The History of Fascism and Benito Mussolini

After news broke last week that British authorities had foiled a plot to blow up airplanes bound for the United States, President Bush called it “a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists.” That got us wondering about fascism and fascists. Where did those terms come from? And what do they really mean?

These days, hardly anyone calls themselves a “fascist.” Since the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, the term has become an insult, and scholars argue endlessly over its proper use.

Who You Calling “Fascist”?

Some say the only true “fascists” were the Italian Fascists, the party led by Benito Mussolini from 1919 to 1943. Others reserve the term for Mussolini’s Fascists, Hitler’s Nazis, and various other right-wing political groups – like Austria’s Fatherland Front, Portugal’s National Union, and Spain’s Falange – that sprouted up in the wake of World War I, at least partly in response to communism.

But many scholars and commentators use the term “fascist” much more broadly, to refer to all groups that share certain characteristics, including contempt for democracy and liberty, extreme nationalism (or ethnocentrism), and pursuit of a totalitarian state. Such groups often couch their totalitarian projects in calls for national, cultural, or ethnic “renewal” – though the good old days for which fascists wax nostalgic are often more myth than history.

Fascism’s Founding Father

It’s repugnant stuff. But the earliest fascists didn’t apologize for it – not even when they were heaping scorn on things like freedom, voting, and peace.

Take fascism’s founding father: Benito Mussolini, who inspired Adolf Hitler before playing second fiddle to him. Mussolini seized power in Italy in 1922, and ruled as dictator until World War II brought him down. He coined the term “fascism” in 1919, from the Italian fascio, meaning “union” or “league,” and the Latin fasces, a bundle of sticks strapped to an ax – the ancient Roman symbol of authority and penal power. In 1932, Mussolini co-wrote a 6,000-word entry on fascism for an Italian encyclopedia. Here’s what that article says.

On Fascist “Spirituality”

* “Fascism sees in the world not only those superficial, material aspects in which man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self-centered . . . it sees . . . the nation and the country; individuals and generations bound together by a moral law, with common traditions and a mission which, suppressing the instinct for life closed in a brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on duty, a life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self-sacrifice, the renunciation of self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.”

* “In the Fascist conception of history, man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which he contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation.”

On Fascist “Inclusiveness”

* “The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State – a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values – interprets, develops, and invigorates the whole life of a people.”

* “[Fascism] aims at refashioning not only the forms of life but their content – man, his character, and his faith. To achieve this purpose it enforces discipline and uses authority, entering into the soul and ruling with undisputed sway.”

On Fascist “Liberty”

* “Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State.”

* “Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual. Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual. And if liberty is to be the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State.”

On Fascist “Democracy”

* “Fascism trains its guns on the whole block of democratic ideologies, and rejects both their premises and their practical applications and implements. Fascism denies that numbers can be the determining factor in human society; it denies the right of numbers to govern by means of periodical consultations; it asserts the irremediable and fertile and beneficent inequality of men who cannot be leveled by any such mechanical and extrinsic device as universal suffrage.”

* “Fascism is . . . opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number.”

On Fascist “Diplomacy”

* “The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. . . . Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit – that is, in the tendency of nations to expand – a manifestation of their vitality. In the opÃ?­posite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home country, it sees a symptom of decadence.”

* “Fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace. It therefore discards pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciaÃ?­tion in contradistinction to self-sacrifice. War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it.”