Fascist Spectacle.pdf

Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v...
the love for fellow creatures and from willing nothing. They will return her goal to earth and to men their hopes—new,
free, very free spirits who will triumph over God and the Nothingness. [15]
The new spirits were needed in a reality that Mussolini believed was dominated by a lack of ideals
and spiritual values.
― 45 ―
The Superman is a symbol, the exponent of this anguishing and tragic period of crisis that is traversing European
consciousness while searching for new sources of pleasure, beauty, ideal. He testifies to our weakness, but at the same
time represents the hope for our redemption. He is dusk and dawn. He is above all a hymn to life, to life lived with all the
energies in a continuous tension toward something higher. [16]
Only the superman could make life heroic. Only the new spirits could upset the egalitarian system
that democracy had introduced into social and political life. [17]
As a matter of fact, well before he took the role of duce of fascism, [18] and prior to the mass
organization of his myth, Mussolini came to represent the model of a new generation of politicians.
Whether he stood in the forefront of the battle as leader of the revolutionary socialists or played the
role of spokesman for interventionism in World War I, Mussolini's claims to spiritualism, his activism,
and his nonconformist political theories attracted the attention of many critics of the liberal system
who were looking for a "new man." [19] A few years later, when Mussolini became the central cult
figure in the fascist regime, his myth was made possible by the search for "the man" in what Warren
Susman labels "the culture of personality." [20] The widespread mystique of the great leader explains
as well the extended admiration and success of the Duce when he was appointed prime minister in
1922. [21]
Mussolini in the Culture of Personality
In the middle of the twentieth century's first decade, a change occurred in the normative expectations
of ideal social behavior for the individual. As Susman argues for the American case, "the modal type
[of self] felt to be essential for the maintenance of the social order" shifted in the 1910s from
"character" to "personality." [22] The notion of character had responded to the nineteenth-century
preoccupation with elaborating a standard of conduct in society that would ensure the mastering of the
self and its moral development. It also constituted a model for the presentation of the self to others
that established the link between the "social" and the "moral." Hundreds of books, pamphlets, and
manuals connected to the building of "character" were published during the century. Other cultural
forms, such as literature and the arts, also testified to the concept's influence upon the moral spirit of
the 1800s. [23] Qualities such as citizenship, duty, democracy, work, honor, reputation, and integrity
were most frequently associated with the notion of character. [24] Values of work and production, as
embodied in Max Weber's ideal type of the Protestant capitalist, were particularly emphasized.
― 46 ―
The Protestant capitalist, representative specimen of the "culture of character," exemplified the
construction of the moral self via the disciplined control of impulses and the internalization of moral
values.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, and in the face of changes in the social order,
a new vision of the self emerged, along with a new method of presenting the self in society. The
development of psychiatric and psychological studies at this time was symptomatic of the growing
awareness of the effects that material transformations were exercising upon individuals. [25] Self-help
books appeared with new kinds of advice that responded to novel needs and conditions caused by
technological discoveries' effects upon people's sense of time and space. [26] The new American
disease, "neurasthenia," spurred the spread of therapies seeking to relieve nervous depressions, or
what Victorian England called "shattered nerves." [27] Within this context, therapeutic ideals of
self-fulfillment overcame the interest in moral qualities and ascetic self-denial; the notion of expressive
"personality" and individual needs began to come to the fore. Manuals for self-improvement suggested
ways to build one's personality and referred to qualities such as "fascinating, stunning, attractive,
magnetic, glowing, masterful, creative, dominant, forceful." [28] This constituted a fundamental shift in
the social ideal of the self. [29] Uniqueness became a must in a society dominated by "crowds." Having
an identity meant being someone special, unusual. Interestingly, as Susman remarks, self-help guides
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