Fascist Spectacle.pdf

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Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v... Democracy has deprived people's lives of "style." Fascism brings back "style" in people's lives: that is a line of conduct, that is the color, the strength, the picturesque, the unexpected, the mystical; in sum, all that counts in the soul of the multitudes. We play the lyre on all the strings, from violence to religion, from art to politics. [77] Three years after this speech, in the aftermath of the special laws of 1925–1926, when fascism liquidated the opposition and moved to become the only governing party, Mussolini's call for "bringing style" to people's lives turned into a rhetoric envisaging the birth of a "new man." This man would be "serious, intrepid, tenacious." [78] The artistic metaphor linking the politician to the sculptor who smashes and carves the marble led Mussolini to declare the need for "reshaping the Italians," "making the Italians' character," "creating a new generation of Italians." [79] Like the artist who molded his material in order to realize his inspiration, Mussolini aimed at forging the Italians' character into a work of art to carry out his political vision. By building a new, fascist Italian and by establishing new, fascist ways of living, Mussolini would create his final masterpiece: a long-lasting fascist Italy. For this purpose, he required the total involvement of every person; he demanded people's full participation. Indeed, "to give style," the aesthetic expression that reflected Mussolini's political aim to transform the populace, had as a pragmatic counterpart the expression "to fascistize." The regime started to adopt this expression at the same time it began to utilize the term "totalitarian"—the term that most successfully conveys the regime's aim to exercise full authority. Mussolini first used the term "totalitarian" in a speech delivered at the conclusion of the Fascist Party's fourth national congress, on June 22, 1925. [80] On that occasion Mussolini, after declaring "all power to all fascism" (tutto il potere a tutto il fascismo ), talked about fascism's "totalitarian will" and hinted that others had previously characterized his fascist movement in this manner ("that goal that is defined as our ferocious totalitarian will will be pursued with even greater ferociousness"). [81] As a matter of fact, the origins of the ― 27 ― word "totalitarian" can be found slightly earlier in the political discourse of the antifascist opposition, whose leader, Giovanni Amendola, first employed the term in a May 12, 1923, article. In this writing, Amendola discussed the electoral maneuvering pursued by Mussolini's government, and in this context he referred to fascism as a "totalitarian system." After this first, very technical use, the word was imbued with another meaning. In November Amendola wrote about the "totalitarian spirit" of fascism and interpreted it as the inner characteristic of fascism's attempt to constitute a new, all-encompassing order, an authoritarian state structure. [82] In this larger sense, the word continued to be invoked by the opposition during the following two years, especially in concomitance with the 1924 parliamentary elections. On January 2, 1925, the noun "totalitarianism" appeared for the first time, in an article in La Rivoluzione Liberale by the socialist Lelio Basso. Only one day later, on January 3, Mussolini delivered the famous speech that marked a turn in the history of fascism. With that speech Mussolini asserted the role of force and the obsolescence of the constitutional state, and he sanctioned the beginning of a formal dictatorship. Then, on June 15, 1925, Amendola gave a political speech in which he referred to fascism's "totalitarian will." [83] A week later Mussolini would repeat those words in his first use of the term "totalitarian." The attempt to understand the new political phenomenon of fascism had pushed the opposition to discover new explanatory notions in order to come to terms with a reality that escaped existing categories of political discourse. Mussolini and his movement appropriated those words to define themselves, [84] and in so doing they elaborated a vision for the future organization of state and society in the new, fascist-dominated Italy. [85] "Totalitarian" came to coincide with fascistizzare ("to fascistize"). [T]hat goal that is defined as our ferocious totalitarian will will be pursued with even greater ferociousness: it will truly become the dominant thought and preoccupation of our activity. We want, finally, to fascistize the nation. [86] The regime's aesthetic-political operation of "giving style" to the Italians and constructing a beautiful whole ran parallel to fascism's realpolitik attempt to organize a totalitarian state. [87] The two projects depended on each other. The population's homogeneity not only provided the state with full power but also allowed the creation of a harmonious artwork. Only through the identification of the individual with the state, only when the new fascist man was totally submitted to and coincided with the fascist state, could ― 28 ― 16 of 199 7/11/2006 12:54 AM
Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v... the beauty of the whole emerge. [88] Consider this interesting passage from Simmel's discussion of symmetry in aesthetics: Quite apart from its consequences for the individual, the rational organization of society has a high aesthetic attraction. It aims to make the totality of lives in the whole organization into a work of art. . . . Consider, for example, the aesthetic appeal of machines. . . . The organization of a factory and the plan of a socialistic society only repeats this beauty on larger scales. This peculiar interest in harmony and symmetry by which socialism demonstrates its rationalistic character, and by which it aims to stylize social life, is expressed purely externally by the fact that socialistic utopias are always set up according to principles of symmetry. . . . This general trait of socialistic plans attests to the deep power of attraction in the idea of an harmonic, internally balanced organization of human activity overcoming all resistance of irrational individuality. [89] Simmel was referring to socialism, yet his observations can as well apply to Mussolini's aesthetic design. [90] The "irrationality" of the "masses," which Mussolini posited as a fact, could not be tolerated by a system that aimed at the harmonious organization of the whole and the "stylization of social life" within a totalitarian state. Therefore, the leader was in charge of building an "internally balanced organization of human activity"—a work of art—by overturning the irrationality of the "masses." The identification of the individual with the state allowed for the development of the fascist reality that Mussolini was pursuing. Fascism's aesthetic-totalitarian project and its ideal of harmony were founded on violence, although the regime denied it at the level of representation. In fascism's discourse, as a matter of fact, violence turned out to be a rhetorical trope and a mystique. Through a series of mythical transformations and discursive reconfigurations, fascist representations of violence glorified force and identified it with renewal and rebirth. Violence as Regeneration Mussolini's aesthetic vision of politics, his identification of the politician with the artist, and his conception of the women-masses as passive material combined to form Mussolini's negative judgment of the populace. Mussolini despised the "masses," although he was also attracted by them, and Le Bon offered him the "scientific" justification for such contempt. However, Mussolini was not the only one to cultivate such feelings toward the population. Distrust for the "masses" emerged in the current of antidemocratism that, by the end of the 1800s, had fully developed in Europe and even in the United ― 29 ― States. [91] Parliament, as the fundamental institution of "bourgeois" representative democracy, especially attracted criticism from the whole political spectrum. [92] For the left, parliament failed to fulfill the democratic principles of egalitarianism, popular sovereignty, and pacifism. [93] For a large part of the radical right wing, parliament epitomized the regressive and decadent aspects of democracy, as it upheld the principles of egalitarianism, pacifism, and representation. The liberal-conservatives, in their turn, attacked parliament for allowing the advent of a new political elite to replace their own leadership. The liberal-conservatives opposed the new politicians, who were supposedly defending particular interests, and against them they strenuously upheld the legitimacy of their own claims to power. [94] Crowd psychologists had elaborated their theories of mass behavior in part as a critique of the widening of parliamentary representation. [95] Although claiming to be defending democratic principles, these social scientists actually held a peculiar notion of democracy: democracy was valuable as long as it maintained the existing social order. [96] In effect, crowd theorists forcefully attacked the egalitarian doctrines that threatened to upset traditional class divisions. [97] Within an interpretive framework concerned with the danger of stagnation and dissolution, crowd theorists considered parliamentary representation an element of risk, for it eliminated differences in social relations. Democracy amounted to a negative balancing of interests, and crowd theorists attacked it for its tendency to smooth over conflicts and create leveling compromises. [98] Following the same logic, the intellectuals of the nationalist radical right criticized the resolution of conflicts via parliament, a body they considered a basic mystification. The representative system allowed for the coexistence of oppositions. In so doing, however, it substituted for division its fictional representation. [99] For the nationalists, parliament turned out to constitute the theatrical staging of violence—the institutionalization of conflicts through the suppression of violence. Parliament deprived struggle of its role in the evolution of society, with the risk of exposing the latter to decadence and regression. The rightist radicals shared with a large part of the contemporary political culture a belief in the 17 of 199 7/11/2006 12:54 AM
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