[Some historical notes on the roots of Italian National-Socialism which would become Fascism.]
Firstly, this is not an attack piece on Socialism as Italian fascism changed a great deal from socialist ideas that Mussolini originally accepted into a revolutionary nationalist reform party. It had roots in Socialism in some key ways but differed greatly. This series of notes is not complete and was written a couple of months ago when I was looking into the subject matter.
Mussolini avoided the draft in Italy in the early 1900s by working in Switzerland. He actually met Lenin in exile during this period. And the Italy socialist movement operated in-part in exile in Switzerland. He supported a general strike, was arrested then sent home to Italy. Upon his return he drafted. Later, he got deeply into working with the socialist party again in what is now Italy but was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Working as a journalist he wrote various pieces on the role of the class struggle, the importance of unions, and other work as a mainstream left-socialist. He was considered an intellectual and well-read. He studied the great philosophers and seemed to value Marx and Engels very highly.
By 1911, after much hard work, he was one of the best-known socialists in Italy. Although, Italy back then was a very old fashioned and backward nation in some ways, not an industrial powerhouse like France, Germany or Great Britain, yet with a historical past that gave it much pride. In fact, Mussolini was in riots against the government at that time, due to the war in Libya, which was labelled as an 'Imperialist War', we was imprisoned for five months. Italy was late to empire, and Mussolini helped expel the socialists in the party who supported the war. He then edited socialist papers and was a great propagandist for the hard-left in Italy. Yet, by this period he had concluded that social equality was not the right direction. Nietzschean ideas added to socialism was considered to be a way to reinvigorate socialism. The early roots of fascism in the socialist party.
In WW1, Mussolini was against the war that the liberal party was pushing for and the socialists caused a general strike. Yet, while using the issues of war and the influence of Italian solidarity and the popular nationalism that was promoted by the other parties, he ended up supporting the war to free the Italians under Austrian imperial rule. He condemned the Central Powers as Imperialist aggressors as they engaged in a war over Belgium, Serbia, etc. And the occupied Italians were just another oppressed people group. His flip from Socialist Party darling to a practical politician soon get him expelled from the party. Even though he had expelled others who thought as he had only a few years earlier.
With the war that was to spread to every power of the world, Mussolini switched from socialism with a new philosophy to the more comparable ideas within nationalism. As a new thinker on these matters, adding socialist ideas to nationalist cries gave him support from both nationalists and dissident socialists. Mussolini decried orthodox socialism for their ideological limitations, mostly over the war and their inability to appeal to the nationalistic feelings of many Italians who swayed far more by other parties as the Socialist Party was impotent in such matters.
Mussolini's inner group he imagined running a brave new Italy were no longer the workers and their socialist guides, but rather people of any class. At this time he termed himself a national socialist. One who was respective of the history and people, the legacy of Italy.
Within a few years he became seen as a man of revival and strength, he claimed socialism had failed and his was a key organiser in anti-socialist activities. Breaking up protests, producing propaganda, etc. Italian-Fascio squads were used to crack the skulls of those who risked revolution and other failures in Italian society and production. The ideological basis of the fascist movement came from Mussolini's personal beliefs, inspired by Plato's republic, Nietzsche, the legend of ancient Rome, and a variety of selected ideas weaved together. Including Social-Darwinian concepts of how a society should be run, imperialism is justified to allow space for the Italian people, inferior people, including slavs, deserve to be treated as lesser people. Although, racism in this sense was less extreme than German National Socialism which was in the process of being an ideology at the same time, such as with the German Workers Party(1919-1920).
Economically, they were modern and for radical reform of what was a stagnating post-war economy with a lack of modernisation.
In 1922, the fascists had a vast following, the elites and the workers, and marched upon Rome, given few choices the prime minister resigned and the King handed power to Mussolini. Soon he was prime minister of Italy and form a coalition to rule and reform Italy. A task founded on false claims then on vast debts to built up the nation and its economy. And the first few years if Italian Fascism were troubled by unrest. Over this period a slow movement to remove restraint of governmental power was removed and local authority was abolished, leaving the corporate structured state in its place. A system in which Mussolini was practically dictator, in principle, he was only answerable to the King. Clearing lands and draining swamps by executive planning, modernising the rail services and the navy. There was much to be admired in the modernisation of Italy under this tyrant, much under various reformers given the power to offer radical reform throughout history.
Over the years leading up to the second world war, Italian fascism would make some great leaps moving Italy out of the victorian era, but at the cost of turning it into a police-state with ambitions of empire. They would extend Italian imperialism beyond Libya and other pre-fascist imperial grabs, including Eritrea and Somaliland(Somalia), Abyssinia(Ethiopia) would be conquered in 1935, in 1939 they would conquer Albania. Italy would have its fair share of genocides, concentration camps in Libya in the 1920s and 30s, even chemical weapons used to clear the "inferior" people. Methods were not dissimilar to what most colonial empires used at one point or another in occupied lands. And much like other nations and empires of the time, the Italian Empire had a very low-view of "half-cast" people, making inter-racial relations a criminal offence. And Italy adopted antisemitism in the late-1930s. Italian fascism tolerated Jewish people, as they did various groups, as useful tools, once the Germans under Mr Hitler were seen as a far more useful tool for Italian gains, they were turned upon. Later handing over many Italian Jews to the Germans in WW2.
During the Second World War showing its deep failings and poor modernisation when facing various militaries. Losing their imperial possessions and Allied forces taking most of Sicily, until only until Mussolini was removed from office by his own grand council and some power was handed back to King Vittorio.
