“He raised the Italian people from Bolshevism into which
they might have sunk in 1919 to a position in Europe such as Italy had never
held before”,
Winston Churchill.
Whether the author consciously set out to write a book that
challenges a perilous trend in some poorly written books is open to debate.
These books have sought to impose a revisionist historiography that attempts to
rehabilitate Benito Mussolini and mystify the rise of Italian fascism.
For Sassoon, the study of Italian fascism is not merely an
exercise in historical research, but holds substantial lessons for today’s
political situation. To combat the resurgence of right-wing and fascist forces
in Italy and the world today, it is essential to study the past objectively and
truthfully.
Modern Italian
Politics
Perhaps the most marked development in politics during the Silvio
Berlusconi years was the attempt to rehabilitate Mussolini and his fascist
party. Italy’s former Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi,
on numerous occasions, praised the fascist “Duce” Benito Mussolini.
According to him, Mussolini had “done a great deal of good”.
Berlusconi went on to downplay Italy’s collaboration with
the Holocaust, saying it was “not comparable to that of Germany.” He also
repeated the tired lie that Hitler pressured Mussolini.
One of the more grotesque by-products of the whitewashing of
the Italian fascist leader by Berlusconi came about when Apple issued an app of
Mussolini’s speeches. Apple was roundly condemned by a large number of Jewish
groups, who correctly stated that Mussolini was directly responsible for
sending thousands of Jews to their deaths during the Holocaust. Apple
subsequently pulled the app.
Revisionism
This political whitewashing of Mussolini and the fascists is
mirrored in publishing circles by a growing number of poorly written books. At
the moment, it is hard to gauge whether this revisionist whitewash is a
minority or if they have started to gain a foothold in academic circles.
So many of these books have appeared that one writer sees it as “a noir
publishing niche”.
It would take a historian a considerable amount of time to
sift through over 100 current biographies of Mussolini to determine whether
this revisionist trend has had any impact on academia. According to the
historian R.J.B. Bosworth, “It is true that much revisionism of the Berlusconi
years is hard to take seriously. The slew of biographies and memoirs devoted to
praising 'good Fascists' mostly fall well below an acceptable academic
standard. In devoting himself without reserve to the idea in which he believed.
But the quality of the research base of such works, and the decisions about
which facts to include and which to exclude, are too blatantly slanted to make
much impact on scholarship. [1]
While that may be the case for academic books, there is a
definite trend in non-academic publications to rebrand fascism in a way that
fits into today’s politics. As one reviewer put it, these books are not so much
an attempt at revisionism but at restoration.”
One such book is by Nicholas Farrell [2], who has sought to
overturn decades of historiography to argue that Mussolini was not as bad as
previously thought and that his alliance with Hitler led him astray. According
to Farrell, Mussolini had "charisma" and was a "phenomenal"
personality. Farrell tends to mirror Berlusconi's thoughts.
It is not that difficult to challenge these falsehoods. A
more objective and truthful examination of the facts would also lead us to a
different picture. Mussolini’s prime goal was to create a new—the “Roman
Empire” around the Mediterranean Sea.
To achieve this goal, the Italian fascists invaded and
occupied North Africa and areas of Yugoslavia. To justify the slaughter of
Jews, Africans and Slavs, the fascists classified them as “subhuman.” This
discrimination was done in defence of a “pure Italian race.” According to
historian Carlo Moos, Italian racial laws were very similar to the Nazi’s and
belonged to “a long-existing, general-fascist racial concept” [3]
Another book, Liberal Fascism [4], is “less a work of
neutral scholarship or unbiased journalism than thinly veiled historical
revisionism.” Jonah Goldberg’s argument is simplistic, to say the least. It is
the idea that fascism came from liberalism. A position is not dissimilar to
some of the “pseudo-left” writers from the Frankfurt school who put forward the
perspective that fascism can be traced back to the Enlightenment. However, it
must be said that it was difficult to take this writer seriously when he described
former presidents of the United States as fascists.
The rise of Fascism
Given limited space, Sassoon does a very competent job of
explaining the rise of Italian fascism. While not a Marxist, he has a left-leaning
perspective on his history. The rise of fascism in Italy was a sudden and
spontaneous development, with significant sections of the population
participating. Its leaders predominantly came from the ranks of the
fascist organisation.
Despite taking a plebian character, it was controlled and
financed by big business. Its social composition was primarily made up of the
petty bourgeoisie and lumpen elements of the working class. In its latter
stages, it began to draw in larger sections of the working class.
Sassoon has conducted some thorough research into the social
composition of the fascists in 1921, revealing that 24 per cent were rural
workers, 15.5 per cent were industrial workers, 14 per cent were white-collar
workers, 13 per cent were students, 11.9 per cent were small farmers, and 9 per
cent were shopkeepers. “The proportion of students was a much higher proportion
than any other group in the population."
Mussolini’s Rise to Power
The notion fostered by far too many right-wing history books
is that Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy at the end of 1922 by carrying
out a heroic march on Rome. The truth revealed by Sassoon is a little less
glamorous.
The majority arrived in special trains. The few that did
march were hardly a fascist vanguard; they were, as one writer put it, a
“raggle-taggle bunch with hardly a modern weapon among them, and who could have
been easily stopped by the army.”
Benito Mussolini and his fascists did not crush all before them;
instead, they were invited by the aristocracy and sections of big business to
form a coalition government. Once entirely in power, the fascists carried out a
murderous crackdown against their opponents in the working class.
The Italian bourgeoisie had always fancied itself as high
power, but economically, this was not the case. The crisis of capitalist rule
that brought the Italian fascists into power was a product of Italy's entry
into the First World War in 1915, on the side of Britain and France.
The pressure of the war merely escalated Italy’s economic
and political crisis. This led to the famous post-war "Red Years" of
1919-1920. During these years, a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism was
clearly on the cards. Sassoon’s account is remarkably sparse in these years.
Why?
To solve this crisis, the Italian bourgeoisie turned to the
fascists, as the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky explains “At the moment
that the "normal" police and military resources of the bourgeois
dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to
hold society in a state of equilibrium -- the turn of the fascist regime
arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of
the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralised
lumpenproletariat -- all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself
has brought to desperation and frenzy”.[5]
There are two major weaknesses of the book, the first being
Sassoon’s complacent attitude towards the Italian Communist Party’s role in the
rise of fascism. Despite its being only two years old when Mussolini was given
power, it played a crucial role in allowing the fascists to consolidate their
rule again, as Trotsky said, “One must admit, however, that the German
Communist Party has also learned little from the Italian experience. The
Italian Communist Party emerged almost simultaneously with the rise of fascism.
But the same conditions of the revolutionary ebb tide, which carried the
fascists to power, served to deter the development of the Communist Party. It
did not give itself an accounting as to the full sweep of the fascist danger;
it lulled itself with revolutionary illusions; it was irreconcilably
antagonistic to the policy of the united front; in short, it was stricken with
all the infantile diseases. [6]
The second major political weakness of the book is its
glaring underestimation of the revolutionary nature of the working class. The
Italian bourgeoisie saw the dangers of a socialist revolution and turned to
fascism to address its predicament. In doing so, it involved collaboration
between social democracy and Stalinism.
Despite these weaknesses, I recommend this book to
anyone who is beginning a study of this important international event. I would
also urge students and anyone interested in history to consult Leon Trotsky’s writings on the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy.
[1] R. J. B. Bosworth -Benito Mussolini: Bad Guy on the
International Block- Contemporary European History, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Feb. 2009),
pp. 123-134
[2] Farrell Nicholas Mussolini: A New Life Weidenfeld, 2015
[3] Moos, Carlo. Late Italian Fascism and the Jews (2008).
[4] Jonah Goldberg- Liberal Fascism: The Secret
History of the Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning- Penguin- 2009
[5] Leon Trotsky - What Next? Vital Question for the German
Proletariat, 1932
[6]Leon Trotsky - Fascism- What It Is and How to Fight It
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