The Thermopylae of Fascism

“For this common ground,” Mussolini once said, “I would give my life even now, willingly, so long as it is truly marked with real Italian spirit.” “…I was, and am, a socialist” (see Angelica Balabanoff on Mussolini’s Problem in the “The Young Mussolini”).

It is 1945, early in the year, the DUCE and Fascism is near its end against the Allied leaders, yet Mussolini refuses to give up hope. What is such a cause he was willing to fight for to the bitter last battle? Along with 30,000 troops, he planned to reach Valtellina (valley in northern Italy bordering Switzerland) with a group of loyalists to lead a final resistance against an invasion from the Allies.

This was the final, last major decision of his life — a choice to establish a final effort with 5,000 of his loyalist followers before Valtellina, which was controlled by Waffen-SS, or make an escape to the Swiss border. Mussolini found inspiration from Leonidas and his heroes, picturing himself as Leonidas in his situation. ‘This will be the Thermopylae of Fascism,’ he said. Thermopýles, or Thermopylae alludes to the Battle of Thermopylae (480-479 B.C.E.).

The Allied leaders repeatedly vowed to have Mussolini stand in front of an international tribunal for crimes against humanity. “I can already see the trial they will stage for me at Madison Square Garden,” he laughed, “with people in the stands looking at me as if I were a caged beast. No, it is better to die with weapons raised. Only this can be an end worthy of my existence” — stated romantically at his last; and sounding bravely poetic amidst decadence in the hour of ruin like his compatriot, D’Annunzio.

However, attempting to make a last stand for Fascism without joining the Duce at Valtellina, May 20, U.S. troops surrounded the militia of troops led by Italian SS leader, Major Mario Carita, who were gunned to the last man by heavy artillery.

In this end, Mussolini envisioned the future:

“The present war will produce an alteration in order of rank. Great Britain, for instance, is destined to become a second-class power, in view of disclosure of Russian and American strength (…) In a short time, Fascism will once more shine on the horizon. First of all, because of the persecution to which the Liberals will subject it, showing that liberty is something to reserve to oneself and refuse to others.”

In Mussolini’s last testament, so to say, he speaks of hope for Fascism, his cause for workers’ labor, and how his legacy would be defined by others versus what he believed it to be. This was, he explains, a revolutionary cause of socialism, that sought to adapt to reality, viewing Marx’s predictions of society as becoming by time improbable. Fascism saw and critiqued the weaknesses of the idle intellectualism and liberalism of its day.

Most importantly, he states, that “when it is written that we are the white guard for the bourgeoisie, it is the vilest of lies. I defended, and I state this with full conviction, workers’ progress. Amongst the principal causes for the fall of Fascism I blame the deaf and merciless fight of certain financial and industrial groups who, in their mad egoism, feared and hated Fascism as the worst enemy of their inhuman interests.” He terms his critics false prophets, and rails at his last, against the hypocrisy of democracies and the plutocrats, or of those we can say, enjoy their rulership today. Yet, the democratic masses still declare the solution is “more democracy.” They ask, and their rulers, playing to this desire and political language (i.e., illusions) come election period instead — when having secured victory — gives them election after election more surveillance, lesser freedoms, and subjugate the people (mere consumers to manipulate and manage), who grow greatly discontent year by year.

The Codex Fascismo reads, that “Fascism triumphs because it is, among other things, a formula of fulfillment, which people are happy to turn to from the liberal formulas of defeat, frustration, and inhibition both of governmental and private initiatives . . .” (Lawrence Dennis, Codex Fascismo, p. 423). Benito Mussolini predicted, that “In a short time, Fascism will once more shine on the horizon. First of all, because of the persecution to which the Liberals will subject it.”

Let us glean more into what would appeal to certain people, that would make them step outside of the liberal tradition.

In L’Unità, October 7, 1924, Communist Antonio Gramsci wrote an article titled Neither Fascism nor Liberalism: Sovietism! on the political crisis and strategy of destroying Fascism, that are no different than the present-day, when saying the actions of the opposition bloc are weak. However, similar and insightful observations can be gleaned, that compares to the thoughts of the Fascists, when they were considering their future and choices. Antonio Gramsci on the opposition bloc to the Fascists, had wrote of, “Its heterogeneous social composition, its hesitations, and its aversion for a struggle of the popular masses against the Fascist regime reduce its actions to a journalistic campaign and parliamentary intrigues…”

The Italian Marxist and communist, Antonio F. Gramsci continues:

“In the opposition movement to fascism the most important part has passed to the Liberal Party because the bloc has no other program to oppose to fascism than the old Liberal program of parliamentary bourgeois democracy, the return to the constitution, to legality, to democracy. In the discussion concerning the succession to fascism, according to the congress of the Liberal Party the Italian people is placed by the opposition before a choice: either fascism or liberalism; either a Mussolini government of bloody dictatorship or a Slandri, Gioliotti, Amendola, Turati, don Sturzo, or Vella government tending towards the reestablishment of the good old liberal Italian democracy, under whose mask the bourgeoisie will continue to exercise its exploitative rule.”

As they do well into the present-day beyond Italy.

“The worker, the peasant, who for years has hated the fascism that oppresses him believes it necessary, in order to bring it down, to ally himself with the liberal bourgeoisie, to support those who in the past, when they were in power, supported and armed fascism against the workers and peasants, and who just a few months ago formed a sole bloc with fascism and shared in the responsibility for its crimes. And this is how the question of the liquidation of fascism is posed? No! The liquidation of fascism must be the liquidation of the bourgeoisie that created it.” (ibid.)

The life and story of Nicola Bombacci, from Communist to allied with Mussolini and Italian Fascism, after seeing the same limitation of possible choice with the alliance of the democratic societies with the Soviets under Stalin, also shares similarity to this last ditch effort of Mussolini, and how the Italian monarch’s actions, later exiled, disgraced Italy. It demonstrates, that Mussolini never really controlled Italy.

Ready for the rounds of the firing squad, loyalist to both Lenin and Mussolini, Bombacci cried out as the bullets of the Communists pelted him, “Long live Socialism!” A few notable Fascist hierarchs cried out “Long live Italy!”