Indian fascism, the Hindutva, was heavily influenced, in its formative years, by Italian Fascism. So it will be very relevant in today’s India to have a look at some of the basic contours of the political doctrine of Italian Fascism. Fascism, as a political movement, appeared in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century. Fasci di Combattimento, perhaps the first organizational platform of the fascist brigade, was founded in 1919. It brought “ex-socialists, revolutionary syndicalists, nationalists, futurists, war veterans, and other militant but disaffected political forces” together to fight against the “party” culture that was prevailing in Italy then. (All quotes in this essay are from Borden W. Painter, ‘Renzo De Felice and the Historiography of Italian Fascism’, The American Historical Review, Vol. 95, No. 2 (Apr., 1990), pp. 391-405). This anti-party campaign was in fact very revealing about the fascist take on political democracy. The doctrine of fascism is very much antagonistic to the notion of a plural space where different political parties can debate on various issues pertaining to nation and its population. Though the fascist movement itself got practically transformed into a party in 1922, the afore-stated ideological stance was not abandoned. The Program of the National Fascist Party published on 27 December 1927 made clear that the party “aims to restore the ethical principle that government ought to administer the commonwealth as a function of the nation’s supreme interest and not as a function of the interests of political parties and cliques”. Obviously, the “nation’s supreme interest” would be decided by the fascist party. In other words, the fascist critique of political parties was nothing but a masqueraded desire for its single-handedness in Italian administration. Mussolini later became more explicit in this regard. He stated in 1932: “A party governing nation in totalitarian fashion marks a new departure in history. There are no points of reference or of comparison….Granted that the nineteenth century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass, peoples remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the “right”, a fascist century”.

The fascist movement claimed to have deliberated an alternative model of state and economic organization which could deny the “leveling state” in communism and the “anarchic individual” in liberalism. The proposed third way was termed “corporativism”. The party “program” of 1927 declared: “The rise of corporations is a historical fact that fascism cannot oppose. It aims at coordinating corporative development in the pursuit of national objectives. Corporations must be promoted with two fundamental goals in mind: as an expression of national solidarity and as a means for the development of production”. Articulating the dissent with Marxism, Mussolini said: “No one denies that the vicissitudes of economic life-discoveries of raw materials, new technical processes, scientific inventions-have their importance. But it is absurd to argue that they suffice to explain human history to the exclusion of other factors. Fascism believes and will always believe in sanctity and heroism, which is to say, in acts in which no economic motive, be it remote or immediate, is at work…fascism also denies the immutable and irreparable character of the class struggle as the natural outcome of this economic conception of history…Fascism refutes the possibility of a materialistic conception of happiness …It denies the equation well being equals happiness, which sees in men mere animals, content when they can feed and fatten, thus reducing them to a pure and simple vegetative existence”. “Fascism trains its guns” not only on socialism, but on the “democratic ideologies” as well. “Democratic regimes may be described as those under which the people, from time to time, are deluded into thinking that they exercise sovereignty, while real sovereignty resides in and exercised by other, sometimes irresponsible and secret forces”. Thus the fascist intellectuals in Italy developed a comprehensive critique of the existing frameworks. But just like the critiqued ideologies, their alternative also turned out to be destructive in the course of time. “Instead of proving itself a revolutionary third way, Mussolinian fascism surfaces in the contemporary memory as a dead end”.

The word “nation” figured very important in the fascist terminology. National interest, which was to be defined by the Duce from time to time, was proposed as the supreme truth and the touchstone to distinguish right and wrong. Citizens were ought to adjust themselves in favor of these so-called national interests without any protests or questions. Fascism was well aware of the fact that the population was not that much nationalistic and as such educating the masses to this end was considered as a bounden duty. The 1925 Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals had detailed this point. After indicting democratic socialism for “the neglect of state’s authority” and the “lowering of the prestige enjoyed by the king and the army”, the Manifesto informed: “It (fascism) understood and championed politics as a training ground for self denial and sacrifice in the name of an idea…The idea in question is that of the fatherland”. Further, “for fascism the fatherland is not an external appendage. It lives and beats within the chest of every civilized man”. Fascists claimed to have more or less accomplished in Italy the dream of such a fascist state with model citizens: “Foreigners …who have seen the new Italy with their own eyes, heard the Italians with their own ears, and shared the citizens’ material lives have come to envy the new public order”.But the actual political scenario in the fascist Italy was in fact far removed from the manifesto’s bombast and rhetoric. Due to the attempts to dub its political opponents as “non-Italians” or “foreigners”, the fascist party itself eventually surfaced as a “foreign oppressor” in the eyes of many Italian citizens.”The “air of suspicion and animosity” became so widespread that it “pitted even university youth against one another, youth heretofore bound together by the old, true brotherhood of youthful shared ideals”. This paradox-an ideology premised upon the idea of strong nationalism causing virulent intra-national fights- was indicative of the aftermath fascism as a political doctrine would produce whenever and wherever propagated. A Reply to the Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals written by Benedetto Croce in 1925 warned the Italian people against abandoning their “old faith, a faith that, for two and a half centuries, has formed the core of Italy’s resurgent spirit and modern nationhood; a faith that encompasses the love of truth, the pursuit of justice, a global commitment to humane and civic values, a zeal for intellectual and moral edification, and a deep concern for freedom”. The Reply declared in plain words: “We feel no urge to embrace this chaotic, ungraspable “religion” (fascism) and to abandon our old faith”.

Fascist perception of nationalism was that of a jingoistic one. It was totally opposed to the postulates of internationalism. The National Fascist Party argued that the “destiny that awaits global life is not the unification of various societies into a single, immense society: “humanity” in the parlance of internationalists. Rather, destiny promises something better: fruitful and peaceful competition among all national societies”. Consequently, fascism found the “founding principles” of the League of Nations “wanting”.The prospect was apparently a renewal of the erstwhile “Roman empire and Roman salutes”. The conception was stated crystal clear in the party-program of 1921: “Italy must reaffirm its right to complete historical and geographical unity, even in cases where unity has not yet been fully achieved. It must fulfill its duty as bulwark of Latin civilization and Mediterranean basin. It must firmly and serenely assert the sway of its laws over the peoples of different nationalities annexed to Italy. It must provide real protections to Italians abroad, Italians who are deserving of the right to political representation….The state must make the most of Italian colonies in the Mediterranean and overseas by means of economic and cultural institutions, as well as by developing rapid informational and transportation links”.In May 1936, Mussolini announced the creation of the Italian empire. March 1938 saw German invasion-cum- annexation of Austria with the approval of Mussolini. In April 1939, Italy invaded Albania.
Hitler and Mussolini met for the first time in July 1934. By this time, Hitler had seized power in Germany. Hitler gradually emerged as the “true figurehead of international fascism”.

German Nazism was influential inasmuch as it tempted Mussolini to reconfigure the content of Italian fascism. This was the political context in which racism got appropriated as an element of Italian fascism. The Manifesto of Race (1938) proclaimed: “The population of Italy today is of Aryan origin, and its civilization is Aryan. This population and its Aryan civilization have inhabited our peninsula for many millennia”. This sudden discovery of the Aryan-ness of Italians was actually made to exclude the Italian Jews from the “population”. The Manifesto declared openly: “The Jews represent the only population that was never assimilated in Italy because it was comprised of non-European racial elements absolutely different from the elements that gave rise to Italians”. Albeit the draft of the this Manifesto was revised in 1942 owing to protests within the party, racism continued to remain more or less integral to the movement.

Abdul Kahhaar