ORIGINS.
According to the fideist current of fascist mysticism, faith and reason are incompatible: for such reason, faith trumps all else and establishes fascism as ‘’a religious concept of life’’, constituting a ‘’spiritual community’’ as defined by Benito Mussolini in 1932. Be it from a purely biological (Giovanni Preziosi) or idealistic-mythological point of view (Julius Evola), the fascist doctrine is founded upon the assumption of a hypothetical ‘’italic race’’, as a constituent part of the greater indo-european family. Niccolò Giani envisioned Europe as closed within a struggle between the Mediterranean world, close to the ancient Greek and Roman traditions that centered on the spirit (‘’Europe of the Aries’’), and the materialistic world born from the French revolution (‘’Europe of the Taurus’’). Whilst the latter was home to the ‘’semitic’’ theorists of both liberalism and communism, as in Russia, Great Britain and France, the former brought together Italy and Germany in ‘’this Europe of the aries that is arian, mediterranean and latin, and at the same time is Egyptian and Greek, fascist and nazist’’, in the very words of Giani. In other words, a conceptualisation that turned Italy in a war against the allies and in collaboration with the axis powers. Due to this ‘’historical continuum’’, sprouting from the Roman empire, the civilising force of Rome was reinstated through the idea of a pagan imperialism that was inherently racist and antisemitic. With this epistemic premise, Fascist mythology was to be accepted as a ‘’metareality’’. FASCISM AND THE STATE. ‘’The fascist mystic is faith and action, a dedication that is absolute but at the same time conscious’’: this is how Guido Pallotta described the nature of this school of thought. Profoundly rooted in faith, this proposed a vision of the world built upon Roman-catholic religion and a hierarchy represented by the traditional motto of ‘’God, Fatherland, Family’’, precisely in this order. The perfect fascist man had to be firstly a servant to god, then to his political leader (il Duce), then to his familiar sphere. According to these ‘’mystics’’, the New Man was one ‘’who does not want to be a twig at the mercy of cosmic laws, but rather a capable will’’, able to readily respond to adversities. He is one who is able to resist the scepticism, the materialism and the hedonism, that ‘’mortify the spirit of other contemporary peoples’’, in order to ensure the continuity of the fascist regime. The connections that deeply intertwine the fascist school with Roman-catholic religion are evident, in spite of their often-difficult relationship, as Pietro Misciattelli clams that the ethical ends of Fascism correspond to the ethical ends of the catholic church. Although objectionably a contributor to the fascist mystic school, Julius Evola himself wrote that nonetheless it was not possible to speak of a ‘’mystic’’ but rather an ‘’ethic of fascism’’: this movement did not respond to questions of higher values, of sacrality, which are essential components of any mysticism, but rather remained ‘’vague and conforming to the dominant religion’’. THE FASCIST GOVERNMENT. The one certainty that underlay fascist mysticism was that the sole source of the fascist doctrine was the thought of its leader: not only politically, but also spiritually, the Duce had the power to determine the truthfulness or falsity of his followers’ beliefs by his own will. As Giani stressed in his manifesto for the School of Fascist Mysticism, founded in 1930 and ceased in 1943, ‘’fascism has its 'mystical' aspect, as it postulates a complex of moral, social and political, categorical and dogmatic beliefs, accepted and not questioned by the masses and minorities. [...] A Fascist puts his belief in the infallible Duce Benito Mussolini, the fascist and creator of civilization; a Fascist denies that anything outside of the Duce has spiritual or putative antecedents.’’ Obedience thus becomes the demonstration of collective faith. In a polity where one has the power to determine the ideology of all, obedience becomes the coin for survival. In this sense, as reported by the Fascist National Party in the Dictionary of Politics, Vol. III (1940), ‘’fascist mysticism’’ becomes both the firm belief in the absolute truth of the Duce’s doctrine and the firm belief in its necessity for national strength. The mystique of fascism is defined therein as ‘’the most energetic and blazing preparation to action that tends to translate the ideal affirmations of Fascism into reality’’, thus the cult of one man through the study of his writings and speeches, accompanied by an absolute and faithful commitment to living in accordance with his word. Rather than contributing to the political sphere through constitutional means, under Fascism the sole expression of political dignity becomes the ability to make oneself a good servant to the government, to obey, ‘’to march in order not to rot!’’. Political action in this sense, however, was not the expression of one’s true being, outwith the space of necessity, as in the Aristotelian conception of philosopher Hannah Arendt: rather it is the will to conform, to assent, to surrender one’s political being to the shadow of authority. In his essential essay ‘’On the Duty of Civil Disobedience’’ (1849), Henry David Thoreau writes that ‘’disobedience is the true foundation of liberty’’. To challenge the laws or authorities that are in place in any political space must be a fundamental condition of any political system. In a political space, when the will of the authority is taken to be the law, then we assist to the mortification of civil rights and society. This is what Arendt calls the ‘’banality of evil’’: it is merely rooted in the inability to think for oneself in the face of authority. (Are we doing this because it is right, or because one is telling us to?) Yet evil has shallow roots, ‘’it can bever be radical, it can only be extreme, for it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension’’. Evil comes from the failure to think for oneself as separate from one’s appeals to authority, and a doctrine such as the fascist, constructed upon the cult of one man and the loyalty to his word, can in no way present a philosophical structure that survives any ethical or methodical scrutiny. The warfare, violence and militarisation taking place on our continent today, due to the Russo-Ukrainian war, all sprout from the same root. As in yesterday’s words of ANPI president Gianfranco Pagliarulo ‘’the peace that was granted in Europe for more than 70 years was the result of a long political, institutional and juridic journey, following the devastation of two world wars. We must immediately reclaim that vision and that project, result of the Resistance to nazi-fascism, and legacy of our resisters and our partisans.’’ To understand the viciousness and atrocity of fascism means also to understand how we, today, may change the turning of our times. To understand is our moral duty.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
THE ANTI-NEWS.
TO CARE IS A POLITICAL ACT! Archives
November 2023
Categories |