Mussolini & Racism, Part 4
Racism & Other “Horrors”

Tullio Crali, Before the Parachute Opens, 1939.

2,012 words

I will take a recent episode of a personal nature as a starting point for the clarification of certain ideas. This clarification might be useful to those who, within the Right, are not only concerned with problems related to the more contingent forms of political struggle. The episode is the following. In Rome, an organisation of the MSI [Movimento Sociale Italiano][1] was planning to dedicate a conference to the ideas that I defend. In this there was also a kind of point of honor for them, since shortly before a Roman cultural circle headed by a non-Fascist and non-“Aryan” individual, had for a time taken an interest in the presentation and dissemination of one of my latest books.

Well, at the last moment the MSI conference was cancelled. Someone had pointed out the danger that I represented for the Party, since I was a “racist” and supposedly an enemy of the Church. It is strange that these labels, which until now had been used only by anti-Fascists as part of a conspiracy of silence and an ostracism against my activities in general, had begun to be used by certain elements of the MSI, which evidently had no exact knowledge of doctrines on which I have written and which instead had given credence to rumors, without taking the trouble to check their veracity.

Since these were also people who profess an unconditional loyalty to Mussolini, it is also strange that they do not know that Mussolini approved of the very ideas that seemed frighten them the most, and had officially endorsed them by agreeing to that the term “Fascist” be added to the title of the German edition of my book Sintesi di dottrina della razza [Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race] making the title: Grundrisse der faschistischen Rassenlehre.

That aside, the essential part of the ideas I have defended do not deal with race, and that is the part that primarily should be considered; furthermore, after the war I have not taken up the issue of race or the controversy with Catholic ideas: not because I have recanted my position with regard to those issues, but because they are no longer relevant to the current situation, for reasons that I will come to in a moment.

It is certainly not my fault if some young people have made an arbitrary, confused and not very serious use of some ideas in my books, confusing different planes. As a consequence of such confusions, a Milanese newspaper went so far as to conceive of some connection between those ideas and a senseless terrorist attack against the Archbishopric, in the same way that the Roman police, in connection with the trial of the FAR [Fasci di Azione Rivoluzionaria][2] in 1951, saw in me an “evil and shadowy figure” (sic) behind the “Fascist” plot it had dreamed up. A few young people have even recently reprinted my brochure, Orientamenti, without my permission, childishly stamping it with a “Ghibelline” crest and counting the year from the foundation of Rome instead of the Common Era.

Things like that, which it is not in my power to prevent, are the only things that might possibly explain, but by no means justify, the fears of the individuals mentioned earlier. I say “by no means justify,” because only those who have not taken the trouble to find out which views can in fact be attributed to me today, unlike those more distinguished friends who have already repeatedly to invite me to contribute to official or supporting journals of the MSI.

With this, I close these personal remarks. Which, again, will serve only as an opportunity to clarify certain notions. This might be useful, since among “neo-Fascists” today there are some who, perhaps even without realizing it themselves, have started speaking the language of the new democratic times, and who think, for example, that the “racist” revolution in Fascism was something sad, something it would be better to pass over in silence, and that today we should take up a party line of sanctimonious conformism, being careful not to question the ideas and claims of clericalism in any domain. I would not say that that is a sign of excessive intellectual and political courage. Anyway, let us get to the point.

Regarding “racism,” it is stupid, however common it is today, to simply make this term a synonym for anti-Semitism, Buchenwald, gas chambers, and everything else that has served up by Allied propaganda, which made extensive use of exaggerations and even fabrications. From the political point of view, Mussolini positioned himself against Judaism not in order to passively copy the German example, but simply because he was obliged to do so on the basis of precise information about the aggressively anti-Fascist attitude that increasingly, and without exception, characterized international Jewry. But well before this Mussolini had recognized the role of Jewry in finance and in the life of democratic countries, especially the United States, and had denounced it as a danger. Anyone can see that things have not changed. On the contrary, the precise and irrefutable documentation collected by Giovanni Preziosi, Mussolini’s faithful collaborator, could today be multiplied, if under current rules of public discourse there had not been a veto on the issue. Just re-read, for example, the excellent article on American cinema released in the previous issue of this magazine.

That is what I have to say about the attitude of Mussolini on the political level, with regard to actual Jews. For my part, it was not in this domain (the legitimacy of which I nevertheless recognize, while condemning any excess) that I was active. The theory of race that I have formulated, and that Mussolini approved, was intended to transcend biological, materialistic racism by highlighting not only the race of the body, but also the race of soul and of the spirit, and in fact emphasizing the latter: physical race matters less than inner race, which may not correspond at all to the first, given the irreversible processes of ethnic mixing that have occurred in all peoples through the ages.

On this basis, “Jewishness” and “Aryan-ness” should be defined first and foremost as two ways of being, in themselves and for themselves, as universal, and therefore regardless of their more or less prevalent manifestation in one race or another, in one or another individual. It is easy to see the extent to which this point of view permitted and permits the removal from the concept of race every one-sidedness, and, at the same time, to extend the defense of our own superior values, and attack inferior and alien values. In that framework, the “Jewish” quality must be combated in its negative aspects wherever it is found, regardless of blood, even when it manifests itself in ”Aryans,” in fact, above all when it manifests itself in them.

Now, if after the collapse caused by the last war I refrained from taking up the anti-Jewish polemic again, one of the main reasons for this was that, unfortunately, the character and mentality that we condemn in the Jew is something we today see come up everywhere: and if Jews might possibly have the excuse that this behavior is due to heredity, this excuse is completely lacking in the case of those “Aryans” or Christians who today, as far as character and as “inner race” are concerned, are 100% Jewish. Thus, today it would be dishonest to insist on certain positions and denominations. What we should be fighting is a whole way of being, but unfortunately with very little prospect of achieving anything, given the general climate.

Mussolini’s “racism” had a second aspect, which did not concern the Jewish problem but the defense of the prestige of the white race against peoples of color, an issue that had become particularly urgent after the creation of the Empire in Africa. In this matter Mussolini simply followed the line practiced by all those who wanted to maintain European hegemony, even without any particular “racist” zeal: starting with England.

Now that many “whites,” with a sort of masochism, in the name of democracy and humanitarianism, rejoice in the emancipation and threatening rise of peoples of color and the definitive demise of European prestige, things may be different. You can align yourself with the irresponsible Americans who feel sorry for the “poor Negro,” who celebrate interracial promiscuity, who do not object too much if white girls sleep with Negroes and procreate with them. And why not then the Mau Mau or even the Australians.

In all this, it’s simple question of “inner race” (you see how useful this concept is), of a collapse of inner race and of any corresponding sensitivity. I don’t think our comrades in MSI wish to follow this line and defer to the principle of the universal equality not only of individuals, but also of races. Consequently, there is no reason to be ashamed of this second aspect of Mussolini’s ”racism” (if that is what you want to call it).

And so much the less, I think, with regard to the third and final aspect of Mussolini’s “racism,” which was the positive, creative aspect. It was not only a matter of defending Italians from negative influences, of setting up protective barriers, it was no longer, therefore, an issue of Jews and of international Jewry, of mestizos, or peoples of color, but of everything in Italy that through precise measures could shape and strengthen a superior type of man (superior both spiritually and, if possible, physically, since the highest ideal necessarily includes both aspects), a type of man that should have formed the existential backbone of the Fascist state and secured the continuity of the Fascist movement in the future.

This positive “racism” was in fact tantamount to the creation of the new Italian, not Fascists merely in the sense of “party members,”[3] wearers of black shirts and praisers of the Duce, but of a clearly differentiated type of man. The distinguished features of this type would not have been the generic qualities, which are often entirely negative, of “Italians,” but, in tendency, those of the highest Roman type: qualities closely related to those also present, in primordial times, in other civilizations with the same roots, that is to say, with Indo-European roots, or “Aryan,” if you prefer. In this framework, Mussolini absolutely approved of the ideas that I had tried to formulate, with the intention of creating an original counterpart to what the Germans were trying to do, but with the “Nordic” type as a reference point for the formative action within their national substance.

Now, should we not recognize the fact that a process of “race” formation in this qualitative sense in Italy did not take place or was interrupted by the military catastrophe, is the main reason for the frightful collapse of the Italian people and the current social, political and moral level of our nation? I therefore believe that there would be little to object to if anyone, beyond any petty political activism, were to begin with similar initiatives, recognizing that the essential thing for any kind of resurgence would be the rigorous formation of a new Italian, of a new Italian character, but without giving in to any illusions — here, either — about what practically can be achieved.

And with this we can end our discussion of “racism.” Not wishing to irritate anyone, I will refrain from adding that, psychoanalytically, those who reacts excessively, almost hysterically, as soon as they hear the word “racism,” by their very reaction prove that their own race — physical or inner — is hardly in good order.

Translator’s Notes

1. Movimento Sociale Italiano was a post-Fascist party founded in 1946; it later split into the centrist Alleanza Nazionale, which officially repudiated the post-Fascist label, and Pino Rauti’s Movemento Sociale Fiamma Tricolore.

2. Fasci di Azione Rivoluzionaria was a paramilitary group founded by Pino Romualdi, former vice-secretary of the Partito Fascista Repubblicano and one of the founders of the MSI.

3. Evola himself was never a party member.

Source: http://www.juliusevola.it/risorse/template.asp?cod=391&cat=EVO&page=6