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SCHOLAR ISLAND |
Fascism
"Fascism is not a political party but, a specific attitude toward people, toward love and work."
Wilhelm Reich
"Fascism is a religion; the twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism."
-Benito Mussolini
"Fascism....does not hesitate to call itself illiberal and anti-liberal....Fascism now throws the noxious theories of so-called Liberalism upon the rubbish heap."
-Benito Mussolini
"Our regime is based on bayonets and blood, not on hypocritical elections."
-Francisco Franco Caudillo of Spain
"The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature's plans.....if classical liberalism spells individualism, fascism spells government."
-Benito Mussolini
"We were the first Fascists...When we had 100,000 disciplined men, and were training children, Mussolini was still an unknown, (and) Mussolini copied our Fascism."
attributed to Marcus Garvey
-Colin grant
Negro With A Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey
"Here in this country the worst Fascists are those who disowning Fascism, preach enslavement to capitalism under the cloak of liberty, and the Constitution. They steal not only wages but honor."
-John L Lewis
"Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction."
-Leon Trotsky
"Capitalism and Fascism are one under the
iron mask.
Fascism is the expression of Capitalism's
death struggle
War is the life blood of Capitalism: it is the
body and soul of Fascism.
Capitalist economy leads inevitably to War:
Fascist economy begins and ends in war."
-Kenneth Patchen
"Cure the evils of Democracy by the evils of Fascism! Funny therapeutics! I've heard of their curing syphilis by giving the patient malaria, but I've never heard of their curing malaria by giving the patient syphilis."
-Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here
"Fascism" was, in fact, a Marxist coinage. Marxists borrowed the name of Mussolini's Italian party, the Fascisti, and applied it to Hitler's Nazis, adroitly papering over the fact that the Nazis, like Marxism's standard-bearers, the Soviet Communists, were revolutionary socialists. In fact, "Nazi" was most annoyingly shorthand for the National Socialist German Workers' Party. European Marxists successfully put over the idea that Nazism was the brutal, decadent last gasp of "capitalism."
Tom Wolfe
Hooking Up
"That which the Fascists hate above all else, is intelligence."
-Miguel De Unamuno
"We do not believe in programs, in plans, in saints or apostles, above all, we do not believe in happiness, in salvation, in the promised land."
-Benito Mussolini, Fascism
"Under fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions."
Jose Ortega Y Gasset
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."
-Benito Mussolini
"Fascism is capitalism plus murder."
Upton Sinclair
"The secret of Fascism is the revival of archaic beliefs in an ultra modern setting-the Nazi edifice was a skyscraper fitted with hot water pipes which drew on underground springs."
-Geoffrey Ashe
"Everyone is sure they know what fascism is. The most self-consciously visual of all political forms, fascism presents itself to us in vivid primary images: a chauvinist demagogue haranguing an ecstatic crowd; disciplined ranks of marching youths; colored-shirted militants beating up members of some demonized minority; surprise invasions at dawn; and fit soldiers parading through a captured city.
Examined more closely, however, some of these familiar images induce facile errors. The image of the all-powerful dictator personalizes fascism, and creates the false impression that we can understand it fully scrutinizing the leader alone. This image, whose power lingers today, is the last triumph of fascist propagandists. It offers an alibi to nations that approved or tolerated fascist leaders, and diverts attention from the persons, groups, and institutions who helped him. We need a subtler model of fascism that explores the interactions between Leader and Nation, and between Party and civil Society."
-Robert O. Paxton
The Anatomy of Fascism
"Fascism is a complex phenomenon, multifaceted and historically speaking, far from extinct. It has healthy and sick aspects, old and new, elements preserving as well as those destroying the state. Therefore in evaluating it, calm and impartiality are needed. ....Fascism emerged as a reaction to Bolshevism, as a concentration of the state-preservative forces on the right. During the onslaught of leftist chaos and leftist totalitarianism, it was a healthy and inevitable phenomenon. Such a concentration will come again, even in the most democratic states: in the hour of national danger; the healthy forces of the people will always be concentrated in a a conserving and dictatorial direction. So it was in ancient Rome, so it was in the new Europe, and so it will be in the future."
Ivan Ilyin (1948)
"Nothing beyond the State, above the State, against the State. Everything to the State, for the State, in the State."
Benito Mussolini
"At the extremes of the political spectrum one encounters people who are moved chiefly to find an outlet for the venom that is in them."
D. Sutten
"The weakness of the fanatic is that those whom he fights have a secret hold upon him; and to this weakness he and his group finally succumb."
Paul Tillich
"Fascism is a fist in the face."
Mussolini
"Sure we'll have fascism in America, but it'll come disguised as 100% Americanism."
-Huey P. Long
..."Mussolini and his Fascist movement took upon themselves the task of upholding the value of violence as predicated by Sorel. Between 1919 and 1022, the countryside of Italy's northern and central agrarian regions became the theater of fascist squads' punitive expeditions, aggressions, murders and devastations. Mussolini praised these actions and exalted them as "saintly and Moral." If blood and regeneration had been characteristic features of World War I, they also became the identifying traits of the Fascist movement. Within this highly spiritualized vision of violence, the fascists who died during violent actions were turned into "martyrs" for the fatherland. The dead from violent causes became one more reason to affirm the sacred values of fascism. Fascist squads, or the phenomenon of squadrismo then equaled spiritualism, against normality and bureaucracy. It epitomized force, virility, and will. So much so , that when Mussolini became increasingly distant from the violent wing of the fascist party, strong currents of antimussolinismo developed."
Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi
Politics, Aesthetics and Fascism in the World of Malaparte
Malaparte: A House Like Me
Fiat ars-pereat mundus (Let art be created though the world shall perish) had become Fascism's creed and influenced its actions.
"It is the idea of progress that we refuse, not the material practical results of scientific activity. It is the spirit of futurist modernity that Anglo-Saxon people identify with civilization that we negate, not findings and remedies that can enrich and make our life easier....We cannot but be modern."
Ardengo Soffici
"Fascist ideology took on the character of an anti-intellectual reaction which pitted feeling and emotion, and irrational forces of every kind, against the rationality of democracy. It was the rediscovery of instinct, the cult of physical strength, violence and brutality....its aims were to create a world of fixed criteria, a world freed from doubt and purged of all foreign accretions..."
Professor Zeev Sternhell
Hebrew University, Israel
"That politics is an art there is no doubt. Certainly it is not a science, nor is it empiricism. It is thus art. Also because in politics there is a lot of intuition. Political like artistic creation is a slow elaboration and a sudden divination. At a certain moment the artist creates with inspiration, the politician with decision. Both work the material and the spirit....In order to give wise laws to a people it is also necessary to be something of an artist."
Benito Mussolini 1926
"...The black shirt, however, symbolically remained a fascist outfit, a reminder of the movement's historical exordium. As such, the black shirt constituted the basic piece of party members; uniforms and a constant of fascist attire spanning more than twenty years of variations in fashion. All participants in the numerous fascist organizations, from women's fasces and children's groups to school associations and sport clubs, also wore the black shirt. In November 1934 even infants and children up to eight years old were organized under the umbrella name of "Sons and Daughters of the She-Wolf' (Figli e Figlie della Lupa) and outfitted in miniature back shirts. Store advertisements for the black shirt and other fascist clothes punctuated papers and magazines.
During the 1920s use of the black shirt did not follow precise rules. Mussolini himself wore it on random occasions, even though he claimed that the black shirt had a sacred value and should not be spoiled by mundane usage. Thus, in a speech to parliament of September 12,1924, Mussolini proclaimed that the black shirt could not be worn every day, only in particular circumstances. he even ordered the arrest of those who wore it "improperly." Almost a year later, on June 22, 1925, he reiterated his thoughts to the Fascist Congress: "The black shirt is not the everyday shirt, and is not a uniform either. It is a combat outfit and can only be worn by those who harbor a pure soul in their heart."
Mussolini's high-sounding rhetoric, which identified the black shirt with all the regime's cherished values-courage, struggle, and spiritual superiority-soon turned into a series of precepts that defined the proper employment of the shirt. The black shirt became the object of rigid orders aimed at eliminating any sign of confusion and disunity. One of the ten Fascist Commandments stated : "He who is not ready to sacrifice body and soul to Italy and to serve Mussolini without question is unworthy to wear the black shirt, symbol of Fascism."
Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi
Politics, Aesthetics and Fascism in the World of Malaparte
Malaparte A House Like Me
"Fascism was the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain. The other major currents of modern Western political culture-conservatism, liberalism, socialism-all reached mature form between the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century. Fascism, however, was still unimagined as late as the 1890s. Friedrich Engels, writing a preface in 1895 for his new edition of Karl Marx's The Class Struggles in France, clearly believed that wider suffrage would inexorably deliver more votes to the Left. Both time and numbers, Engels was certain, were on the socialists' side. "If it (the growing socialist vote) continues in this fashion, by the end of this (nineteenth) century we (socialists) shall conquer the major part of the middle strata of society, petty bourgeois and peasants, and grow into the decisive power in the land." Conservatives, Engels wrote, had noticed that legality was working against them. By contrast, "we (socialists), under this legality , get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like life eternal. There is nothing for them (the conservatives) to do but break through this legality themselves." While Engels thus expected that the Left's enemies would launch a preemptive attack, he could not imagine in 1895 that this might win mass approval. Dictatorship against the Left amidst popular enthusiasm-that was the unexpected combination that fascism would manage to put together one short generation later."
Robert O. Paxton
The Anatomy of Fascism
"They claim to be super patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjugation."
-Vice President Henry Wallace 1944
"The Chinese Communist party has become one of the most corrupt organizations the world has ever witnessed....and that China is ruled by a "Leninist corporatism" that threatens to unravel all the economic progress the country has made."
Will Hutton
The Writing Is on the Wall (guardian.co.uk)
"Freud also suggests that fascism and fundamentalism, because of their amazing powers of attraction, will always constitute an emergency. When a powerful or rich nations turns to either, something must be done, and the more quickly, the better. One of the reasons that France and England may have been slow to act prior to the Second World War was that their statesmen did not understand the joy-no less a word should attach to it-that fascism offers people. Inner strife dissolves and the people become powerful and strong. They have never felt so good before and they will not readily give that feeling up. Others see their joy and are drawn to it. Such people make determined and potent foes."
-Mark Edmundson
The Death of Sigmund Freud
"In a completely fascist country, the one remaining personal freedom is the freedom to look and act like a complete fascist. In a country that has been gradually slipping toward greater authoritarianism and ever-tighter social control, be it through increasing militarism, the criminal justice meat-grinder or any of the other, parallel trends, other freedoms may still exist, but their exercise is likely to become increasingly dangerous. Displays of extreme individualism such as the public expression of non-mainstream political opinions, are bound to become quite risky. Taking such risks seems rather unnecessary, unless one wants to play the part of a martyr for a lost cause-and it is hard to see why anyone should want to play that role."
-Dmitry Orlov
Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects
"We who detest from the depths of our soul all Christianity, from Jesus' to Marx's look with extraordinary sympathy upon this "resurgence" of modern life in the pagan cult of force and daring."
-Benito Mussolini
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Book: Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power" by Lutz Koepnick
Book: "MY Autobiography" by Benito Mussolini
Book: "Mussolini" by R.J.B. Bosworth
Book: "Mussolini: A New Life" by Nicholas Farrell
Book: "Political Inversions: Homosexuality, Fascism, and the Modernist imaginary" by Andrew Hewitt
Book: "The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy" by Emilio Gentile
Book: "Elitist Fascism: Chiang Kaishek's Blueshirts in 1930s China" by Chung Dooeum
Book: "Opera and the Culture of Fascism" by Jeremy Tamblin
Book: "Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy" by Mabel Berezin
Book: "Staging Fascism" by Jeffrey T. Schnapp
Book: "The Anatomy of Fascism" by Robert O. Paxton
Book: "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning." by Jonah Goldberg
Book: "The Body of Il Duce: Mussolini's Corpse and the Fortunes of Italy" by Sergio Luzzato