Chapter 11

From Marxism to Fascist Nationalism

The first systematic leftist and nationalistic opposition against Moscow-centered communism came from Italy. It was fascism; it had clearly socialistic origins. The fasces were the Roman symbols of authority and they reappeared in the symbols of the French Republic and on the American dime at a later period. In the earlier 1890s fasci (“bundles,” leagues) of workers so-called fasci dei lavoratori created grave disturbances primarily in Sicily, but also in parts of Tuscany. They were imbued with romantic socialist ideas and could only be subdued by force.

The founder of this century’s fascism was Benito Mussolini, the son of an Italian Socialist blacksmith who had two sons; the older he called Benito (and not, in the Italian way, Benedetto) after Benito Juárez, the Mexican Indian who, supported by the United States, had defeated and then executed Emperor Maximilian Ferdinand Joseph, a Hapsburg and brother of Franz Joseph. The younger Mussolini was baptized Arnaldo after the medieval revolutionary Arnaldo di Brescia, a cleric who protested against the wealth and power of the Popes. Young Benito Mussolini was also a fanatical Socialist and started out to become, like his mother, a teacher. Later he went to Switzerland to take literature courses at the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva while earning his livelihood as a mason. He had difficulties with the police, was temporarily jailed, and later went to Trent, then in Austria, where he worked as a journalist for two newspapers, printed in Italian, which had nationalistic and Socialist tendencies. He became convinced that the local population, though ethnically Italian in its vast majority, preferred Austrian rule and, due to clerical influences, hated the idea of joining Italy. Mussolini also considered the Austrian administration superior to that of his own country.1

The future duce del fascismo also used his stay to study German quite thoroughly, but was finally expelled by the Austrian authorities who were suspicious of his nationalistic and irredentistic propaganda. Back in Italy Mussolini became an agitator against the Italian War with Turkey over Tripolitania (Libya). As a good Socialist young Mussolini considered this an imperialistic war of aggression. In 1913 he published a book in Rome, the fruit of certain contacts he had made in Trent with Czech nationalists. The book was called Giovanni Hus, il veridico, “John Hus, the Truthful.” It was badly written, showed a marked anti-Catholic bias (as did his one and only novel The Cardinal’s Mistress), but was far more political than religious. Actually Mussolini was also attracted in earlier years by unorthodox Socialists such as Sorel and by anarchists such as Prince Kropotkin.2

What interested Mussolini more than anything else was the popular movement which had sprung up after the burning of Hus at the stake in 1415—one of the great blunders the history of the Catholic Church abounds in. The more moderate followers of Hus, the Utraquists, soon made their peace with the Church and were given concessions in their rite while the Taborites, the radical wing, embraced extreme religious, social, and political propositions. In the Taborite movement (so-called after the newly founded fortified city of Tabor in Bohemia) nationalism (“ethnicism”), democracy, and various socialistic trends were united in a new synthesis for the first time in Europe. It was obvious that such a violently collectivistic and identitarian current immediately encountered the strongest opposition from the Catholic Church, which is supranational, has always recognized the principle of idoneity against all egalitarian manias, and has a long tradition of patriarchalism, of respect for the father image.3

The Taborites waged violent racial-ideological wars not only in the Lands of the Crown of St. Wenceslas (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia), but also in the surrounding areas—Austria, Saxony, Upper Hungary. They were feared for their utter inhumanity; for their tendency to kill all men, women, and children in the cities they conquered; for their limitless hatred for everything German. In Komotau, for instance, all males were slaughtered—except thirty who had to bury the others.4 The Hussite women were completely “emancipated” and worse than the men in committing atrocities—against other women. In one case they undressed their victims completely and burned them in groups, reserving special cruelties for those who were pregnant.5 When the Taborites stormed Prachatitz (Prachatice) in 1420 they spared the lives of the Utraquists but burned all the other men alive.6 Their hostility for everything Catholic and German was matched only by their loathing for the nobility—and this in spite of the fact that, as in the later leftist revolution, members of the nobility frequently acted as leaders for the bestialized masses. Zižka of Trocnov was one of them. Here again one has to remember that sadistic tortures are the expression of hatreds and that hatreds always originate from some sense of inferiority, or some sort of weakness. When we feel or really are superior, we have the choice to treat others with contempt and pettiness or, much better, with love and magnanimity. It is the truly inferior person in a superior position who yields to his sadistic drives. Moreover, there is also a statistical aspect to this state of affairs. It is almost always the inferior majorities who try to exterminate the superior minorities, who surely would agree with Ovid’s Bene vixit qui bene latuit. Privileged minorities might have a strong libido dominandi, but the drive toward physical extermination always has a root in the inferiority complex of the suspicious and envious masses, who in a deeper sense always are and feel helpless, hence their cruelty.

The importance of these events, centering in fifteenth-century Bohemia, cannot be exaggerated. They constitute a phase in the development of the entire Western world which produced currents of a decisive and irrevocable character. (Of course, all history is, in a sense, irrevocable.) True, we should not forget that John Hus is unthinkable without the intellectual fatherhood of John Wyclif, an early nationalist (in the British-American sense of the term8). Hus himself was a theologian rather than a political theorist, and we have investigated elsewhere the connections between Hus and Luther.9 Hus’s ideas remained alive in the German-speaking regions adjoining Bohemia until Luther’s days. What then was precisely the political character of the Taborite, the radical Hussite, movement? In the second half of the nineteenth century, while it was considered not only as fiercely nationalistic as radically leftist, we have to tone down this extreme judgment somewhat. But what is important to us is not so much the reality of a movement’s character but rather the historic evolution of its image. (Something similar can be said of the American War of Independence in which the American folklore has become an “American Revolution” and as such frequently affects the mind of the average American.) However exaggerated the picture of Taboritism, it had a great effect primarily on the Czechs, but in the long run also on their German neighbors (the so-called “Sudeten Germans”) and they were often prepared to forget the anti-German character of Taboritism while cherishing its anti-Catholic and sometimes also its anti-Austrian bias.

Professor Josef Pekař was probably right in his hotly contested thesis that the Taborites were neither quite as democratic nor as socialistic as had been maintained earlier, and that the presentation of other scholars (Masaryk, Palacký, Krofta, Hajn, Czerwenka) was at least in part erroneous.10 Until the middle of the nineteenth century the Taborite movement was morally rejected by the vast majority of Czechs and Germans as an outbreak of primeval savagery. Palacký’s mythological presentation changed all this. With the simultaneous rise of nationalism, democracy, and socialism, the Czechs came to cherish the idea that they were the forerunners of modernity, and Taboritism received a reinterpretation which went hand in hand with a reevaluation of Hus among the Germans. The end of the nineteenth century saw the organization of the “Away from Rome” movement (Los-von-Rom-Bewegung)11 especially strong among the Germans from Bohemia and Moravia, and now the memory of Hus, hitherto a despised Czech nationalist hero, suddenly became sacred. An entire German nationalistic literature sprang up in praise of Hus (whose name, written with a “double s,” suddenly sounded quite German). Here it is interesting to note that to the Czech nationalists (then as now) the Catholic Church appeared as the German-Austrian Church of the Hapsburgs, and when Thomas G. Masaryk joined the Bohemian Brethren (bratři), his break with Rome had simultaneously a religious and national significance. (Needless to say, to German nationalists and Nazis the “Church of Rome” appeared to be “Latin-Slav” and “alien”—artfremd—almost like the allegedly pro-Slav Jews who were excoriated by Masaryk as pro-German Hapsburg protégés.) As a form of neurosis, race-conscious nationalism almost always ignores logic and knowledge: In the East European civil wars between 1918 and 1920 Jews were slaughtered for a variety of contradictory reasons, as capitalists and as communists, as friends of the Ukrainians, as Polonophiles, as pro-German—just as it suited the circumstances. However, it can be argued that during World War I the Jews in Eastern Europe sympathized with the Central Powers who gave them civil equality (as, for instance, in the Treaty of Bucharest, 1918).

What other momentous effects the “National Socialist” presentation of Taboritism had in central Europe we shall discuss later. At this stage we are primarily interested in its influence on Mussolini who was an Italian Socialist with a nationalist outlook and, at the outbreak of World War I, was immediately in favor of intervention. He berated the Catholic Church, the House of Savoy, and the conservative circles for not immediately bringing Italy into the war on the side of the Allies, and it is likely that he received monetary aid from France for his newly founded dissident Socialist newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia. We cannot doubt, however, that even in his heart he really stood for intervention on the side of the Western Powers, although Italy, together with Germany and Austria-Hungary, formed the Triple Alliance and her national interests would have been served much better had she remained in it.12 Italy could—and did—gain rather little from the defeated Austria-Hungary except territories inhabited predominantly by non-Italians. Italy’s belligerence on the side of the Central Powers would have resulted in their speedy victory, since this would have forced the French to fight in the north as well as on a second front in the south, thus enabling the Germans to outnumber them more effectively and the Austrians to devote themselves wholeheartedly to the war in the East. Mussolini, however, had ideological reasons for his switch from pacifism to belligerence on the “wrong” side, and when Italy joined England and France, he immediately volunteered and was severely wounded near the front by an exploding mortar.13 By that time he had also given up his purely Marxist views and according to his own avowal became increasingly interested in Proudhon, Sorel, and the French Syndicalist movement.14 Péguy, Nietzsche, and Lagardelle also had made a deep impression on him.15

Mussolini returned from the war as a non-Socialist and in order to stem the tide of chaos and anarchy this still staunch republican and leftist founded the fasci di combattimento whose real fighting force were the squadristi. They wanted to save Italy from total anarchy toward which the country indeed was headed. They also wanted to Italianize the newly-acquired regions wrested from Austria in total defiance of the principles of self-determination. They considered the preservation of the Austro-German character of the Central Tyrol a “national scandal” and brutally attacked the local population. The formal founding of the Fascist party, however, took place only late in 1921, the March on Rome in October 1922. (Mussolini went most of the way by train.) By that time the Fascisti already had wise support not only from ex-Socialists but also from the middle and upper classes.

Who was to blame for this development? Primarily the Communists and Socialists who had plunged the country into an indescribable confusion leading to near collapse. One strike followed the other. The present state of Italy (which is bad enough and shows ominous historical parallels) does not offer a complete analogy. At that time Communist bands occupied factories, paralyzed communications, established local Soviets, and defied the central authority. There is no doubt that the constitutional monarchy, far too loyally adhering to the then existing constitutional laws, could no longer cope with the situation. It would have been the duty of the Crown to establish a temporary royal dictatorship with the help of the Army. Yet Victor Emmanuel III probably considered it more “democratic” for an existing party to shoulder the responsibility and thus he refused to proclaim the state of emergency desired by the weak Facta government whose resignation was accepted. Mussolini, appointed Prime Minister, had a hard time putting the brakes on the more radical (and more emphatically leftist) Fascists. Full dictatorship did not develop until 1925-1926. The transitional period lasted several years and the diarchy (King and Duce) until 1943, when the monarchy saved the country by having Mussolini arrested. Such a finale was not possible in Germany where Hitler fought to the bitter end and left the country divided and in ruins. Mussolini, “saved” by Otto Skorzeny and brought to Hitler’s headquarters, proclaimed (in all likelihood upon Hitler’s advice) the Italian Social Republic which collapsed in 1945.16 A year later the Republic was revived with decisive Communist support.

Today it is possible to review Italian fascism more dispassionately and to see it in its right context: as an ideology and as a historic phenomenon within the Italian scene. We subscribe to the view of Hannah Arendt who pointed out that, compared with Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, the Italian scene under fascism was hardly totalitarian. There can be no doubt that Fascist Italy was far more humane than the two tyrannies in the North.17 The temperament of nations is a highly important factor in the character of any government, and Italian umanesimo and umanità have had their effects.

There was another aspect to fascism, although less apparent than in Russian communism and not at all present in German National Socialism. The countries of southern Europe, having played such an eminent part in history until enlightenment, liberalism, and technology speeded up the evolution of the North, were fatally eclipsed and “left behind.” Italy was no exception. While Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia were forging ahead, acquiring military and naval fame, and rapidly increasing their living standards, the Mediterranean nations, engaged in dolce vita and in dolce far niente, enjoyed blue skies, soft melodies, and delightful conversations—with a great deal of poverty. However, the presence of tourists from the affluent north created an inferiority complex which in turn fostered the desire to compete successfully with these progressive and powerful nations. The remedy seemed to be hard work, discipline, punctuality, cleanliness, the fight against corruption, control of morality, military prowess, artificial industrialization, obligatory sports, and propaganda for “national greatness.” Fascism tried to promote all these efforts and drives. Foreign tourists were gratified to see the beggars disappear from the streets and the trains running on time. George Bernard Shaw, the great Fabian, had nothing but praise for Mussolini and thereby elicited cries of protest from Socialists. He was called a traitor, but he stuck to his guns: the Fascists were “progressive.” Similarly, many a Russian nationalist was delighted by the industrialization of the USSR. Russian refugees gloated: “They are going to show the decadent West!” One has to know the USSR, as I do, to realize how desperate the Soviet desire is to outdo the United States above all.18 Even Lenin’s surrealist slogan: “Communism means all power to the Soviets plus electrification of the country,” which one still sees everywhere, is a morbid piece of pseudo-Americanism.

Yet apart from this competitive urge conditioned by an inferiority complex there is still a purely ideological aspect to fascism, a solid piece of Socialist heritage and also of Religionsersatz, of synthetic religion, which made coexistence between fascism and the Catholic Church so difficult.19 Fascism also had a Maurassian side insofar as it said “yes” to the Catholic Faith as a “national religion” and this attitude had a Machiavellian, a pragmatic basis.20 In this and other respects fascism differed strongly from Spanish falangism and the Rumanian rather spiritual even if savage Iron Guard ideology.21

One need only read the pertinent passages about Italian fascism in the very interesting diaries of Victor Serge, a dissident Russian Communist, to understand the deep and lasting connection between the national and international leftist ideologies, socialism-communism and fascism. Serge writes about Nicola Bombacci, a Socialist who later returned to Italy and “collaborated.” When Serge met him in his exile in Berlin (1923-1924), Bombacci told him that Mussolini owed much to the ideas of the Communists. “Why,” Serge asked, “didn’t you get rid of Mussolini at the time of the destruction of the cooperatives?” “Because our most militant and energetic men had gone over to him.” Serge confesses that he then realized how much he was tortured by the attraction fascism exercised on the extreme left.

Equally interesting are the confessions of Henri Guilbeaux, another founder of the Komintern, made to Serge. Guilbeaux saw in Mussolini the real heir of Lenin. Serge concluded that fascism attracted so many of the revolutionaries by its “plebeian force and violence” and by its constructive program: to build schools, to drain swamps, to promote industrialization, to found an empire. Moreover, there was the vision of a New Order which, to the leftist mind, would come about when the groundwork done by the Fascists was crowned with socialism. “It is impossible to review the Fascist phenomenon without discovering the importance of its interrelations with revolutionary socialism,” Serge confessed.22

In Massimo Rocca’s well documented How Fascism Became a Dictatorship we find even more material about the leftist ties of fascism. Rocca insists that Mussolini in his last days thought of surrendering to the Socialist party, expecting to be spared by his old comrades. (Twice he had saved the life of Pietro Nenni.) Toward the end of 1922 (which means at the very beginning of Fascist rule) Mussolini was still trying in the Chamber to win over the extreme left through fiery appeals.23 “For Mussolini,” Rocca writes, “fascism was nothing but an interlude between his exit from the Socialist party and his future triumphal readmission, a hope nourished for twenty years.”24 In 1919 Mussolini still had praised the Communist seizure of the factories in Dalmine and in 1921 he had offered the Socialist party (P.S.I) cooperation in an antimonarchical and anticapitalist revolution. Mussolini’s “conversion” to the monarchy came a few weeks before the Marcia su Roma, but his last truly trusted friend was a Socialist, Carlo Silvestri. And during his rule of the “Social Republic” (with the capital in Salò) Mussolini’s loathing for the “bourgeoisie” and the “capitalists” again came out into the open. His hatred and contempt for the aristocracy had been strong at all times, as Vittorio, his son, confirmed. This also explains in part his hostile attitude toward his daughter Edda’s marriage.25 In this respect he felt very much like Hitler, to whose spell he succumbed tragically toward the end of his life, even accepting the Führer’s racist ideas, though racial prejudices have no place in the Italian mentality. After his rise to power Mussolini had a Jewish mistress who wrote his first biography. Hitler, his pupil who became his teacher, had been influenced by the Taborite image in a more devious way. In practice Hitler certainly subscribed to Mussolini’s “Tutto nello Stato, niente al fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo stato (Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State).”26 Theoretically, however, both could have repeated another monistic formula referring to their own rule as intended to be a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

“Hitler and Mussolini,” Jules Romains wrote in Les hommes de bonne volonte, “are despots belonging to the age of democracy. They fully profit from the doubtful service which democracy has rendered to man in our society by initiating him into politics, by getting him used to that intoxicant, by making him believe that the domain of catastrophes is his concern, that history calls for him, consults him, needs him every moment. Dictatorship of the Nazi type is a late cancer which has blossomed on the soil of the French Revolution.”27