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Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingyona Show.
Speaker 1: Kurt from Anelopillos Back. Are you doing to a Kurt?
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm doing great. Hi? Everyone, happy to be back.
Speaker 1: Well, we are going to talk about, uh, talk about
Speaker 1: another book that Antelope Hill has published. It is I
Speaker 1: will I always struggle to pronounce it, Il duche Massimo
Speaker 1: Volume One's enough, Yeah, yeah, Il duce Massimo Volume one
Speaker 1: Selected speeches and writings of Mussolini from his beginnings to
Speaker 1: the first attempted assassination December nineteen oh one October nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: Big picture, what do you get out of this out
Speaker 1: of these speeches and writings.
Speaker 2: Well, the big thing that most people know about Mussolini
Speaker 2: but aren't really familiar with is that he of course
Speaker 2: came out of the Italian Socialist Party, and he wasn't
Speaker 2: just sort of a participant in that. He was he
Speaker 2: was a big name. He was someone who was headlining
Speaker 2: a lot of their publications. He was a well known speaker, writer, propagandist, agitator,
Speaker 2: and he knew his stuff. He was very familiar with
Speaker 2: all of the sort of classic socialist writings. He comments
Speaker 2: a lot on Marx and Angles, of course, but also
Speaker 2: other maybe slightly lesser known but still prominent European socialists,
Speaker 2: as well as on a lot of other philosophers. So
Speaker 2: that's what I think is really interesting about this book
Speaker 2: is that we're really going back to the formation of
Speaker 2: Mussolany's political and philosophical and economic thinking, and and so
Speaker 2: you're getting the Mussolini from before fascism was even really
Speaker 2: an idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he really seems to you know, the first question
Speaker 1: I had when I'm like, okay, so what is a
Speaker 1: young Mussolini from his beginnings? You know, how much is
Speaker 1: he influenced by Marx? Obviously, so from the speeches and
Speaker 1: the writings, what do you how do you see his
Speaker 1: Marxist priors, let's just call it that.
Speaker 2: Well, I think he appears as someone who definitely is
Speaker 2: a Marxist. Would would probably describe himself as a maybe,
Speaker 2: if not a Marxist, at least a follower of Marx,
Speaker 2: someone who highly valued Marx's ideas. He's very much not
Speaker 2: a sort of doctrinaire of any one sort of school
Speaker 2: of social He describes himself as a couple of different things.
Speaker 2: A syndicalist is one of the terms he uses to
Speaker 2: describe himself, which basically means he he believes in a
Speaker 2: revolution through the power of trade unions and that sort
Speaker 2: of organization, rather than through parliaments and parties, which is
Speaker 2: kind of interesting because that obviously changes later. But he
Speaker 2: in his commentary on Marx, he definitely rejects the people
Speaker 2: who who want to throw out Marx entirely, while at
Speaker 2: the same time saying, yes, obviously Marx wasn't right about
Speaker 2: literally everything, so he's somewhere in that sort of middle
Speaker 2: ground of socialists in this time period.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting when you look at some of
Speaker 1: the people who can consider themselves to be syndicalists. A
Speaker 1: lot of them, the paths they took or the people
Speaker 1: that they inspired tended to be more on the right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is interesting. The biggest name I think is
Speaker 2: George Sorell was a French syndicalist. He's at least the
Speaker 2: one that I find the most interesting, even though Mussolini
Speaker 2: comments on him. Not a whole lot, but he does
Speaker 2: excerpt a few of his writings and reprints them in
Speaker 2: one of the newspapers that he's that he is writing
Speaker 2: for at the time, Currell basically the sort of TLDR
Speaker 2: for those who don't know much about him. He is
Speaker 2: a revolutionary socialist of the syndicalist variety. As we've said,
Speaker 2: he sort of really believes in the power of revolutionary violence,
Speaker 2: of the general strikes, the rule of the proletariat, and
Speaker 2: he makes a few different major contributions to socialists thinking.
Speaker 2: One of the big ones is the power of of
Speaker 2: the myth as it's as it's put the base, which
Speaker 2: is basically referring to the power of violence as a
Speaker 2: sort of energizing force, something around which a myth us
Speaker 2: can be built that will strengthen the social classes. And
Speaker 2: he even refers to this as the violent contest in
Speaker 2: the classes as hopefully also reforming the bourgeois classes as well,
Speaker 2: which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: It's so it's he's definitely a class warfare rather than
Speaker 2: a class cooperation guy. But he does think that through
Speaker 2: this the rest of society beyond gets the proletariat wall
Speaker 2: so be improved. Where I think you're you're seeing kind
Speaker 2: of an early step into a sort of fascist thinking,
Speaker 2: and he ends up, interestingly enough, becoming like an integralist
Speaker 2: later on and saying essentially that the socialism has failed
Speaker 2: and gravitates more towards the sort of French integralists like
Speaker 2: Charles Morat.
Speaker 1: The let's let's stay on Cirell for a while, because
Speaker 1: I think Sorell is really important, and there's you know,
Speaker 1: we'll get back to Mussolini, of course, but it seems
Speaker 1: like Sorell when you look at fascism and you look
Speaker 1: at even national socialism in Germany. People like to bring
Speaker 1: up Nietzsche as an inspiration, and obvious he was, but
Speaker 1: it seems to me that probably Sorel Sorell is unsung
Speaker 1: there and that there was probably in practice there was
Speaker 1: more inspiration from Sorel than Nietzsche. Do you agree with
Speaker 1: that or am I wrown?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not sure, because they're different sorts of contributions.
Speaker 2: Nietzsche obviously is not programmatic, he doesn't or or systematic
Speaker 2: Niche is really at sort of the maybe subconscious level
Speaker 2: and inspiration for all of this, and including for Cerell himself.
Speaker 2: But crell Is Sorell is a huge contributor to this
Speaker 2: sort of radical revolutionary attitude and the way that violence
Speaker 2: is understood as in the end a social tonic or
Speaker 2: amenable to creating positive social change, and it's very much
Speaker 2: against the sort of parliamentarism. One of the things that
Speaker 2: you see as a common thread throughout all of Mussolani's
Speaker 2: inspirations is an anti parliamentarism. That's really the ultimate bad guy.
Speaker 1: And we will come back to Mussolanium. I just want
Speaker 1: to stay on this for a while because you mentioned
Speaker 1: Currell and the general strike. How relevant do you think
Speaker 1: a general strike is today? Or is or things just
Speaker 1: too automated at this point?
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I would have to say, I
Speaker 2: haven't thought about it too much, although the thought did
Speaker 2: a heard to me as I was reading this, whether
Speaker 2: or not such a thing as even possible at this point.
Speaker 2: My first instinct is that I don't think it is.
Speaker 2: I don't think that the laboring class in certainly in America,
Speaker 2: has the requisite level of of of political consciousness for
Speaker 2: such a thing. And in many ways, it's it's gone backwards.
Speaker 2: It's it's that that genie has been put back in
Speaker 2: the lamp through all sorts of means, just stay propaganda
Speaker 2: and essentially the victory of the reactionary liberal so called
Speaker 2: democratic classes in the us. Possibly in Europe, it's still possible,
Speaker 2: but we of course run up against the fact that
Speaker 2: all of the the so called socialists of today have
Speaker 2: just completely changed their positions. They have just decided that
Speaker 2: their constituency are freaks and degenerates and foreigners, which has
Speaker 2: completely cut the legs out from under any kind of
Speaker 2: labor organizing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I mean, I've I've had these thoughts a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, from reading Sorell, and I think you're right.
Speaker 1: There's really the only way you're going to have that
Speaker 1: is if you have a coherent culture. And there is
Speaker 1: no coherent culture there, there is no culture on a
Speaker 1: mass scale. So yeah, it's everything keeps coming back to localism.
Speaker 1: But all right, moving on with the text. So, from
Speaker 1: what I got from reading reading this early views or
Speaker 1: anti statist, he sees economic transformation suppressing current property relations
Speaker 1: proletarians or the or the main actors or the sole actor.
Speaker 1: And then but he also seems to when he starts
Speaker 1: turning away from Marx, I think he just sees Marx.
Speaker 1: It seems like he sees Marx as an economist concerned
Speaker 1: solely with labor and material conditions. And I think that
Speaker 1: basically what Mussolini starts to see is is this do
Speaker 1: you think this is? When he starts to, you know,
Speaker 1: just start looking at the Italian people as the Italian people,
Speaker 1: and the yeah, it would be kind of it would
Speaker 1: be difficult to take a coherent culture and seeks to
Speaker 1: durascinated as such.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's his stance on nationalism as such
Speaker 2: really in the beginning is doctrinaire Marxist. He's very much
Speaker 2: against the idea of nationalism. He views patriotic appeals as
Speaker 2: basically being a tool of the bourgeois to fool the
Speaker 2: proletariat into fighting the wars for them, and so on
Speaker 2: and so forth. I'm not really sure where the turn
Speaker 2: towards a sort of Italian nationalism comes in. He has
Speaker 2: positive feelings about some figures in the history of Italian nationalism,
Speaker 2: like Mazzini, who is one of the leaders of the Resourcialmento,
Speaker 2: but they're sort of limited. He he's equivocal about his
Speaker 2: praise for these people. On Mazzini, for example, he notes,
Speaker 2: of course, in comparing him to Marx, that Mazzini really
Speaker 2: is not an economist, and he doesn't value Mazzini as
Speaker 2: an economist. Mazzini is a liberal. Basically, he's a liberal
Speaker 2: Republican who wanted to set up these sort of social
Speaker 2: democratic mechanisms that are completely against doctrine our socialism. But
Speaker 2: at the same time praises him as as a man,
Speaker 2: as sort of as a political agitator. But I'm not
Speaker 2: quite sure where the ultimate verdict would fall on these people.
Speaker 2: As far as Mussolany is concerned. It seems to me
Speaker 2: like in this period he's he sees them as well
Speaker 2: intentioned people with perhaps some noble virtues, but ultimately I
Speaker 2: don't think he sees himself as following in their footsteps.
Speaker 1: Well, one figure that probably people who don't know, you
Speaker 1: know who ever read the early history of Mussolini and
Speaker 1: you know, once again, thanks for putting that out there.
Speaker 1: One figure that he was really inspired by was Vilfredo Perretto,
Speaker 1: actually going to his lectures and doing commentary on his work,
Speaker 1: and it seemed like he he described Parretto's ideas as
Speaker 1: like a healthy positivism. Is that what you get from
Speaker 1: the reading?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I would. I would tend to agree with that.
Speaker 2: Parretto's sort of analysis of the way that democratic states
Speaker 2: actually function is I think something that naturally would have
Speaker 2: appeal to a socialist who who believes their worldview to
Speaker 2: be scientific right, or values a sort of scientific worldview.
Speaker 2: And Parretto is used by Mussolini in a couple different
Speaker 2: ways here. Firstly by breaking down the sort of idea
Speaker 2: of social majorities. Vil Fredo Pereto, for those who don't know,
Speaker 2: was actually am I correct on this? He began as
Speaker 2: more of an economist and then moved into more political science.
Speaker 2: You are correct, yes, okay, And so he applies a
Speaker 2: more systematic, analytical, sort of economics based framework to analysis
Speaker 2: of politics. And basically he's saying that democracy is fake,
Speaker 2: and he can prove it mathematically that there is essentially
Speaker 2: never any such thing as a majority in politics, that
Speaker 2: the idea of majoritarian rule itself is sort of a fiction.
Speaker 2: Everything is always run by an organized minority, something that
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people on our side of
Speaker 2: things today will will take for granted that that's essentially true.
Speaker 2: But he's sort of the founder of that principle and
Speaker 2: the one who did the most had demonstrated scientifically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he uh Parretto. When Leslin he writes in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh four that Parretto is basically likening the sovereign right
Speaker 1: of majorities to the divine right of princes and the
Speaker 1: Parreto also see it says, you know, like I think
Speaker 1: you mentioned, and like moral majorities or even intellectual majorities,
Speaker 1: that those have to be looked upon with suspicion, with suspicion,
Speaker 1: because there is you're at least at this time, at
Speaker 1: the time he's writing, the world has changed so much
Speaker 1: that and so much thought in the West has progressed
Speaker 1: away from throwing throwing an altar that it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard not to see that individualism is really taking over.
Speaker 1: And that's what I Predo says, Like even the terms
Speaker 1: like individual and social in the social sciences are can't
Speaker 1: even be made precisely right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the value that Pereto has for
Speaker 2: Mustleny at this point is basically exploding the mythology of
Speaker 2: the liberal republican or not even necessarily republican at this point,
Speaker 2: but of liberal parliamentarian, I should say, states.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems like Mussolini was inspired by Peretto
Speaker 1: his insights teaching socialists at the time about unity and
Speaker 1: party tactics, suggesting that Peretto his critical his critical analysis
Speaker 1: of societal structures and limitations of conventional political concepts resonated
Speaker 1: with Mussolini and seemed to push his I think it
Speaker 1: pushed his socialism more, and it looks like it could
Speaker 1: possibly be pushing away his Marxist kind of socialist leanings
Speaker 1: towards more of a kinist kind of socialist leanings, if
Speaker 1: you get what I'm saying, Yeah, perhaps I think you.
Speaker 2: You see in a lot of his his writings at
Speaker 2: this point, there's some stuff that definitely seems contradictory, especially
Speaker 2: as it concerns those sort of later developments of his ideology.
Speaker 2: I think this is this is one of them, because
Speaker 2: he'll he'll cite or he'll he'll write approvingly of Nietzsche
Speaker 2: or Peretto's ideas on one page, and then on the
Speaker 2: next he's sort of back to this very classical Marxist
Speaker 2: universal brotherhood of man stuff, This this sort of universal
Speaker 2: humanism that doesn't really seem to mesh with what he's
Speaker 2: been talking about on the page before. So, and of course,
Speaker 2: being a man of contradictions at this point in his life,
Speaker 2: is is really no criticisms. He's basically trying to synthesize
Speaker 2: all of these things together. He hasn't and he hasn't
Speaker 2: done it yet, of course, because it's it's very early process.
Speaker 2: But I do agree. I think you definitely see the
Speaker 2: seeds of those later developments coming in at this point. Peretto,
Speaker 2: after all, is I'm not sure how I would describe him,
Speaker 2: Perhaps a conservative revolutionary at this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably a conservative revolutionary. It's very strange people different
Speaker 1: people read Peretto and get different things out of him
Speaker 1: and see him as different things, which I guess that's
Speaker 1: a good thing. I guess that the compliments to him.
Speaker 1: The thing you mentioned about seeming contradictions, I think anybody
Speaker 1: who is who has gone like when you talk to
Speaker 1: people who were like on the left and now they're
Speaker 1: on the right, or libertarian who basically pretty much the
Speaker 1: same thing as being on the left and moving, you know,
Speaker 1: moving to what we would call the far right. In
Speaker 1: that process of evolving your the contradictions are going to abound.
Speaker 1: Because you're you don't want to leave things, you don't
Speaker 1: want to leave things behind you, you don't want to
Speaker 1: leave your past beliefs behind. You can start to believe
Speaker 1: that you're you know, why should I if I believe
Speaker 1: something was right at one point, why you know what
Speaker 1: makes it wrong now? And you know there's there's also
Speaker 1: the you know, you don't want to lose acquaintances and
Speaker 1: friends along the way, So any kind of you know,
Speaker 1: what you see from his writings where he's analyzing somebody
Speaker 1: who's obviously not a doctrinaire Marxist and struggling with that
Speaker 1: and still holding some you know, still holding some Marxist beliefs.
Speaker 1: I think that's just a a logical for anyone who's
Speaker 1: ever made a big shift, I think they're sympathetic to that.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. I did notice as well that some of
Speaker 2: the commentary where he seems to me anyways to be
Speaker 2: sort of at his worst in terms of this sort
Speaker 2: of sappy universal humanism, it seems to coincide with his
Speaker 2: time writing for one specific outlet, So it may have
Speaker 2: even been the influence of his editor or whatever whatever
Speaker 2: council was setting the editorial line for that publication, which
Speaker 2: I thought was kind of interesting. It was during his
Speaker 2: time in Trentino, I noticed especially he tends to write
Speaker 2: like that, Trentino being the Austrian at the time, Austrian
Speaker 2: province that was populated by primarily Italians.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to probably somebody who inspired him. It
Speaker 1: appears much more than did Nietzsche. I mean, first, first
Speaker 1: and foremost, it seems like Mussolini was just drawn to
Speaker 1: the brilliant spirit the challenging of traditional morality and systems
Speaker 1: every It's almost like Nietzsche offered a offered a basis
Speaker 1: for every revolts in every moral and political attitude of
Speaker 1: the revolutionary at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think his his reading of Nietzsche
Speaker 2: is quite good. Actually, I found very little in it
Speaker 2: that I that I really disagreed with, And I think
Speaker 2: his his his use of Nitsche to explain or to
Speaker 2: justify some of the radical positions that were taken by
Speaker 2: sort of revolutionary socialist figures. I think it's it's quite
Speaker 2: lightning for someone who's coming at it from our side
Speaker 2: of things. People who are are fans of Niche might
Speaker 2: find something valuable in there that the niche is not
Speaker 2: simply justifying their politics that is sort of right wing,
Speaker 2: right wing radical politics, but also people who are coming
Speaker 2: from the left and came up with some some pretty
Speaker 2: valuable interpretations of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like he it seems like he's almost drawing
Speaker 1: draws directly on the genealogy of morals, describing the origin
Speaker 1: of the state as a violent act by a pack
Speaker 1: of blonde beasts of prey and race of lords and
Speaker 1: conquerors who impose their laws on weaker populations. And while
Speaker 1: all of that sounds negative, it seems like it definitely
Speaker 1: resonated with him when it came to strength and force
Speaker 1: in the formation of a society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's that's the theme that you see coming
Speaker 2: through with with him and with surrounds and of the
Speaker 2: others that we've we've talked about this, this clear thread
Speaker 2: through all of Mussolini's arguments on the value of of
Speaker 2: action of power on self reliance. Uh. He's he's always
Speaker 2: pushing for uh. And he and he quotes Marks on
Speaker 2: this saying, you know, the workers have to liberate themselves.
Speaker 2: They can't rely on on outside help or or charity
Speaker 2: from guilty bourgeois millionaires.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: The workers utopia is not going to be built by
Speaker 2: charity cases. And that's that's I think an interesting way
Speaker 2: to synthesize Nietzsche with Marx, even in a certain a
Speaker 2: certain way.
Speaker 1: And he do you think it's in Nietzsche that he
Speaker 1: starts to see the uh see that even the blonde
Speaker 1: beasts of prey require a principle of solidarity for their
Speaker 1: collect for the for the collective and the states to
Speaker 1: endure like like this, it would involve obedience to collective
Speaker 1: rules and protection of slaves or production represented represented by
Speaker 1: a first limitation of individual will, a fatal also, which
Speaker 1: could be a fatal flaw of solidarity that even the
Speaker 1: strong can escape. But you know, even he like mostly
Speaker 1: he noted that the contradiction of Nietzsche's thought between the
Speaker 1: unique Guber mentioned the need for communal rules. But it
Speaker 1: seems like this is where he starts to get some
Speaker 1: of his uh, some of his inspiration to move away
Speaker 1: from uh Marxist being a doctrinaire Marxist to or it's
Speaker 1: more of a kinship kind of model.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's. It's certainly he sees
Speaker 2: this as a dilemma. In Niches thought, he has a
Speaker 2: pretty interesting passage where he sort of explores it more
Speaker 2: in depth that honestly, I felt like I had to
Speaker 2: go back to and reread it. It is. It's it's
Speaker 2: pretty complicated conceptually. I think it is notable how much
Speaker 2: of a philosopher Bussolini really is at this point. He
Speaker 2: has a very very good grasp of these things and
Speaker 2: a lot to say, a lot to say about it.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if did I answer the question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean it's I mean, that's a rabbit hole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like, that's a series just to to examine certain
Speaker 1: figures and how they how they rectify the uber Mensch
Speaker 1: and communal rules. And but you know, it's like, I
Speaker 1: guess at that point where he he's embracing the concept
Speaker 1: of the uber Mensch and he really starts to I think,
Speaker 1: as you just said, starts to question everything, and he
Speaker 1: even sees like the uber Mensch representing a being who
Speaker 1: surpasses man, battling against not only the police, you know,
Speaker 1: the plubs, but also God.
Speaker 2: M hm. Yeah, yeah, I mean I certainly think that
Speaker 2: that his reading is. I think it's a good one really.
Speaker 2: And he also everyone will will notice at this point
Speaker 2: he's really leaning on Niche for his anti Christian views,
Speaker 2: and mostly throughout this book is very much an anti
Speaker 2: clerical radical. He really sees in the Church like one
Speaker 2: of the greatest enemies, one of the greatest reactionary forces.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the and I guess it can't be overstated that
Speaker 1: considering the the priors that he comes from, that that
Speaker 1: would definitely be something that would be he would carry forth,
Speaker 1: and that would probably be the hardest thing for him
Speaker 1: to throw off.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and the interesting thing I think is that
Speaker 2: when you look at what happens in what was it
Speaker 2: twenty two or twenty three, that the actual that the
Speaker 2: Fascist Party comes to.
Speaker 1: Power two I believe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, with what happens in twenty two,
Speaker 2: he ends up compromising on a lot of things that
Speaker 2: probably he shouldn't have, most especially the monarchy and the
Speaker 2: sort of parliamentary system. Even the Grand Council of Fascism
Speaker 2: ends up ultimately being basically a little better than a
Speaker 2: parliamentary system. So you see, of course, the old rule
Speaker 2: expressed that all movements are more pure in the beginning
Speaker 2: and become less so as they go on. And he
Speaker 2: and of course he compromises with the Church as well
Speaker 2: in the end, there's the various accommodations that are made.
Speaker 2: Of course, in the beginning, the Church is very much
Speaker 2: opposed to fascism, but then in the end he's of
Speaker 2: course supporting the Spanish nationalists who are very much aligned
Speaker 2: with the Catholic Church. You see the same thing play
Speaker 2: out basically in Germany, right where the Church manages always
Speaker 2: to sort of escape the clutches of these anti clerical
Speaker 2: movements because they have bigger fish to fry. But I
Speaker 2: don't think mostly any really ever in his heart returned
Speaker 2: back to Catholicism. I think he might have made his
Speaker 2: peace with it, but you still have the sort of
Speaker 2: anti clerical streak in him.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, Padre Pio Trot did as much as
Speaker 1: he could, but yeah, he can only do something.
Speaker 2: And it's it's funny because you almost see like a
Speaker 2: Napoleon here, because Napoleon follows the same trajectory, beginning as
Speaker 2: a radical, never really quite making his peace with the
Speaker 2: Church or or never coming the whole way back around
Speaker 2: to it, of course taking the crown from the Pope's
Speaker 2: hands and crowning himself, but yet also restoring some of
Speaker 2: its privileges and some of its status.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: It's the Church has always had a tricky relationship with
Speaker 2: these sorts of radical movements.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, the speaking of the church, he he
Speaker 1: some of these some of his writings are extremely short
Speaker 1: and so he I mean just to bounce on like
Speaker 1: a couple, just cover a couple of these. I mean,
Speaker 1: he has a very short one on the Masonic question,
Speaker 1: and he wrote this in nineteen ten. And he's like,
Speaker 1: to the question, kind of socialists joined Freemasonry? We will
Speaker 1: answer no, must a socialists who is found to be
Speaker 1: a member of Freemason beury being spell from the party?
Speaker 1: We will answer yes, there are a few hundred of
Speaker 1: our leaders who, instead of working in the interests of
Speaker 1: the proletariat, work in the interests of the lodge to
Speaker 1: which they belong. They must be swept away, purified the
Speaker 1: air infected by the old secular left wing. Click, then
Speaker 1: we will breathe better. Some amazing, some amazing writings, and
Speaker 1: just he could turn a phrase which is which basically
Speaker 1: what your enemies. And I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who don't like Mussolini at all. Doctor Matthew Raphael
Speaker 1: Johnson can't stand him. I'm more like neutral. I look
Speaker 1: upon him as a historical figure that needs to be
Speaker 1: studied good things, bad things, And but to underestimate his
Speaker 1: importance and because of basically because of the timing of
Speaker 1: his rise is uh and and to not study him
Speaker 1: is just I think it's, uh, you're failing yourself. And
Speaker 1: also to get back to my mind's all over the place.
Speaker 1: I gets Scatterburan sometimes his his enemies and they still
Speaker 1: still exist to this day, will tell you that, you know,
Speaker 1: he was just a brute of a man who would
Speaker 1: fight anybody on the street, which is obviously true. But
Speaker 1: I think one of the things his speeches and his
Speaker 1: writings prove is he was also an incredibly intelligent person.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, yeah, it's uh, Mossleney is certainly underrated. I'm
Speaker 2: sure I've said that before talking about our our other
Speaker 2: mussol Any book that we have, which is a collection
Speaker 2: of his his late war speeches which are much more sparse.
Speaker 2: Of course, he didn't have time for all this, all
Speaker 2: this writing when he was a head of state. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean personally, I think these these early writings are
Speaker 2: the most interesting part about him. Like reading Mussolani in
Speaker 2: his his younger radical stage, and you know, you, like
Speaker 2: we've said, you you can detect the seeds of where
Speaker 2: he's going to develop later ideologically, but he still really
Speaker 2: has this this radical edge that a lot of of
Speaker 2: people like him had before the war. The First World
Speaker 2: War of course, ends up changing everything in Europe. So
Speaker 2: getting that that window into what things looked like beforehand
Speaker 2: is always fascinating.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's so obvious, like the what the war
Speaker 1: did to so many. I mean, he's a you know,
Speaker 1: he would be a considered to be a fan of
Speaker 1: a hero of the trade unionist, of the working man,
Speaker 1: you know, of the proletariat. And then he gets into
Speaker 1: power and who are the anti fascists who try to
Speaker 1: kill him? Trade workers, republicans, former uh, former soldiers from
Speaker 1: World War One? And it just well, because we didn't
Speaker 1: live at that time, and because so little and I
Speaker 1: actually believe so little has been preserved from that time
Speaker 1: or just hasn't been translated yet, that we don't understand
Speaker 1: exactly how revolutionary a time that was coming out of
Speaker 1: that war, and how the average man returning to his
Speaker 1: country who fought in that war, what he found at home,
Speaker 1: and how you know, we know, we probably know better
Speaker 1: how the national socialist dealt with it, but you know,
Speaker 1: there were this was every country that had to deal
Speaker 1: with it and come home to radicals trying to infiltrate
Speaker 1: in pretty much every country. And yeah, just knowing the
Speaker 1: path that he took, and then how the people who
Speaker 1: before the war would have been his comrades are now
Speaker 1: trying to kill him absolutely amazing.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's them might even be an overstatement.
Speaker 2: I don't don't think that he I don't think that
Speaker 2: Mussolini's transformation from a socialist to a fascist was as
Speaker 2: much of an about face as people tend to think.
Speaker 2: I believe he really did hold on to a lot
Speaker 2: of these ideological tenets. And of course to really get
Speaker 2: in depth on the reading there, we'll have to wait
Speaker 2: for the next volume to come out of this collection.
Speaker 2: Because even if you look into the twenties and thirties,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of even military collaboration between Musolini's Italy
Speaker 2: and the Soviet Union, especially in the naval realm. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of comments from Mussolini that paint the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union in a favorable light during this period, or at
Speaker 2: least highlight the positive things that Mussolini sees developing there.
Speaker 2: It really is quite interesting, and I think a lot
Speaker 2: of his sort of cadres from the socialist period follow
Speaker 2: him into the Fascist Party. There's not necessarily a view
Speaker 2: that they're nimically opposed to each other. It seems to
Speaker 2: me that a lot of the a lot of the
Speaker 2: opposition to Mussolini's rule in Italy really is more of
Speaker 2: a coalition between these sort of anti authoritarian radical liberals
Speaker 2: on one hand and the sort of of Trotskyist types
Speaker 2: on the other. Like you see these fractures within socialism
Speaker 2: becoming more pronounced, and that's I think where a lot
Speaker 2: of the opposition comes from.
Speaker 1: I think that's what I was. What I was trying
Speaker 1: to say, more than anything, was how people were viewing him,
Speaker 1: how people who would know who he was before the
Speaker 1: war were viewing him now. And it goes to show
Speaker 1: how much people people were pretty much everyone was actually
Speaker 1: changed by the war. I mean not everyone, I mean
Speaker 1: obviously the the Marxist, the Bolsheviks, they pretty much stayed
Speaker 1: in there in the lane that they were in before.
Speaker 1: But just people's perceptions, how much they changed, and also
Speaker 1: how how much of a sense of urgency it seemed
Speaker 1: coming out of the war, which you know, if you
Speaker 1: understand exactly what the war was, what it did, what
Speaker 1: it did, and the world coming out of it makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. It's just I don't think it's
Speaker 1: something that it's hard for us to grasp just by
Speaker 1: reading a book.
Speaker 2: At this point, m oh I did want to say though,
Speaker 2: because I don't think I I had the opportunity to
Speaker 2: make much of an introduction to the book at the beginning.
Speaker 2: And I just mentioned now that this will be part
Speaker 2: of a series. So this is volume one. We're gonna
Speaker 2: have a lot more of these coming out. I think
Speaker 2: we're shooting for one book in this series per year
Speaker 2: for the foreseeable future. So we're going to cover a
Speaker 2: lot of Mussolini's writings through aunt up Pill, and I
Speaker 2: really recommend that people do get familiar with the intellectual
Speaker 2: developments during this time period this volume one. I really
Speaker 2: cannot overstate how much more of an appreciation it's given
Speaker 2: me for that sort of turn of the century radicalism
Speaker 2: and the way it led into all the political developments
Speaker 2: that were more familiar with later on into the interwar period.
Speaker 1: Yeah, awesome, awesome, I know people look forward to that.
Speaker 1: So I guess one other one other specific. Uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is a letter or yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a letter. He actually writes a letter on the
Speaker 1: need for propaganda. I mean just explicitly. Oh, sure, and
Speaker 1: I think that's just something that you you didn't see
Speaker 1: in the day, and even today when I don't think
Speaker 1: we call it properly. I think the term we a
Speaker 1: lot of us use is just narrative control. We need
Speaker 1: our own narratives. It's not as explicit and he's I
Speaker 1: mean he's he's incredibly explicit about how how this is
Speaker 1: needed to guide the people and control the people. And
Speaker 1: it's just it's it's a breath of fresh air to
Speaker 1: read somebody being this, uh, this out in the open
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, propaganda back then hadn't become like a dirty word.
Speaker 2: It was understood as really the textbook definition of the word.
Speaker 2: It's propaganda is called propaganda because it is to propagate
Speaker 2: an idea or a viewpoint. I mean, if you even
Speaker 2: look at like Rex's minister Goebels was, he was Minister
Speaker 2: of Propaganda, that was his official title. It wasn't something
Speaker 2: shameful to say, we're doing propaganda.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think people just think of of Gebel Goebbels
Speaker 1: as being like, we don't care, you know, we're we
Speaker 1: just we're being explicit about it. But no, it was
Speaker 1: just something explicitly talked about back then. Nowadays, it's it
Speaker 1: has become such a dirty word. I mean, and even
Speaker 1: more explicitly than like if you read I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: you've probably read Brenees's propaganda. Yeah, he catches it in
Speaker 1: advertising language. I mean he's not he's not even explicit
Speaker 1: about it. And he's considered the father of propaganda, and
Speaker 1: he's writing at the same time, and.
Speaker 2: It's it's funny. I think it's like Westerners have this
Speaker 2: idea that propaganda is like something that happens to other
Speaker 2: people or or in other in other countries. It's it's
Speaker 2: like this dirty word. It's no, you're being propagandized all
Speaker 2: the time, every day. You can't you can't step outside
Speaker 2: your door without being propaganda. I tell you can't stay
Speaker 2: inside your door without being propagandized.
Speaker 1: The guy on Fox and New has told me that
Speaker 1: there's no propaganda going on on the channel. But if
Speaker 1: there is one, if there's one thing that we one
Speaker 1: theme that you think that's really important in this volume
Speaker 1: that that we haven't covered, let me know now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think my big takeaway is that
Speaker 2: what we're looking at in Mussolini's early work is how
Speaker 2: fascism and sort of third position is a more generally
Speaker 2: really comes out of a fusion of radical ideologies and
Speaker 2: radical thinkers. It is not the inheritance of any one
Speaker 2: particular historical political trend. It really is its own thing.
Speaker 2: I think often people forget that, or people want to
Speaker 2: identify our sort of politics as being quote unquote right
Speaker 2: wing or far right. But really, I think we have
Speaker 2: to destroy that notion. I think it feeds back into
Speaker 2: bad thinking, It feeds back into priors that a lot
Speaker 2: of people have that are wrong and embracing that sort
Speaker 2: of radical heritage, that willingness to throw out these these
Speaker 2: old ideologies that feed the system that were supposedly opposed
Speaker 2: to that really needs to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, well good work on this. People should
Speaker 1: go to Antelope Hill Publishing dot com. The books right
Speaker 1: at the front there with another book that right next
Speaker 1: to it is another book featured products that I've covered
Speaker 1: with the that the gentleman Antelope Hill were nice enough
Speaker 1: to allow me to speak to the translators Germany installer
Speaker 1: and is Cross Hair Germany and Stalin's Cross Hairs by
Speaker 1: Bernt Schipper. And uh, that's a an episode that people
Speaker 1: really got a lot out of and actually had people
Speaker 1: in I sent my copy to somebody in in a
Speaker 1: europe In country because they couldn't they couldn't order it.
Speaker 1: They were they weren't a lad's order. You're shocked, aren't you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, go order the book there. Order. I can't
Speaker 1: count how many analo Pill books I have that I've
Speaker 1: actually purchased with my own money and use promo code
Speaker 1: PQ you get five percent off, and uh yeah, check
Speaker 1: this book out. Because we are this collection, there'll be
Speaker 1: a volume two, and I think for those who are
Speaker 1: interested in the subject, learning about the genesis and taking
Speaker 1: this basically taking the journey with Mussolini through through the
Speaker 1: rise of fascism in Italy will uh we'll learn a
Speaker 1: lot from it. And there may even be some things
Speaker 1: in there that could be useful in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I've got to say, and I genuinely
Speaker 2: I don't say this about all of our books, but
Speaker 2: this one really impressed me. I found this one particularly
Speaker 2: valuable and insightful. And it'll also point you towards some
Speaker 2: other thinkers who certainly have valuable things for us, like
Speaker 2: Currel as the headline example.
Speaker 1: All Right, Kurt, I always enjoyed talking to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, absolutely thanks again for having Mesh