Author, Resounding Events: Adventures of an Academic from the Working Class
Some critics treat the style of the text as a danger itself,
fearing it might attract people to new fascist movements. I treat that danger as real but minor by
comparison to how it teaches critics of fascism how such a movement works, how
it can alert those who are too casual about those dangers, how its attractions
speak to real contingencies of today, and what might be done to avoid the mistakes
liberals and others made about Mussolini in his own day. It challenges
casualism. Organized in its episodic way, the text highlights numerous contingencies
that might have broken this or that way. Sometimes a contingency breaks against
M; sometimes for him; sometimes he helps to nudge it in his favor. M is thus not
the master mind of a victiorious march to Rome that was inevitable; he is the
mercurial leader of a movement who senses how to withdraw at one moment,
dissemble at others, and strike at yet others. The text rounds out key figures
such as Mussolini, who starts as a young leader of Socialism; Italo Balbo, who
becomes the smiling, ruthless leader of the violent squadrista; Gabriele D’Annunzio, the foremost poet of Italy who
supports Italian takeover of Fiume-a city in Croatia; Giacoma Matteoti, the socialist
member of parliament who opposed Mussolini long after liberals, the Vatican,
and industrialists had given up; Benedettoo Croce, the liberal who first
opposes M’s advance and then concludes it may not be all that bad; Margherita
Sarfatti, the upper class artist and long term mistress of M; Pareto, the renowned
theorist of elite rule and secret counselor to Mussolini; and many others too
numerous to be covered in this review.
It is unwise to look for parallels or equivalences between
the time of Mussolini and today. But if you read this brilliant text as a long
series of parables, numerous resonances and affinities between then and now may
become discernible. Resonances that may
allow antifascists better to understand the convolutions through which
Mussolini came to power. A parable, as Jesus and Zarathustra knew, is a vague
saying or short story too brief and circumspect from which to draw specific
conclusions for other times, but juicy and urgent enough to trigger insights,
warnings, and prompts from which tnew responses can be mined. Parables travel
across time. They make you think. This set offers insights that might speak,
for starters, to the later regimes of Hitler, Bolsanaro, Putin, Orban, and Trump. Insights that might
strengthen the backbones of those who want to think the danger of Trumpism faded
or died after his electoral defeat in 2020. Here I mostly stick to the parables themselves.
Except when I cannot stop from doing otherwise.
M begins his long trek to power as a radical socialist after
WWI, during a period of inflation and stress marked by the return of soldiers
to a country not ready to assimilate them. Mussolini is a defender of the
returning veterans in 1919 who also becomes the editor of Avanti, the leading socialist journal. He supports the quest for a
General Strike to bring socialism to Europe. He also stresses the spiritual
unity of a nation in the making and the need for an authoritarian leader to
transfigure the surging nation into a state. He and Nicola Bombacci thus soon
break, partly over the issue of authoritarianism and partly over the former’s
view that timely violence is the key to gaining power.
Why do many Leftists eventually slide or run to the right
while others, like Bombacci and Matteoti, remain on the Left? I suspect a
virulent drive to dogmatism, violence and/or authoritarianism—either to one or
all of them--often makes the difference. The right more often welcomes these
things. And it has resources to offer financial and other protections. So as
you face more and more opposition within the Left, you slip and slide away from
it while retaining your dogmatism. This is, of course, not a law, merely a tendency,
one that may chafe against other tendencies.
It is, above all, not to say that liberalism—poised as it is between
Left and Right—is always the answer. Liberals, having allowed the reliability
of electoral institutions to sink so deeply into their pores, too often
minimize or shy away from dangers emanating from the right. They misconstrue
the powers of dissembling and street violence coming at timely moments from the
right sources. And they too often ignore real grievances of the working class
that can open that class to the promises of fascism. And, as a recent NYT
obituary on for Midge Decter shows, many liberals with authoritarian streaks
eventually rumble to the right.
Mussolini, the great speaker and dissembler, propels fascist
violence when his new movement is small, and he often denies he is doing
so. Fascist humor becomes the trademark of the charismatic speaker, a humor
in which vague, dark threats underwrite lighthearted denials. During a
different time, for instance, he might have told the Proud Boys to stand down
and stand by. In October of 1919 M writes to D”Annuzio, “”The elections are a
magnificent pretext for shrill, filthy, socialist opportunism. For us, they are
a means of rallying and camaflouge. We are organizing squads of twenty men
each, armed and in a kind of uniform, both to demand our freedom of speech, as
well as for other events…” (p.106) Pelting adversaries with a filthy vocabulary
of maggots, cowardice, and vermin is a tactic M never relinquishes. Those terms often serve as
a prelude or postlude to violence, for vermin by definition are to be wasted.
By 1920, according to Scurati, “All the liberal
and consevative parties were finally
coalescing into a national bloc against the socialists.., but the fascists
would still be left out. Circumstances would show that they had to assert
themselves through shootings, fires, destruction. Let the others grow old in
the voting booth…Fascism wasn’t an assembly of voters but an order of fighters”
(223). The socialists won the election that year. But the forces of
anti-socialism were very strong institutionaly, particularly among
industrialists, landowners, the Vatican, the fearful middle class, and rural
peasants. The task of fascism is to accentuate those fears and to attack the
purveyors. The police and the carbonniere
are sympathetic, providing space and cover for violences the fasci enact.
By 1920 fascism is spreading like “an epidemic”. People are
suffering. The fascist ensemble of daggers, clenched fists, words as punches,
guns, fires, night time attacks, fast cars, hot women, and charismatic denials
becomes a tempting stew to innumerable outcasts. Sex and violence become
intercoded, as expressed in the violent rapes that accompany each attack. And
the famed, ruthless sexual adventurism of M, says Scurati, exudes an “erotic
fury.” (272) An ugly masculinism is one of the attractions of fascism for those
who relentlessly demand primacy and have been thwarted too often.
M knows by this time that socialists occasionally call for
violence. But violence does not sink as deeply into their DNA. In violent
contests between fascists and socialist, the fascists will thus prevail; their
numbers will grow in the countryside as they do, even if the cities at first
resist. By 1921 “everyone is rushing in: big and small Landownrs, share
croppers, shopkeepers, tenants.” (286) Industriallists have already begun to
collude. They fear and detest socialism
and Bolshevism, while they at most merely dislike fascists. The former would
take away private property, hope for big profits, entrepreneurial liberty. M pursues an industrialism with high profits
grafted onto the fascist spirituality of a nation. Neither socialist nor
classical liberal, he the image of an industrial nation serves as a counter to
both. In early 1921 M announces in Il
Popolo d’Italia-- the defining journal of fascism of which he is is the
editor—"the assembly in Bologna celebrates a year of fascist battles. It
is the consecration of victory…Fascism is rampant because it carries within it
the seeds of life, not those of dissolution. It is a movement that cannot
fail.” (348) Violent purges, tethered to the promise of new national unity.
Italo Balbo is the organizer of the squadrista, a melange of free wheeling
fascist thugs and killers, eager to club and beat socialists and anybody else
who disagrees with them. The members of this militia often arrive from the
military or police forces. Balbo smiles a lot, conveying to his militia a sense
of joy in combat and in killing scum. The killing is for the cause. It also
exceeds it: it wreaks Vengeance for a
lot in life its warriors did not choose.
That is why the dagger is such a potent symbol and weapon of
fascists. It plunges into the enemy in an act of sexual violence, drawing blood.
You clean off your dagger or wipe off your penis and walk away.
In 1921 Balbo’s force occupies the town of
Pontelagorscuro; it “sets fire to the Chamber of Labor and forces the
socialists to kiss the corpses’s hands”. Then they attack another village in
Ferrara, soon obliterating several Socialist Leagues. Liberals, industrialists,
and the Vatican do not like the violence, but they do like defeat of the
socialists. They thus tolerate, and soon come tacitly to support, the fascist violence they condemn in principle. Often they can find a pretext to underplay
the tenacity of the violence. It is for a good cause. Balbo creates a recipe
that combines vicious violence with absolute disgrace of the socialists.
Disgrace as a key weapon of combat. “You
seize a diehard socialist, ram a funnel down his throat, and force him to drink
a quart of laxative. Then you tie him to the hood a car and drive him throuigh
town while he farts and toots and shoots himself…Impossible not to laugh.”
(359) Humiliation brings authority to the humiliators.
Fascist humor is a humor of contempt, disgrace, and
humiliation, attached to memories and promises of violence. Violence and humiliation
work back and forth upon each other, softening critiques of violence through the
vicarious memories of disgrace in some, the love of disgracing opponents in
others, and a visceral fear of humiliation
in yet others. The agents of disgrace, of course, feel most avenged when they humiliate
those of decency and nobility. Such attacks lift their spirits, dragging those
who previously ignored them into the muck. M both urgently needs Balbo and tries
to rein in him from to time. Finally Balbo is given control of the squadrista when they are later mobilized to
become an official force inside the Italian army itself. Hitler learns from
this.
At a strategic moment in 1922, Vilfredo Pareto, the famous
theorist of elite rule, writes privately to M that the time to attack is now or
never. He had publicly kept a thin veneer of distance between himself and M. But
a series of contingencies have now temporarily broken in a fascist direction. Socialists
are discouraged because of failure of their general strike. Industrialists and
landowners need the violence of fascists against socialists and Bolsheviks to counter
their electoral power. Liberals are demoralized as they preside over a
gridlocked parliament. The king is tired. Luigi Facta, an old moderate
nostalgic for a rural life, is on the verge of resigning as prime ministar. And
Benedetto Croce, the prominent liberal theorist, now assures everyone that
there is no need to exaggerate the effects of a fascist takeover. The
institutions will tame them.
M prepares a march on Rome while vociferously denying in
public that he is doing so, making one think today of Putin’s “routine military exercises” on the
border of Ukraine. The march is launched, a ragtag group of armed enthusiasts heading
to Rome. At an untimely moment Luigi Facta tenders his resignation. And the
king is neutralized. The armed squadrista
enter the city. The army does not confront them. No one has ordered them to do
so. If the order had been made, the militia would almost certainly have been
defeated. The king now invites M to organize a new government. Scurati: “Had
the prime minister resigned even 24 hours earlier, it would have enabled the
country to have a government capable of confronting the fascist aggression.” (521)
A fateful contingency of timing amid gridlock. The untimely death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg fits
that description too.
Croce is not too worried, thinking the new prime minister
will organize a fairly balanced cabinet. He reminds one of those pundits on
“Morning Joe”, who first said Trump could not win in 2016 and then called upon
liberals to give him a chance to assimilate to liberal institutions after he
did. Doubly wrong. Always a step behind the eight ball. Instead, M forces a new
electoral system through parliament, assuring a majority for him in the next
election. Violence becomes extensive in the provinces. Matteoti, a former
landowner turned socialist, now becomes a lonely voice in parliament to document innumerable fascist
violences. Other antifascists are too cowed. One day he disappears. A major public
crisis erupts, until M promises to hunt for the culprits and to work
relentlessly to create a beautiful fascist nation out of disorder and gridlock. He is confident the people now favor order
and rule over liberty. Here is what a ten year old, the only one who witnessed
the abduction said: “I was playing with my friends. Close by was a car…Five men
got out and started walking up and down. All of a sudden I saw Matteoti come
out. One of the men went over to him and punched him hard, knocking him to the
ground. Then the other four came over…So we could see that Matteoti was
struggling. Then they picked him up by the head and feet and carried him to the
car. We didn’t see anything else after that.” (705) His shallow grave was
discovered much later, with his head bashed in.
Read the whole book front to back as you also track daily news
items in America, Europe, South America and elsewhere about, for instance,
militia violences, the Presidential insurrection against the state on January
6, the large number of former police officers, militia members, and war veterans
who participated in it, the Republican legislators who embraced it, urban police
street killings of Blacks, right wing refusals to obey subpoenas issued by the
January 6 commission, grievances of the white working class that liberals try
to ignore, Trumpian speeches that define his adversaries to be traitors, scum, and
enemies of the people, desultory delays in bringing charges against high
ranking insurrectionists by Attorney General Garland, systematic Republican
Party suppression of Black and poor voters, surging inflation, the Big Lie
about a stolen election reverberating with the base, Republican norm breaking to
produce a right wing Supreme Court, extreme anti-abortion language of a new
court decision that also forebodes rollbacks in other areas, insistent denials
of climate change amid a growing climate crisis, white evangelical racist intensities
and neoliberal collusions, Elon Musk’s takeover of twitter, and Trumpist plans
to win and rule more resolutely the next time. Either the Donald himself or one
of his acolytes.
There is no star that guarantees the fascist movement will
win the next time. There are always
unexpected contingencies, each posing new questions about how each side responds
to it. There is no insitutional star that guarantees this movement will fail either.
It is a gathering storm. You can start by refusing to call its leaders
“populists”. M offers a series of
parables for our time.
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