The Specter of “Fascism”
8th October 2022
A specter haunts the Western world today and it is not that of fascism, semi- or otherwise, as President Biden among others demagogically claims. Fascism is a circumscribed historical phenomenon, most distinctive to Italy in the period 1922 to 1945. It combined authoritarianism marked by the cult of the Duce or leader, radical nationalism and neo-pagan idolatry, militarism, and economic corporatism. In blustery speeches in the late 1920s, Benito Mussolini proclaimed the necessity of a “totalitarian” party-state, although in practice he was forced to tolerate both the existence of the Italian monarchy and a Catholic Church under Pope Pius XI (the Roman pontiff from 1922 until 1939) that vigorously challenged the totalitarian pretensions of the fascist state.