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Re The “Liberal Fascist” Hoax The Myth of “Syndicalist Support for Mussolini”

Alex Constantine - August 20, 2010

By Alex Constantine (repost w/spell correction of Jonah Goldberg's name)

Mussolini - Re The “Liberal Fascist” HoaxComment from "Jimboo,"  jim787@optimum.net, who has obviously been influenced by Jonah Goldberg's delusional Holocaust revisionism: "Mussolini = devout communist (1926) – uses Syndicalism which was a left wing labor movement to form the foundations of Fascism ..."

This is obscenely false and deliberately so, a fine example of the perversion of history coming from "conservatives" these days - and that's why we normal folk call them "Wingnuts." 

Syndicalism is a potential substitute for the evils of capitalism, a reformed corporate system that depends on unions to overcome economic imbalances of the sort common in the American system, eventually leading to socialism. Mussolini's shift from the left to militarism in fascism's formative era was opposed by Italian socialists, including the Syndicalists, though a few  leaders did throw in their support. This, however, is a far cry from "Jimboo's" statement above.

In fact, the foundation of Mussolini-style fascism is the military - labor unions are the perceived enemy of the Italian military-industrial model.

From "Mussolini & Syndicalism," by Tom Wetzel:

"Mussolini ... was developing the fascist ideology during the war years, he continued to advocate 'heroic action' but he now saw this in terms of military action rather than in terms of workers revolution ...  Nonetheless, Mussolini got very little support from the working class for his new patriotic, pro-war position. Working people in Italy had seen too many instances of troops and cops being used to repress workers struggles to identify the military as "theirs." However, Mussolini did succeed in convincing the main leadership of the Italian Syndicalist Union (USI) of his patriotic position by early 1915. At the USI's congress in 1915, its general secretary, Alceste de Ambris, and other leaders such as Filippo Corridoni, tried to sway the organization into a pro-war position. It is this event that gave rise to the myth of syndicalist support for Mussolini. ... "

Apart from a few leaders who attempted to assist Il Duce, he had absolutely no support whatsoever from the Syndicalists. So it can not be said that he used the movement to advance his fascist ambitions - but lies and myths are all "conservatives" have these days to advance their own. Pity the liars of the right - they are intellectually denuded and must cling to Goldbergian fantasies laced with Rush Limbaugh's manic-depressive ravings.

BTW, anyone who believes that Mussolini was a "devout communist" in 1926, as "Jimboo" does, is drudging through too many disingenuous Wingnut blogs and needs a decent therapist - preferably a liberal one. This was the very year that Il Duce declared Italy to be a far-right totalitarian nation - a fascist one. He traded in his communist principles for corporatism. The rest is history - but far-right stinkbug propaganda-meisters  know very little about that ...

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  1. Goldberg owes his entire career to the fact that his mother was Linda Tripp’s reactionary handler during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, nothing else. The guy has a difficult time with facts and his writings would be useful only if printed on very soft paper.
    Furthermore Mussolini strayed from Socialism when the British government paid him. He went from being an ardent class warrior to being a front line soldier.

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