the age old chronicles of the Persistence of Roman- Italian Catholicism, the timeless Italian Renaissance, the poignant dramatic passions of Italian Opera, the radiant illumination of Italian Culture with its myriad expressions of genius, charm, fascination, and international admiration.
