Debunking Mussolini Part One

I recently wrote a piece on Medium explaining what The Ten Commandments of Fascism are. Unfortunately, thanks to Tucker Carlson and his ilk making excuses for Nazis, it will (somehow) not be obvious to certain people why the Ten Commandments of Fascism are bad. With that in mind, here’s everything wrong with the Ten Commandments of Fascism (1934 edition). I'll address the 1938 version in a later post.

1. Know that the Fascist and in particular the soldier, must not believe in perpetual peace. (Matitya’s commentary: I’ve read excerpts from Perpetual Peace by Immanuel Kant but never the full book. From what I can tell, there are parts of it with which I agree and parts with which I disagree. I’m not a big fan of Kant generally speaking though I will concede that making peace last is a worthy goal to strive towards. As the prophet Yeshayahu said “And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2:4))
2. Days of imprisonment are always deserved. (Matitya’s commentary: That’s obviously untrue. Sometimes people are imprisoned for crimes they did not in fact commit. That is unjust and undeserved.)
3. The nation serves even as a sentinel over a can of petrol. (Matitya’s commentary: I’m not entirely sure what that means but from what I can tell it’s a statement of support for strong central government. The problem with strong central government is of course that its leaders are as corruptible as everyone else is, “for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” (Genesis 8:21) Giving the corruptible immense amounts of power is a bad idea.)
4. A companion must be a brother, first, because he lives with you, and secondly because he thinks like you. (Matitya’s commentary: From what I can tell, this is saying that your duty to your country takes precedence over political disagreements with your countrymen. I don’t have a problem with that one. If your country is threatened, say by invasion, then you have to do what you can to save it, internal political squabbling be damned.)
5. The rifle and the cartridge belt, and the rest, are confided to you not to rust in leisure, but to be preserved in war. (Matitya’s commentary: I would prefer a more American-style vision where your weapons are there so you can defend yourselves from the government if and when it turns against you.)
6. Do not ever say “The Government will pay . . . “ because it is you who pay; and the Government is that which you willed to have, and for which you put on a uniform. (Matitya’s commentary: This is half-right. The government gets its money through taxation. The money that the government is taxing comes from the citizen. That said, it’s not and shouldn’t be the government for which you put on a uniform. I believe, as Mark Twain allegedly did, that “patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.” Thus making it possible for the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior and his followers to break unjust American laws not in spite of their love for their country but because of it. After all, if you love your country then you’ll want what’s best for it. And every country sometimes has bad governments in power, that isn’t an indictment of the country as a whole.
7. Discipline is the soul of armies; without it there are no soldiers, only confusion and defeat. (Matitya’s commentary: That’s almost certainly true.)
8. Mussolini is always right. (Matitya’s commentary: That’s obviously false. Mussolini wasn’t always right. Franco wasn’t always right. Salazar wasn’t always right. Hitler wasn’t always right. Perón wasn’t always right. Lenin wasn’t always right. Stalin wasn’t always right. Mao wasn’t always right. Castro wasn’t always right. Putin isn’t always right. They were still believed to be always right by their followers and every single one of them was (or is) a vicious tyrant. If your political ideology requires you to believe your leader is always right, then that’s what you’ll get. Why? For the simple reason that a leader with bad intentions will abuse his position and a leader with good intentions needs pushback to force him into sober second thought. Said pushback is impossible when the leader’s presumed always to be right. George Orwell was spot-on in Animal Farm. When Napoleon the pig accuses several animals of being traitors and executes them for it, Boxer the horse refuses to think ill of his leader and therefore decides the fault lies solely within himself. Boxer determines that the only way to resolve his ethical conflicts is to embrace as an axiom the claim that “Napoleon is always right”. Sure enough, Boxer works harder than any beast of burden could ever be expected to work since Napoleon believes he should and “Napoleon is always right”. Boxer gives way to exhaustion, so Napoleon sells him to the knackers to have him made into glue. Then Napoleon and his sidekick Squealer convince all the animals that Boxer’s last words were “Napoleon is always right” and that they should be an inspiration to them all. When your political ideology mandates that you believe your leader is “always right”, that’s how you get Animal Farm! For your own safety, as well as for moral reasons, never join a political movement that claims its leader is “always right.”
9. For a volunteer there are no extenuating circumstances when he is disobedient. (Matitya’s commentary: There are definitely extenuating circumstances to justify disobedience. Mussolini just isn’t acknowledging them since he’s more interested in starting a cult than creating a viable political system.)
10. One thing must be dear to you above all: the life of the Duce. (Matitya’s commentary: In that case, the ideology fails on its own terms. Mussolini wasn’t immortal. Even if he weren’t killed at the end of the Second World War, he would have died eventually. If Fascism valued Mussolini’s life “above all” then his death would have been the death of the entire movement. Also, if this commandment were truly valued above all then it doesn’t make sense for it be placed as the tenth commandment instead of the first.)

The conclusion I draw from this is that Mussolini was a demagogue with a personality cult disguised as a set of principles. Next up, is the 1938 version better? (Spoiler alert, it’s not.)