The ‘persona’ of Benito Mussolini remains compelling to this day. Not the man as such, nor his ideas. But the personality he craftily constructed: that which led Winston Churchill to hail him as “the Roman Genius”, “the greatest law-giver among living men”.
He wasn’t alone to be infatuated. A host of other politicians, intellectuals, ‘captains of industry’ – the pope himself – awed by this persona, considered Mussolini to be “a man sent from God”, a model to emulate, the man of the future.
After bluffing his path to power in 1922, he worked his way to obtaining widespread consensus among the Italian populace; even, nowadays, the myth persists in Italy that ‘trains ran on time during the good old days of the Duce’ and that only another Duce will be able to cure Italy from its troubles.
After the infamous marcia su Roma, when Mussolini was made prime minister by Victor Emanuel III, the Leftists decried the violence of the black shirts. They accused the king of weakness, the police of collusion, the liberal administration of inertia.
However, the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci berated his colleagues for blaming the establishment – that certainly played its part in Mussolini’s ascent to power – while failing to acknowledge their own fair share of the blame.
How did the Left contribute to Mussolini’s taking of power? That was the question to be answered according to Gramsci.
We are living in interesting times. The Right has gone way to the right and seems to be going places too. The latest success of this ultra-Right was Giorgia Meloni (in coalition) winning the elections in Italy.
The rest of Europe (‘liberal’ Europe, that is, not that ‘other’ Europe) went ballistic, even though, during the run-up to the elections, Meloni did her best to assuage their fears at the cost of appearing wildly inconsistent on her past declarations (famously about the euro, national sovereignty and, yes, him, Vladimir Putin).
Contrary to what’s been reported, Meloni is not the first post-fascist to get to power. Alleanza Nazionale, direct descendant of the Partito Nazionale Fascista, was already in government allied to Silvio Berlusconi back in 1994.
Numerous faces from that government are expected to make their comeback as part of the ‘new’ Meloni team.
To brand Meloni as fascist (whatever fetish she may have with Mussolini) is plain wrong. Meloni is an outright conservative but not a fascist. Fascism is all about creating the ‘new man’ it projects towards the future.
Meloni is about going back to so-called ‘traditional’ values; there is nothing forward-looking in her worldview. Like most right-wing populists, what she yearns for is an ‘idyllic’ past, the existence of which is highly debatable.
The Left does well to heed Gramsci’s advice and do some soul searching- Aleks Farrugia
Hers is an ideology shared with other ultra-Rightists across Europe, conservative and nationalistic to the point of xenophobia. What’s to be seen is how she will translate this conservatism in government.
Part of the success of the governing ultra-Right have been certain economic and social policies taken straight out of the traditional Leftist playbook.
Only last week, the Polish government proposed a new tax on profits made from the cost-of-living crisis, a tax on the rich getting richer. Le Pen had promised targeted assistance to non-urban areas hit by under-employment. Meloni made similar promises while hammering the fact that she hails from the Left-leaning working class quarters of the Garbatella in Rome.
It was quite telling when Enrico Letta, leader of the leftist Democratic Party, was booed by the unemployed while campaigning in Bari. The dismal results obtained by the Left, in Italy – but not just – should inspire a soul-searching exercise of the kind suggested by Gramsci in 1922.
In its rush to win over the middle-classes and build bridges with business, the Left ended up alienating the working class from its folds. In matters of social policy, it shifted towards liberalism, concentrating on civil liberties dear to the middle class (not a bad thing if taken within a wider context of a social justice agenda), sidelining such workers’ issues as labour contracts, safeguarding the conditions of work, adequate healthcare and safety at work, workers’ participation and workers’ rights, just salaries and wages (including a decent minimum wage and a living wage to guarantee dignified living for all), the principle of equal pay for equal work, etc. etc.
In economic policy, the agenda of the Left has been hijacked by business interests to ridiculous extents. Forced to decide between the needs and demands of workers and the interests of Capital, the Left has repeatedly favoured the latter upon its traditional constituency.
Again, this isn’t just the case with Italy; we don’t even need to leave these shores to understand the extent to which the Left has shifted away from its working-class legacy besotted by middle-class liberalism and the glitter of Capital and profit.
Orphaned from the Left, the working class has been easy bait for the ultra-Right. Trumpism in the US, the rise of the New Right in Scandinavia, LePenism, Orbanism, Meloni & co.; they all thrive on their appeal to a working class that feels abandoned and helpless in an increasingly alienating world.
The ultra-Right keeps harping about how the Left has turned its back on workers to favour LGBTQ+ rights, illegal migration and ecologism, cosying up to big business, its leadership detached from the grassroots, taking them for granted, treating them as useful idiots, expecting them to vote blindly as instructed, berating them and shaming them if they protest their right to seek refuge in a party that actually cares about them.
It’s a narrative wrought with an agenda but which also rings true on many counts.
Indeed, the Left does well to heed Gramsci’s advice and do some soul- searching; it may well be the case that, in pursuit of electoral glory, it has forgotten where its soul truly lies.