Recently someone compared me to Benito Mussolini for a comment I’d made. I thought it was pretty funny, so used AI to render my face into the famous photograph of the Fascist Party headquarters in Rome. I printed this onto a SimonTV t-shirt and of course, used it to make this promo video for my weekly live show. I enjoyed making it and thought to offer some background context.
“Fascist” is a fairly common slur leftists hysterically level at their political opponents. As with most ideologies -including socialism itself- it’s a pejorative leftists employ without much if any understanding of the underlying philosophy.
This photograph was snapped in Palazzo Braschi just prior to the general election in 1934. As a single party state the Italian people were offered a referendum on the candidates proposed, yes (“si”) or no. Only males could vote but it was not an entitlement. To qualify men would need to be either:
A serving or former member of the armed forces, or;
A member of the clergy, or;
A member of a trade union.
That’s right, a trade union. Because fascism as a philosophy evolved from socialism. Both share a genesis Hegelian Idealism and before he was a fascist, Mussolini himself was a prominent socialist.
I chose the dialogue in this clip quite deliberately. Famously, Mussolini delivered bombastic speeches from a balcony but I’m not sure he ever spoke this particular line. It’s the opening sentence of The Doctrine of Fascism published under his name in 1932 but probably written by Giovanni Gentile, the central figure in the development of the rather incoherent philosophy of fascism, such as it is. My delivery isn’t verbatim as I’ve changed a single word.
So there you go. History demonstrates that in practise there is little difference between socialist and fascist societies. Ideologically they share a commonality. A commonality that most leftists aren’t aware of, and those that are would prefer people didn’t realise.
-SRA. Auckland, 1/xi 2024.
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