Professor Scott Atran has written a paper on Fascism’s Centennial Legacy, with consideration to current western attitudes about democracy.
One hundred years ago, in late October 1922, Italian Fascists under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, a former socialist newspaper editor and politician, marched on Rome and onto the world stage. The goal was to make Italy and its capital great again, as under the Caesars. When the fascist supporters and Blackshirt militia entered the city, King Victor Emmanuel II, transferred power to Mussolini to avoid fascist promises of violence should rule be denied them. The New Order’s watchwords were “belief” and “obedience”: belief in fascism’s spiritual values, rooted in religious readiness to sacrifice the self for the Nation to save it both from the materialism of socialism’s egalitarian descent to mediocrity and from democracy’s apparent weakness, chaos and corruption; and obedience to the cult of the leader, Il Duce (or Der Fuehrer, El Caudillo, and the like), who alone could impart revolutionary enthusiasm to the people, imbuing them with the faith to overcome and even despise rational doubts, the country’s existing institutions, and the indiscipline of dissent that comes with disbelief…..
