Then and Now: Mussolini the Man
Set in a northern village atop a mountainous Italian terrain, a young boy by the name of Benito is born. He is raised by a father who rallies passionately in favor of socialism and prefers to spend more money on his mistress than his children. Not unlike his father, Benito Mussolini began his troublesome and often times inconsistent journey to political fame. A less than cooperative child, he bullied other students at school and after countless suspensions, stabbed another student with his pocketknife at just eleven years old. Thus, the reputation of one of the most violent rulers the world has ever known, a man who largely believed himself to be the new Julius Caesar, harboring the sails of change to the next era of the Roman Empire, was crafted. He failed miserably, though, his reign leaving him hollow, hated and alone with only ghosts of empty promises and the rage of a country in ruins snapping at his heels.
But what if Mussolini were able to see the world as it is today, with all it’s progressive advancement? What if he had the capacity to exert his ideology on societies that have grown and developed since his reign and what might he view as a detrimental problem? In today’s emerging economic systems, with capitalism encompassing most of the industrialized Western world’s politics, Mussolini would find a great discomfort in the prioritization of the individual will over the collective whole. Therefore, he would see the rise of free market economies as a major problem in the world today.
The Manifesto: Individual vs. the State
Mussolini’s Doctrine of Fascism argues for the communist, militant unification of an Italy bound by brotherhood, with progress only being rendered through force and might. Fascism “sees not only the individual but the nation and the country; individuals and generations bound together by a moral law,” he writes with a great spiritual investment, artfully managing to incentivize the needs of the nation as whole over the individual, “standing by himself, self centered, subject to natural law” by associating a individuality with the absorbed needs of the outside. Mussolini’s hatred of liberalism snakes it’s way silently through his manifesto, as he uses the word “individual” a staggering 42 times, with every context defiling the word whether it be in a historical reference to past primitive times, or denouncing self-interest. However, he uses the “individual and the State” side by side, drawing on one of the major differences between Fascism and Communism, which enforces the nationalistic, hierarchical system that seeks to gain power through military conquest instead of economic equality of the masses.
Therefore, with a couple of the main characteristics of the free market systems today being ownership of private property and profit being the main incentive for most business affairs with the thirst for more and more power growing each year, the gap between the classes, and the power of the state-controlled restrictions becoming weaker, Mussolini would be in awe of it all.
To him, the loss of brotherhood to maintain national independence and military strictness in order to maintain military might would be a tragedy but also a necessity in making sure the people didn’t go down the path of self interest. His way of combating the surge would be to adapt as he always was able to, by giving a strong message of nationalistic pride and individual progress toward the State as a means to appeal toward the perceptions of common masses in Italy at the time.
For example, in Italy’s economic crisis today, with the level of manufacturing remaining stagnant, and the educated youth leaving, and the largest public debt growing each year, the Italian economy is in sure decline. Perhaps this constitutes why the memory of Mussolini’s reign, as violent and oppressive as it was, has resurfaced it’s grizzly head in the past decade, as a desperate portrayal of Italy as a once prideful, and unified nation.
Thus, Mussolini’s way of driving arguments in favor of a strengthened brotherhood, with “sanctity and heroism, that is to say in acts in which no economic motive- remote or immediate” would be enforced against the tragedy of the free market system. With the self-interest of the individual comes the greed, and dismissal of the national welfare of the state. As a master manipulator, Mussolini’s ability to promise services catering to all spheres of society, ranging from the eight hour work day for the working class to implementing religious education in elementary schools as a means of pleasing the church; was an agenda he relished as a means of maintaining total rule.
Mussolini’s Military Might
Mussolini regarded loyalty to the dictator of paramount importance to the Fascist agenda and successfully maintained an image that made him look like a man of the people. In today’s free market society, with little to no government intervention, buyers and sellers are able to maneuver without constraint. For Mussolini, this would pose a huge concern and he would impose military might on anyone who opposed the laws for a more liberal interest in state separation and civil society.
His extreme obsession with militant might and taking by means of force, is also a possibility if he were alive today. As with the March on Rome, Mussolini’s insecurity led him to make up stories not only in his journalism, but also in real events. He championed the notion that the people believe false stories, and they also forget them just as easily. Today, however, Mussolini would have many in opposition to him, Matteo Renzi, for instance, being one of them. Just as Mussolini executed the well-loved member of Parliament, Giacomo Matteotti, because he exposed the corruptions and brutality within the Fascist regime, he would have Renzi killed as well. Another parallel includes Mussolini’s genius control of the media and how he was one of the first people to use it to dominate the public, writing false stories in Avanti, and increasing the viewership fourfold. But today, is an era of technological advancement, where information is dispersed through all the social classes. With this kind of infiltration from the public masses, Mussolini would have a much harder time keeping his opposition out, which by definition is illegal in the Fascist doctrine.
Thus, Mussolini’s cunning contradictions, his need for military might and violence and a strictly enforced code of ideological nationalism would be his main methods to abolishing the rise of free market economies from arising in the world. Especially in Italy today, he would use the desperation of the crisis in his favor, earning favors from all the different players in Italy’s political and economic systems.
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