Fascist Rulers

"By 1938, Mussolini could confidently assert that ‘in the face of the total collapse of the system [bequeathed] by Lenin, Stalin has covertly transformed himself into a Fascist.’"

"Mussolini was a Marxist ‘heretic'."

"Mussolini insisted that Fascism was the only form of ‘socialism’ appropriate to the ‘proletarian nations’ of the twentieth century."

"When the workers first occupied the factories, Mussolini bethought himself of ‘Red Week.’ This time [summer of 1920] he concluded, social revolution was really at hand. Eager as always to ride the wave of the future and still posing as a left-wing extremist, he applauded the strikes. But as soon as it became apparent that he had guessed wrong once again, he executed an abrupt about-face."

"Mussolini is a great executive, a true leader of men, and the great works he has accomplished are his genuine fortifications to a high place in history and in the hearts of his people."

"Mussolini used to shout, "Believe, follow, and act," and told his followers that fascism, before being a party, had been a religion."

"Mussolini is the biggest bluff in Europe. If Mussolini would have me taken out and shot tomorrow morning I would still regard him as a bluff. The shooting would be a bluff."

"The Fascist dictator had announced that he would receive the press. Everybody came. We all crowded into the room. Mussolini sat at his desk reading a book.… Mentally he was already reading the lines of the two thousand newspapers served by the two hundred correspondents. "As we entered the room the Black Shirt Dictator did not look up from the book he was reading, so intense was his concentration, etc." I tip-toed over behind him to see what the book was that he was reading with such avid interest. It was a French-English dictionary—held upside down."

"The Brown shirt would probably not have existed without the Black shirt. The march on Rome in 1922 was one of the turning points of history. The mere fact that anything of the sort could be attempted and could succeed, gave us impetus... If Mussolini had been outdistanced by Marxism, I don’t know whether we could have succeeded in holding out. At that time National Socialism was a very fragile growth. As I walked with him in the gardens of the Villa Borghese, I could easily compare his profile with that of the Roman busts, and I realized he was one of the Caesars. There's no doubt at all that Mussolini is the heir of the great men of that period."

"I have myself seen in a dozen different episodes in Italy how very popular the Duce is with the majority of the people; and there is no denying the unparalleled achievements of this man and of Fascism—the innumerable new factories, the construction of new houses and schools and hospitals, the great colonial enterprise and many more; when one recalls the deplorable state of Italy at the time of the Duce’s assumption of power, one realises the magnitude of his achievements. Over and above all this he overcame Bolshevism, not by military force, but by superior intellect, and it is him we have to thank for showing for the first time, by his decisive defeat of the inner power of Bolshevism, that even in this twentieth century it is possible to recall a people to a sense of purely national pride."

"We include all those who today stand as our allies, above all the state that has suffered the same misery, indeed, in part even greater misery than Germany itself: Italy. The Duce-and I know this-sees this battle no differently than we do. His is a poor land, overpopulated, always disadvantaged, never knowing where its daily bread will come from. He and I have sworn an oath, and no power on earth can break that bond! There were two revolutions at different times, and in different forms, but with a common goal. They will reach their common goals together."

"You express amazement at my statement that 'civilized' men try to justify their looting, butchering and plundering by claiming that these things are done in the interests of art, progress and culture. That this simple statement of fact should cause surprize, amazes me in return. People claiming to possess superior civilization have always veneered their rapaciousness by such claims... Your friend Mussolini is a striking modern-day example. In that speech of his I heard translated he spoke feelingly of the expansion of civilization. From time to time he has announced; 'The sword and civilization go hand in hand!' 'Wherever the Italian flag waves it will be as a symbol of civilization!' 'Africa must be brought into civilization!' It is not, of course, because of any selfish motive that he has invaded a helpless country, bombing, burning and gassing both combatants and non-combatants by the thousands. Oh, no, according to his own assertions it is all in the interests of art, culture and progress, just as the German war-lords were determined to confer the advantages of Teutonic Kultur on a benighted world, by fire and lead and steel. Civilized nations never, never have selfish motives for butchering, raping and looting; only horrid barbarians have those."

"Mussolini was a reluctant fascist because, underneath, he remained a Marxist, albeit a heretical one."

"Mussolini began as a disciple of Lenin and did not so much repudiate Marxism-Leninism as become a self-declared “heretic.” Thus one of Mussolini’s groups of thugs called itself the Cheka, after Lenin’s secret police."

"Mussolini has substituted efficient and energetic and progressive processes of government for Parliamentary wrangling and wasteful impotent bureaucracy. He has engendered among the people a spirit of order, discipline, hard work, patriotic devotion and faith.… Italy has attained extraordinary progress, in every respect thanks to the clear sighted and masterful guidance of that remarkable man, Benito Mussolini."."

"A very upstanding chap [who has] done a good job in Italy … [I] continue to be impressed with the innate strength of the present government and sound ideas which govern it."

"What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy."

"Mussolini was the only one among you with the mind and temperament to make a revolution. Why did you allow him to leave?"

"In Italy, comrades, in Italy there was but a Socialist able enough to lead the people through a revolutionary path, Benito Mussolini."

"Benito Mussolini is a Magnificent Beast. No apology is needed for an expression which the Duce himself would have found correct, and which fits like a glove — a boxing glove.,"

"National self-interest...leads no wise man into war. War has often been the resort of fools like Mussolini or knaves like Hitler. They shared a common fate."

"[Mussolini] was never a reformist, but always an extreme left or revolutionary socialist."

"Mussolini regarded himself as a true heretic not only with respect to religion but also with respect to reformist socialism. It was a serious mistake, he maintained, to confuse socialism with the socialist parties."

"Therefore, [Mussolini] envisaged the class struggle as a war between two minorities, the bourgeois minority and the revolutionary minority. His absorbing ambition was to be a leading protagonist, a Duce of the revolutionary minority or élite. In matters of revolutionary tactics and strategy, he was a thoroughgoing Blanquist, and he might well have been called a spiritual brother of Lenin. Like Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Mussolini was not as much concerned with the organization of a mass party of workers on a democratic basis as he was with forming a group of ardent, resolute revolutionists who would be prepared to execute a violent revolutionary uprising and to lead, if not to ‘drag along’, the mass of workers to support such an act."

"One hears murmurs against Mussolini on the ground that he is a desperado: the real objection to him is that he is a politician. Indeed, he is probably the most perfect specimen of the genus politician on view in the world today. His career has been impeccably classical. Beginning life as a ranting Socialist of the worst type, he abjured Socialism the moment he saw better opportunities for himself on the other side, and ever since then he has devoted himself gaudily to clapping Socialists in jail, filling them with castor oil, sending blacklegs to burn down their houses, and otherwise roughing them. Modern politics has produced no more adept practitioner."

"Religion is a species of mental disease. It has always had a pathological reaction on mankind."

"[Mussolini] has always retained a great admiration for Bolshevism, though he presented himself to the public as an antidote to Bolshevism."

"Mussolini was only a gangster."

"My generation really grew up at a very scary time. This time is probably twice as scary, but since we didn't know this time was coming-the Second World War was coming, the Spanish Civil War was happening when I was in high school. Mussolini had invaded Ethiopia and made all those idiotic statements that are famous to this day. Like how beautiful it was to bomb the Ethiopians. The Italian kids in my school were in heaven, they were so delighted and proud they were fainting with joy. It was a scary time. Hitler was coming inch by inch by inch. I remember my parents talking about it."

"Even if [in defining 'fascism'] we limit ourselves to our own century and its two most notorious cases, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, we find that they display profound differences. How can we lump together Mussolini and Hitler, the one surrounded by Jewish henchmen and a Jewish mistress, the other an obsessed antisemite?"

"The sweeping social changes proposed by Mussolini's first Fascist program of April 1919 (including the vote for women, the eight-hour day, heavy taxation of war profits, confiscation of church lands, and workers' participation in industrial management) stand in flagrant conflict with the macho persona of the later Duce and his deals with conservatives."

"Mussolini would be totally forgotten today if some of his lieutenants in the provinces had not discovered different vocations -- bashing Slovenes in Trieste in July 1920 and bashing socialist organizers of farm workers in the Po Valley in fall and winter 1920-21. Mussolini supported these new initiatives by the ras, and his movement turned into something else, thereafter prospering mightily."

"Neither Hitler nor Mussolini took the helm by force, even if they used force earlier to destablize the liberal regime and later to transform their governments into dictatorships."

"Mussolini spoke of himself as an 'authoritarian' and 'aristocratic' Socialist; he was elitist and antiparliamentarian, and he believed in regenerative violence. Like the revolutionary syndicalists (and, in a different manner, Lenin), Mussolini believed that only a special revolutionary vanguard could create a new revolutionary society."

"Mussolini was the greatest man of our century, but he committed certain disastrous errors. I, who have the advantage of his precedent before me, shall follow in his footsteps but also avoid his errors."

"Even as the Fascist leader, Mussolini never concealed his sympathy and admiration for Communism: he thought highly of Lenin’s ‘brutal energy,’ and saw nothing objectionable in Bolshevik massacres of hostages. He proudly claimed Italian Communism as his child."

"Given the opportunity, Mussolini would have been glad as late as 1920-21 to take under his wing the Italian Communists, for whom he felt great affinities: greater, certainly, than for democratic socialists, liberals and conservatives. Genetically, Fascism issued from the 'Bolshevik' wing of Italian socialism, not from any conservative ideology or movement."

"In order that there can be no doubt as to its antithesis to Liberalism, we may well accept Premier Mussolini's definition of Fascism:...'Granted that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism and Democracy... it may rather be expected that this will be the century of authority, a century of the left, a century of Fascism: for if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism (Liberalism always signifying individualism) it may be excepted that this will be the century of collectivism, and hence the century of the state...'"

"Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of "emergency." It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And "emergency" became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains."

"You're the top! You're the Great Houdini! You're the top! You are Mussolini!"

"[I]t is perhaps to Mussolini's credit as a human being that his nationalism was clearly heartfelt where Stalin's was undoubtedly a mere convenience."

"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say "But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.""

"Your figure is not just an Italian one. You are the apostle of the world campaign against dissolution and anarchy...Fascism...is a universal phenomenon that ought to conquer all nations...Fascism is a living Gospel."

"Yes, all Africa remembers that it was Litvinov who stood alone beside Haile Selassie in Geneva, when Mussolini's sons flew with the blessings of the Pope to drop bombs on Ethiopian women and children."

"The difference between the Italian railway service in 1919, 1920 and 1921 and that which obtained during the first year of the Mussolini regime was almost beyond belief. The cars were clean, the employees were snappy and courteous, and trains arrived at and left the stations on time — not fifteen minutes late, and not five minutes late; but on the minute."

"Mussolini accelerated the process after the conquest of Ethiopia (1935-6). The war in Africa was to provide a new context for Fascism’s scheme of social engineering."

"There seems to be no question that [Mussolini] is really interested in what we are doing and I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy."

"I don't mind telling you in confidence that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman."

"The meeting between Chesterton and Il Duce occurred in 1929, ten years before the war, at a time when, whatever his other faults, Mussolini had reintroduced a mark spirit of optimism and freshness to an Italy that had formerly been pessimistic and stagnant. Throughout the 1920s, Chesterton thought he saw in the Italian leader qualities that might have offset certain evils in Britain. It is important to keep in mind that whatever the misreadings of fascism, Chesterton always had some quite specific British problem in view when he praises Mussolini."

"For Chesterton… British public rhetoric was more than a mere style: "The motive is the desire to disguise a thing even when expressing it." To his mind, the dictator's words, even if his actions were as bad or worse than those of the parliamentarians, were morally and stylistically superior. At least they said openly what was being done openly. The British rhetoric, for Chesterton, was one with the decayed British liberalism that allowed exploitation of workers by plutocrats who were never rebuked by government or the courts. If nothing else, Mussolini's language was a bracing alternative. Gazing back across the horrors of World War II, it is hard for us to imagine how good men like Chesterton, whatever their objections to British liberalism, could admire Mussolini, though several prominent intellectuals and politicians did. Many of us have family members or friends who fought or died to stop the fascist darkness, and we find it difficult to sympathize with Chesterton's desire to be fair to Mussolini. Mussolini's thuggish violence, of course, Chesterton and others rejected. But their admiration was an index of the scale of reform they thought needed."