Mussolini Wants Your Soul
Back from the dead. Public humiliation and execution weren’t enough to hold Il Duce down. You can drag him, beat him, torture him, pelt him with rocks, even hang his dead corpse upside down as a morbid spectacle for everyone to see. Then kick him and defile him some more once you cut him down until there is nothing left but a swollen bloodless pulp…and drag him away, completely disgraced, to be buried in an unmarked grave.
He tried to flee, tried to get away to Switzerland. But he was intercepted, caught and arrested. His Fascist State, his nation, the new religion he had devised, the spiritual giant he painstakingly worked his whole political career to create, quickly collapsed in all around him, smothering him in derision, disgust, pain and brutality. It’s no wonder he fled, dawned a German uniform, and forsook his country. He could see his dream of restoring a Holy Empire was crumbling and had failed. Adversaries in Italy were hot on his trail and would hold him to account. All the bravado, all the charisma, all the narcissistic certainty he had once possessed – that he could lead his people to a new order, a new faith…none of that was enough to save him once the mob passed their judgment and expressed their collective ethical will.
They were all part of a historical convergence; a tribe, a society, a culture, a people with a shared history, defined by duty, defined by action. What began as a voluntary militia of blackshirts (some in the West might recognize similar groups today), enforcing revolutionary code and exacting political retribution, became a movement. It was an anti-party, shaking the social foundations and disrupting the institutions. “Fascists knew how to die.” There was no doctrine, only a united cause, a cause grounded in faith that generated a spirit and formed a common ethical will. “Fascism believes now and always in sanctity and heroism” and many of them died like heroes in the streets, just like Il Duce would die (although ignominiously), but in the streets nonetheless. Surely a hero by his standard.
To understand the endeavor, one must understand Fascism, one must understand the will to power and command. The concept of a Fascist State is a “concept of life,” a “spiritual attitude” of action in service of a greater whole, a greater good. The individual is not defined by the dictates of Natural Law, but is a citizen of a nation and country, bound by generations of moral laws, customs and common traditions, intent on a higher life “founded on duty,” “free from the limitations of time and space,” in which that same individual renounces their life in sacrificial service to the state, to the new religion. Only then can one “achieve that purely spiritual existence” in which their human value truly consists.
It is thus in a struggle for existential excellence and duty to the State that the Fascist individual serves themself, their nation and all of humanity at the same time. “Therefore life, as conceived of by the Fascist, is serious, austere, and religious; all its manifestations are poised in a world sustained by moral forces and subject to spiritual responsibilities.” Fascism is a new religion, sculpted by human hands, determined in deed. It is a spiritual awakening, a process in which an individual subordinates their will to the cause, the greater good and higher law; as a member of a family, society, nation and history. “Outside history [one] is a non-entity.” There can be no progression of spirit, no shared common traditions, one ceases to be a spiritual being, they stumble about haphazardly apart from the cause and collective that give them meaning.
Fascism does not believe in “happiness on earth” nor any “theological notion” of a utopia. It is a religion of the present and of action. It is the real “essence of the individual” and “stands for liberty, the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State.” Fascism is totalitarian in that it incorporates everything within itself and goes all the way down. It is the union of all parts of the society into the State apparatus. It consumes the individual in their entirety, imbues them, possesses them, a “discipline of the whole person,” soul-encompassing, a new holy trinity; in word, deed and spirit where every minute act is political.
With one’s will and intellect completely permeated, the individual is ready to do their duty for the State. That individual is now a true citizen. That individual is now free, and being free within the State, can contribute to the collective ethical will and thus help express the “national independence” of the nation. As a nation, the Fascist State is imperialist. It must expand and grow. It is an “ethical entity” only in so far as it expands because to do otherwise is to wither and die.
It employs every tool at its disposal, none more so than the corporazioni, a holy union of corporations and the State, Mussolini’s vision of “national syndicalism.” Today we call it corporatism and it thrives more than ever.
It shrugs off any desire for “perpetual peace” because peace is for the weak. A true Fascist State must grow, endlessly, mercilessly, relentlessly until empire is restored. For only through imperialism, only through force, can the Fascist State truly express the ethical will of its people, and it is only in conflict that the citizen can exemplify their heroism, devotion to the cause and national spirit.
Time has not forgotten Fascism. Time has not forgotten Mussolini, even though it tried to obliterate him and cast him into the abyss. Time has preserved and revised both, given them a new sheen, a new look. Fascism abounds everywhere, especially in the governments of the West. The corpse that was Il Duce has been revived, reanimated in the form of public-private partnerships, progressive realpolitik, and a new world order. Mussolini is back, stronger, better than ever…and he wants your soul.
* All quotations drawn from The Doctrine of Fascism – Benito Mussolini (1932)
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