Precursors and Origins of Italian Fascism
D’Amato traces the ideological and historical roots of Italian fascism.
Much of the meaning contained in the word fascism has been lost in its constant and lazy employment as a general term of abuse. Charges of fascism are shrieked quite without thought to the word’s history or to the record of the actual political and economic system it denotes. This is regrettable, because fascism and its legacy are still very much alive and well—not only as a blanket epithet, but as an operable ideology and philosophy. To achieve a thorough understanding of fascism, it is necessary to embark on an examination of the first and truest fascism, the Italian fascism of Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party. Indeed, a substantial body of the scholarship on fascism argues compellingly that only Italian fascism is entitled to be designated “fascism.” Whenever we contemplate fascism, then, we should account for the fascist project as it emerged and expressed itself in Italy, in the first half of the twentieth century. Even as it offered a critique of existing socialism, it is important to recall that Italian fascism was distinctly and self-consciously socialist, its policy content and character as a movement emerging from the constellation of socialist organizations active in Italy in the early twentieth century. It is simply impossible to understand the advent of fascism without first undertaking a thorough examination of the context provided by the tenor of the Italian radical left in the years before it. There is, therefore, a remarkable irony in the fact that the word fascism is now almost universally associated with the political right. Perhaps this association shows, if anything at all, the glaring inadequacy of the common left-right political spectrum, which reveals itself again and again as unable to meaningfully address the subtleties of political ideology and philosophy.1
The story of Mussolini’s socialist pedigree begins with his father, a blacksmith by trade and a committed socialist and atheist who had been influenced by the Russian anarchist Michael Bakunin. Mussolini was thus reared on socialism and became active in radical politics early in his life, honing his ideas and becoming a formidable intellectual.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário