View Full Version : Information on the Jewish support of Italian Fascism
A hypothetical question: would it have been possible for Hitler to recruit (at least some) German Jews to the Nazi Party, and concentrate on crushing just Communists - if he had only wanted or tried to? Both Italian and Croatian Fascists seemed to be able to do so.
From "The History of the Jews in Italy" (1945), by Cecil Roth, pp. 509-511:
THE TOTALITARIAN STATE
"WHEN, at the beginning of 1919, a wordy, unscrupulous journalist who had formerly been prominent in the ranks of extreme radicals founded the Fascist Party, under the cloak of militant patriotism, he found some of his earliest supporters among the Jews, oblivious to the tragic implications of his doctrine. The new party was rabidly nationalist, and for a hundred years past the Jews had been counted among the most fervent supporters of Italian nationalism; it was anti-Socialist, and the Italian Jews were now pre-eminently members of the bourgeoisie. Mussolini for his part was eager for support from whatever quarter it might come. Like other Italians, he did not differentiate between the Jews and other sections of the Italian people; they had, moreover, shown their devotion to the conception of a Greater Italy in recent years in the Chamber, on the field, even in d'Annunzio's melodramatic raid on Fiume. Accordingly, the attitude of the Jews to the new movement at its inception was indistinguishable from that of the general population. If some of them, of liberal political tendencies, abhorred it, others were its dupes and were included among its earliest and most fervent supporters. Half a dozen of them collaborated in its foundation, at least three were among the "martyrs" who gave their lives on its behalf in its earliest period of struggle, and were subsequently interred in its grandiose shrines. The Italian Jews, in their attitude to Fascism, were no worse, but alas no better than their compatriots.
During Mussolini's first years in power, their position remained ostensibly much as it had been before, and their place in Italian life was hardly affected. Aldo Finzi, a redoubtable airman, was for a long time the Duce's right-hand man, suppressed an anti-Fascist rising in Milan and became assistant minister of the interior; and incongruously enough it was his wedding with a Catholic, at which a cardinal officiated, that gave an oppurtunity for the first demonstration of the rapprochement with the Vatican. Carlo Fóa, Italy's outstanding physiologist, was editor of the Fascist review Gerarchia, in which capacity he did a good deal to mould the party's opinions and policy. Margherita Sarfatti was one of Mussolini's favorites, collaborated with him in his journalistic work, and later became his biographer. Of the fifteen jurists who drew up the Fascist constitution, three were Jews; and Guido Jung, who was of foreign Jewish extraction, was for some years finance minister.
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"On the other hand, there was something to be put to the credit side, so long as Jew-baiting was generally considered disreputable. Mussolini personally intervened to suppress manifestations of it on more than one occasion. He intermittently condemned antisemitism, received foreign Jewish representives, and was readily accessible to Italian Jewish leaders, such as Angelo Sacerdote, the lion-hearted Chief Rabbi of Rome, whom he assured in 1924 that "antisemitism is a growth which cannot obtain a foothold in Italy."
Some additional material from Arnaldo Momigliano's book "On Pagans, Jews and Christians", pp. 243, 247 and 250:
"One of the best-known (Italian) heroes of the First World War remains Roberto Sarfatti, the eighteen-year old student who happens to be the son of Margherita Sarfatti, who was later the mistress and the biographer of Mussolini. Even in the disgraceful Abyssinian and Spanish wars on 1936 the young hero was one of our Jewish students in the University of Turin, Bruno Jesi, who soon found himself confronted by the racial laws.
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"In 1939, when all Jews were thrown out of the army, the navy, and all other governmental positions, the Italian fleet, which had been rebuilt by the Jewish naval architect General Umberto Pugliese, was commanded by two Jewish admirals, Ascoli and Capon, the latter being the father-in-law of Enrico Fermi. In 1940 the Italian fleet was virtually destroyed by English bombing in the harbor of Taranto, and General Pugliese was called back to save what could be saved of the fleet he had built and the Fascists had lost. Admiral Capon, if I remember correctly, was allowed to fall into Nazi hands.
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Fascism was bound to exclude most of those Jews who had solid liberal or socialist traditions behind them, while economic interests led some Jews to direct involvement with Fascism. One of the most honest Fascists was Gino Olivetti, the representative of industrial interests inside Fascism. Fascist ideological sympathies were also to be found among jurists like Gino Arias and Giorgio del Vecchio, who wanted a reform of the Italian state on corporate lines. I have already mentioned the special situation in Ferrara, where the Fascist mayor was a Jew with a prestigious Jewish name, Ravenna.
Petr
A bit more info on the subject:
"Jews such as Angelica Balabanoff had a decisive influence on the formation of the spiritual world of Mussolini in his leftist-anarchist period. Another example is that of Margareta Sarfatti (who edited Gierarchia, el Duce’s fascist organ). Five Jews (A. Finzi, J. Pontremoli, A. Jarach, E. Jona, C. Sarfatti) were among the founders of the fascist nucleus of the “War Organization” (Fasci di combattimento) in March 1919. Those who formulated the socio-economic concept of Italian fascism – “the state of corporations” – both on the ideological and practical levels, were predominantly Jews. Thus, for example, Guido Jung, finance minister and a senior member of the Supreme Fascist Council. Thus also Guido Arias, the senior ideologue of the socio-economic concept of fascism; L. Toeplitz, the chief banker of Italy; and Otto Herman Kahan, a great admirer of el Duce and one of the pillars of banking and American philanthropy. The hard-core of Mussolini’s economic advisers strictly consisted of three Jewish senators (H. Ancona, A. Luria, T. Meyer). Indeed, not for nothing did Alfred Rosenberg call Mussolini “Judenknecht” (Jewish lackey)."
http://www.acpr.org.il/NATIV/2000-2/stavxs.htm
Petr
Simon Wiesenthal Center's comment on the subject:
http://motlc.learningcenter.wiesenthal.org/text/x16/xm1682.html
"In 1908, Mussolini denounced rabbinical Judaism in an article on Nietzsche. However, his real target was Claudio Treves, the Jewish Socialist leader, whom Mussolini was to oust from the editorship of Avanti, the chief organ of the Italian Socialist Party, in 1912. Among those converting the future Duce to a policy of interventionism and nationalism were the Jews Giuseppe Pontremoli, Ermanno Jaracj, Elio Jona, and Cesare Sarfatti, and five Jews (Cesare Goldmann, Piero Jacchia, Riccardo Luzzatti, Eucardio Momigliano, and Enrico Rocca) were among the founders of the Fascist movement. Three other Jews, Gino Bolaffi, Bruno Mondolfo, and Duilio Sinigaglia, went down in history as "Fascist martyrs, " having fallen in the Fascist cause before the march on Rome in 1922. Mussolini was also strongly influenced by two Jewish women, the Russian Angelica Balabanoff and the Italian Margherita Sarfatti.
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Courtesy of:
"Encyclopedia Judaica"
©1972, Keter Publishing House Jerusalem Ltd
Jerusalem, Israel"
Petr
And these warm feelings for Fascism have not entirely disappeared among Jews even today - witness our ol' neocon pal Michael "creative destruction" Ledeen:
http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/feature.html
June 30, 2003 issue
Copyright © 2003 The American Conservative
Flirting with Fascism
Neocon theorist Michael Ledeen draws more from Italian fascism than from the American Right.
By John Laughland
On the antiwar Right, it has been customary to attack the warmongering neoconservative clique for its Trotskyite origins. Certainly, the founding father of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, wrote in 1983 that he was “proud” to have been a member of the Fourth International in 1940. Other future leading lights of the neocon movement were also initially Trotskyites, like James Burnham and Max Kampelman—the latter a conscientious objector during the war against Hitler, a status that Evron Kirkpatrick, husband of Jeane, used his influence to obtain for him. But there is at least one neoconservative commentator whose personal political odyssey began with a fascination not with Trotskyism, but instead with another famous political movement that grew up in the early decades of the 20th century: fascism. I refer to Michael Ledeen, leading neocon theoretician, expert on Machiavelli, holder of the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, regular columnist for National Review—and the principal cheerleader today for an extension of the war on terror to include regime change in Iran.
Ledeen has gained notoriety in recent months for the following paragraph in his latest book, The War Against the Terror Masters. In what reads like a prophetic approval of the policy of chaos now being visited on Iraq, Ledeen wrote,
Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence—our existence, not our politics—threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.
This is not the first time Ledeen has written eloquently on his love for “the democratic revolution” and “creative destruction.” In 1996, he gave an extended account of his theory of revolution in his book, Freedom Betrayed — the title, one assumes, is a deliberate reference to Trotsky’s Revolution Betrayed. Ledeen explains that “America is a revolutionary force” because the American Revolution is the only revolution in history that has succeeded, the French and Russian revolutions having quickly collapsed into terror. Consequently, “[O]ur revolutionary values are part of our genetic make-up. … We drive the revolution because of what we represent: the most successful experiment in human freedom. … We are an ideological nation, and our most successful leaders are ideologues.” Denouncing Bill Clinton as a “counter-revolutionary” (!), Ledeen is especially eager to make one point: “Of all the myths that cloud our understanding, and therefore paralyze our will and action, the most pernicious is that only the Left has a legitimate claim to the revolutionary tradition.”
Ledeen’s conviction that the Right is as revolutionary as the Left derives from his youthful interest in Italian fascism. In 1975, Ledeen published an interview, in book form, with the Italian historian Renzo de Felice, a man he greatly admires. It caused a great controversy in Italy. Ledeen later made clear that he relished the ire of the left-wing establishment precisely because “De Felice was challenging the conventional wisdom of Italian Marxist historiography, which had always insisted that fascism was a reactionary movement.” What de Felice showed, by contrast, was that Italian fascism was both right-wing and revolutionary. Ledeen had himself argued this very point in his book, Universal Fascism, published in 1972. That work starts with the assertion that it is a mistake to explain the support of fascism by millions of Europeans “solely because they had been hypnotized by the rhetoric of gifted orators and manipulated by skilful propagandists.” “It seems more plausible,” Ledeen argued, “to attempt to explain their enthusiasm by treating them as believers in the rightness of the fascist cause, which had a coherent ideological appeal to a great many people.” For Ledeen, as for the lifelong fascist theoretician and practitioner, Giuseppe Bottai, that appeal lay in the fact that fascism was “the Revolution of the 20th century.”
Ledeen supports de Felice’s distinction between “fascism-movement” and “fascism-regime.” Mussolini’s regime, he says, was “authoritarian and reactionary”; by contrast, within “fascism-movement,” there were many who were animated by “a desire to renew.” These people wanted “something more revolutionary: the old ruling class had to be swept away so that newer, more dynamic elements—capable of effecting fundamental changes—could come to power.” Like his claim that the common ground between Nazism and Italian fascism was “exceedingly minimal”—Ledeen writes, “The fact of the Axis Pact should not be permitted to become the overriding consideration in this analysis”—Ledeen’s careful distinction between fascist “regime” and “movement” makes him a clear apologist for the latter. “While ‘fascism-movement’ was overcome and eventually suppressed by ‘fascism-regime,’” he explains, “fascism nevertheless constituted a political revolution in Italy. For the first time, there was an attempt to mobilize the masses and to involve them in the political life of the country.” Indeed, Ledeen criticizes Mussolini precisely for not being revolutionary enough. “He never had enough confidence in the Italian people to permit them a genuine participation in fascism.” Ledeen therefore concurs with the fascist intellectual, Camillo Pellizi, who argues—in a book Ledeen calls “a moving and fundamental work”—that Mussolini’s was “a failed revolution.” Pellizzi had hoped that “the new era was to be the era of youthful genius and creativity”: for him, Ledeen says, the fascist state was “a generator of energy and creativity.” The purest ideologues of fascism, in other words, wanted something very similar to that which Ledeen himself wants now, namely a “worldwide mass movement” enabling the peoples of the world, “liberated” by American militarism, to participate in the “greatest experiment in human freedom.” Ledeen wrote in 1996, “The people yearn for the real thing—revolution.”
Ledeen was especially interested in the role played by youth in Italian fascism. It was here that he detected the movement’s most exciting revolutionary potential. The young Ledeen wrote that those who exalted the position of youth in the fascist revolution—like those who argued in favor of his beloved “universal fascism”—were committed to exporting Italian fascism to the whole world, an idea in which Mussolini was initially uninterested. When he was later converted to it, Mussolini said that fascism drew on the universalist heritage of Rome, both ancient and Catholic. No doubt Ledeen thinks that the new Rome in Washington has the same universalist mission. He writes that people around Berto Ricci—the editor of the fascist newspaper L’Universale, and a man he calls “brilliant” and “an example of enthusiasm and independence”— “called for the formation of a new empire, an empire based not on military conquest but rather on Italy’s unique genius for civilization. … They intended to develop the traditions of their country and their civilization in such a manner as to make them the basic tenets of a new world order.” Ledeen adds, in a passage that anticipates his later love of creative destruction, “Clearly the act of destruction which would produce the flowering of the new fascist hegemony would sweep away the present generation of Italians, along with the rest.” And Giuseppe Bottai, to whom Ledeen attributes “considerable energy and autonomy,” was notable for his belief that “the infusion of the creative energies of a new generation was essential” for the fascist revolution. Bottai “implored the young … to found a new order arising from the spontaneous activity of their creation.”
One of the greatest exponents of such youthful vitalism was the high priest of fascism, the poet and adventurer Gabriele D’Annunzio, to whom Ledeen devoted an enthusiastic biography in 1977. Years ago, I visited D’Annunzio’s house on the shores of Lake Garda: there is a battleship in the garden and a Brenn gun in the sitting room. D’Annunzio was an eccentric and militaristic Italian Nietzschean who “eulogized rape and acts of savagery” committed by the people he called his spiritual ancestors. The poet was also an early prophet of military intervention and regime change: he invaded the Croatian city of Fiume (now Rijeka) in 1919 and held the city for a year, during which he put into practice his theories of “New Order.” In 1918, moreover, D’Annunzio had dropped propaganda leaflets over Vienna promising to liberate the Austrians from their own government, something Ledeen hails as “a glorious gesture.” D’Annunzio’s watchword was “the liberation of human personality.” “His heroism during the war made it possible,” Ledeen writes, “to bridge the chasm between intellectuals and the masses. … The revolt D’Annunzio led was directed against the old order of Western Europe, and was carried out in the name of youthful creativity and virility.”
As Ledeen shows, the Italian fascists expressed their desire “to tear down the old order” (his words from 2002) in terms that are curiously anticipatory of a famous statement in 2003 by the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. In 1932, Asvero Gravelli also divided Europe into “old” and “new” when he wrote, in Towards the Fascist International, “Either old Europe or young Europe. Fascism is the gravedigger of old Europe. Now the forces of the Fascist International are rising.” It all sounds rather prophetic. ____________________________________________________
John Laughland is a London-based writer and lecturer and a trustee of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group.
Even Uncle Sharon can get along with the heirs of Mussolini jes' fine:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D677FCD1-9341-405C-AD2C-93E52E8DB77A.htm
Israel embraces Italian neo-fascist
By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
Monday 24 November 2003, 19:15 Makka Time, 16:15 GMT
Israeli government officials and opposition leaders have met the leader of Italy's neo-fascist National Alliance party, Gianfranco Fini.
Fini, who is also Italy’s deputy prime minister, arrived on an official visit to Israel on Sunday night. The visit has drawn harsh criticism from leftist politicians and Palestinians.
On Monday, he met with Israeli President Moshe Katsav, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom as well as opposition leader Shimon Peres.
Fini’s visit to Israel at the Sharon government’s invitation drew angry reactions from leaders of the leftist opposition. Yossi Beilin, a former minister of Justice and one-time deputy-foreign minister, called the visit a “disgrace to Israel”.
“It is only because he (Fini) supports the fence that he is receiving a red carpet here.”
Meretz leader Yossi Sarid also criticised the visit, calling it “opportunistic” and “a concordance of interests”.
"It's a shame, a real shame," he said. "The battle against anti-Semitism has to be waged from a firm base of values and principles. If the world senses that it is a political, cynical and opportunist Israeli fight, its foundations will be shaken and it will completely lose its moral validity."
Supporter of Israel
Israeli spokespeople contacted by Aljazeera.net refused to explain why Israel decided to invite the Italian fascist leader despite the fact that Jews suffered tremendously at the hands of the fascists in Europe in the past century.
One Israeli spokesman, who asked for anonymity, argued that “Fini has been reformed”.
However, when asked whether Fini was still sympathetic to the legacy of Italian fascistic movement, the Israeli spokesperson remarked that “the important thing is that he supports Israel. We can’t reject or rebuff foreign leaders as long as they support our country. Other aspects of their ideology is none of our business”.
This view, however, is rare among Israeli intellectuals and public opinion leaders.
Roni Shakid, a prominent writer in Israel’s popular paper, Yediot Aharanot, suggested that opportunism is the driver of this visit.
“They are courting him (Fini) because he supports the security wall and the settlements and because he is deputy prime minister and could become Prime Minister one day,” Shakid told Aljazeera.net.
“You know (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon is a close friend of (Italian Prime Minister Silvio) Berlusconi, and he can’t refuse to receive his deputy in Israel,” he added.
Anti-Muslim views
Sharon was on a three-day visit to Italy last week, ostensibly to thank Italy for its support for Israel and opposition to frequent EU criticism of Israeli policies.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted foreign ministry sources as citing three main reasons for the Israeli decision to court Fini, who is known for his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim views.
These include Fini’s objection to anti-Semitism, the fact that the US and other countries have recognised him and the position of the Italian Jewish community which supported the visit.
However, another reason for the Israeli government’s embrace of Fini seems to lie in his anti-Arab, especially anti-Palestinian, stance, as well his support for Israel’s repressive measures against Palestinians and territorial expansion in the West Bank.
Fini, who once called Italy’s wartime dictator Benito Mussolini "the greatest politician of the 20th century", repeatedly voiced his support for Sharon’s repressive policies against Palestinians, including the destruction of Palestinian homes, farms and infrastructure.
Fini has also backed the apartheid wall Israel is building in the West Bank, which, according to Amiram Barkat, a correspondent for the Haaretz newspaper, makes him the most prominent supporter of Sharon’s policies in contemporary Europe.
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(Further treatment by Lenni Brenner on connections between Mussolini and Jabotinskyan Zionists can be seen here:
"10. Zionist-Revisionism and Italian Fascism"
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/ch10.htm
http://www.severi.org/studenti/ipertesti/jewish/Zionism.htm
Zionism and Italian Fascism, 1922-1933
The World Zionist Organisation's attitude toward Italian Fascism was determined by one criterion: Italy's position on Zionism. When Mussolini was hostile to them, Weizmann was critical of him; but when he became pro-Zionist, the Zionist leadership enthusiastically supported him. On the day Hitler came to power they were already friends with the first Fascist leader.
As a revolutionary, Mussolini had always worked with Jews in the Italian Socialist Party, and it was not until he abandoned the left that he first began to echo the anti-Semitic ideas of the northern European right-wing. Four days after the Bolsheviks took power, he announced that their victory was a result of a plot between the 'Synagogue', that is, 'Ceorbaum' (Lenin), 'Bronstein' (Trotsky), and the German Army. By 1919 he has Communism explained: the Jewish bankers --'Rotschild', 'Wamberg', 'Schyff' and 'Guggenheim'-- were behind the Communist Jews. But Mussolini was not so anti-Semitic as to exclude Jews from his new party and there were five among the founders of the Fascist movement. Nor was anti-Semitism important to his ideology; in fact it was not well received by his followers.
Anti-Semitism in Italy had always been identified in the public mind with Catholic obscurantism. It was the Church which had forced the Jews into the ghettos and Italian nationalists had always supported the Jews against the Popes, whom they saw as opponents of a united Italy. In 1848 the walls of the Roman ghetto were destroyed by the revolutionary Roman Republic. With their defeat the ghetto was restored, but the final victory of the nationalist Kingdom of Italy in 1870 brought an end to discrimination against the Jews.
The Church blamed the Jews for the nationalist victory, and the official Jesuit organ, Civiltà Cattolica, continued to insist that they had only been defeated by 'conspiracies with the Jews [that] were formed by Mazzini, Garibaldi, Cavour, Farini and De Pretis'. But this clerical ranting against the heroes of Italian nationalism merely discredited anti-Semitism, particularly among the anti-clerical youth of the nationalist petty bourgeoisie. Since the essence of Fascism was the mobilisation of the middle class against Marxism, Mussolini listened carefully to his followers' objections: what was the point of denouncing Communism as a Jewish conspiracy, if the Jews themselves were not unpopular?
'True Jews have never Fought against You'
As with many another, Mussolini originally combined anti-Semitism with pro-Zionism, and his Popolo d'ltalia continued to favour Zionism until 1919, when he concluded that Zionism was merely a cat's-paw for the British and he began to refer to the local Zionist movement as 'so-called Italians'. All Italian politicians shared this suspicion of Zionism, including two Foreign Ministers of Jewish descent -- Sidney Sonnino and Carlo Schanzar. The Italian line on Palestine was that Protestant Britain had no real standing in the country as there were no native Protestants there. What they wanted in Palestine was an international 'Holy Land'. In agreeing with the position of the pre-Fascist governments on Palestine and Zionism, Mussolini was primarily motivated by imperial rivalry with Britain and by hostility to any political grouping in Italy having a loyalty to an international movement.
Mussolini's March on Rome of October 1922 worried the Italian Zionist Federation. They had no love for the preceding Facta government, given its anti-Zionism, but the Fascisti were no better on that score, and Mussolini had made clear his own anti-Semitism. However, their concerns about anti-Semitism were lifted immediately; the new govemment hastened to inform Angelo Sacerdoti, the chief rabbi of Rome and an active Zionist, that they would not support anti-Semitism either at home or abroad. The Zionists then obtained an audience with Mussolini on 20 December 1922. They assured the Duce of their loyalty. Ruth Bondy, a Zionist writer on Italian Jewry, relates: 'The delegation, on its part, argued that Italian Jews would always remain loyal to their native land and could help establish relations with the Levant through the Jewish communities there.'
Mussolini bluntly told them that he still saw Zionism as a tool of the British, but their pledge of loyalty softened his hostility somewhat and he agreed to meet Chaim Weizmann, the President of the WZO, who attended on 3 January 1923. Weizmann's autobiography is deliberately vague, and often misleading, on his relations with the Italian, but fortunately it is possible to learn something of the meeting from the report given at the time to the British Embassy in Rome. This explains how Weizmann tried to deal with the objection that Zionism wore Britain's livery: 'Dr Weizmann, whilst denying that this was in any way the case, said that, even if it were so, Italy stood to gain as much as Great Britain by a weakening of Moslem power.'
This answer cannot have inspired too much confidence in Mussolini, but he was pleased when Weizmann asked permission to name an Italian Zionist to the commission running their settlement in Palestine. Weizmann knew the Italian public would see this as Fascist toleration for the WZO, which would make it easier for Zionism amongst wary Jews, frightened at the thought of coming into conflict with the new regime. Mussolini saw it the other way around; by such a cheap gesture he would win support both at home and abroad from the Jewish community.
The meeting produced no change in Italian policy toward Zionism or the British, and the Italians continued to obstruct Zionist efforts by harassing tactics on the League of Nations Mandate Commission. Weizmann never, then or later, mobilised opposition to what Mussolini did to Italians, but he had to say something about a regime that actively opposed Zionism. He spoke out, in America, on 26 March 1923:
Today there is a tremendous political wave, known as Fascism, which is sweeping over Italy. As an Italian movement it is no business of ours --it is the business of the Italian Government. But this wave is now breaking against the little Jewish community, and the little community, which never asserted itself, is today suffering from anti-Semitism.
Italian policy toward Zionism only changed in the mid-1920s, when their consuls in Palestine concluded that Zionism was there to stay and that Britain would only leave the country if and when the Zionists got their own state. Weizmann was invited back to Rome for another conference on 17 September 1926. Mussolini was more than cordial; he offered to help the Zionists build up their economy and the Fascist press began printing favourable articles on Palestinian Zionism.
Zionist leaders began to visit Rome. Nahum Sokolow, then the Chairman of the Zionist Executive and later, in 1931-3, the President of the WZO, appeared on 26 October 1927. Michael Ledeen, a specialist on Fascism and the Jewish question, has described the political outcome of the Sokolow-Mussolini talks:
With this last meeting Mussolini became lionised by Zionism. Sokolow not only praised the Italian as a human being but announced his firm belief that Fascism was immune from anti-Semitic preconceptions. He went even further: in the past there might have been uncertainty about the true nature of Fascism, but now, 'we begin to understand its true nature ... true Jews have never fought against you'.
These words, tantamount to a Zionist endorsement of the Fascist regime, were echoed in Jewish periodicals all over the world. In this period, which saw a new legal relationship established between the Jewish community and the Fascist state, expressions of loyalty and affection for Fascism poured out of the Jewish centers of Italy.
Not all Zionists were pleased with Sokolow's remarks. The Labour Zionists were loosely affiliated to the underground Italian Socialist Party via the Socialist International and they complained, but the Italian Zionists were overjoyed. Prosperous and extremely religious, these conservatives saw Mussolini as their support against Marxism and its concomitant assimilation. In 1927 rabbi Sacerdoti gave an interview to the journalist Guido Bedarida:
Professor Sacerdoti is persuaded that many of the fundamental principles of the Fascist Doctrine such as: the observance of the laws of the state, respect of traditions, the principle of authority, exaltation of religious values, a desire for the moral and physical cleanliness of family and the individual, the struggle for an increase of production, and therefore a struggle against Malthusianism, are no more or less than Jewish principles.
The ideological leader of Italian Zionism was the lawyer Alfonso Pacifici. An extremely pious man, he ensured that the Italian Zionists were to become the most religious branch of the world movement. In 1932 another interviewer told of how Pacifici also expressed to me his conviction that the new conditions would bring about a revival of Italian Jewry. Indeed, he claimed to have evolved a philosophy of Judaism akin to the spiritual Tendenz of Fascism long before this had become the rule of life in Italian polity.
Establishment of Relations between Mussolini and Hitler
If the Zionists at least hesitated until Mussolini warmed to them before they responded, Hitler had no such inhibitions. From the beginning of the Fascist take-over, Hitler used Mussolini's example as proof that a terror dictatorship could overthrow a weak bourgeois democracy and then set about smashing the workers' movements. After he came to power he acknowledged his debt to Mussolini in a discussion with the Italian ambassador in March 1933. 'Your Excellency knows how great an admiration I have for Mussolini, whom I consider the spiritual head of my ''movement" as well, since if he had not succeeded in assuming power in Italy, National Socialism would not have had the slightest chance in Germany.
Hitler had two cavils with Fascism: Mussolini savagely oppressed the Germans in the south Tyrol which the Italians had won at Versailles, and he welcomed Jews into the Fascist Party. But Hitler saw, quite correctly, that what the two of them wanted was so similar that, eventually, they would come together. He insisted that a quarrel with the Italians over the Tyrolians would only serve the Jews; therefore, unlike most German rightists, he was always willing to abandon the Tyrolians. Furthermore, in spite of the fact that he had no knowledge of Mussolini's earlier anti-Semitic remarks, in 1926, in Mein Kampf, Hitler declared that in his heart of hearts the Italian was an anti-Semite.
The struggle that FASCIST ITALY is waging, though perhaps in the last analysis unconsciously (which I personally do not believe), against the three main weapons of the Jews is the best indication that, even though indirectly, the poison fangs of this supra-state power are being torn out. The prohibition on Masonic secret societies, the persecution of the supra-national press, as well as the continued demolition of international Marxism, and, conversely, the steady reinforcement of the Fascist state conception, will in the course of the years cause the Italian government to serve the interests of the Italian people more and more, without regard for the hissing of the Jewish world hydra.
But if Hitler was pro-Mussolini, it did not follow that Mussolini would be pro-Nazi. Throughout the 1920s the Duce kept repeating his famous 'Fascism is not an article for export'. Certainly after the failure of the Beer Hall putsch and the Nazis' meagre 6.5 per cent in the 1924 elections, Hitler represented nothing. It required the Depression and Hitler's sudden electoral success, before Mussolini began to take serious notice of his German counterpart. Now he began to talk of Europe going Fascist within ten years, and his press began to report favourably about Nazism. But at the same time he repudiated Hitler's Nordic racism and anti-Semitism. Completely disoriented by his philo-Semitism, the Zionists hoped that Mussolini would be a moderating influence on Hitler when he came to power. In October 1932, on the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome, Pacifici rhapsodised about the differences between the real Fascism in Rome and its ersatz in Berlin. He saw radical differences between the true and authentic Fascism --Italian Fascism, that is-- and the pseudo-Fascist movements in other countries which
... are often using the most reactionary phobias, and especially the blind, unbridled hatred of the Jews, as a means of diverting the masses from their real problems, from the real causes of their misery, and from the real culprits.
Later, after the Holocaust, in his autobiography Trial and Error, Weizmann lamely tried to establish an anti-Fascist record for the Italian Zionists: 'The Zionists, and the Jews generally, though they did not give loud expression to their views on the subject, were known to be 'anti-Fascist'. Given Mussolini's anti-Zionism in the early years of his Fascist career, as well as his anti-Semitic comments, Zionists hardly favoured him in 1922. But, as we have seen, they pledged their loyalty to the new power once Mussolini assured them that he was not anti-Semitic. In the first years of the regime, the Zionists knew he resented their international affiliations, but that did not bring them to anti-Fascism and, certainly after the statements in 1927 by Sokolow and Sacerdoti, the Zionists could only be thought of as Mussolini's good friends.
Jimbo Gomez
11-17-2005, 10:09 AM
Petr: what do you personally think about Mussolini's ideas?
Petr: what do you personally think about Mussolini's ideas?
I guess his internal politics were somewhat acceptable, but he really started to lose it with his infantile imperialistic attacks on Ethiopia, Albania and Greece. His speedy and unglorious collapse simply brings to mind a castle built on sand.
Petr
Jimbo Gomez
11-17-2005, 10:56 AM
I really like his interior politics, but yes, you're right about his foreign stuff.
It did only prove he was a bad military commander though, nothing more than that.
Felix the Cat
11-17-2005, 12:50 PM
Image over substance, the textbook example. That Jews were attracted to Mussolini should not surprise anyone...
It did only prove he was a bad military commander though, nothing more than that.
I wouldn't say quite so. His totally unprovoked attack on Greece showed not only strategic idiocy but also fundamental lack of morality.
This guy puts it well:
"Hitler was, in my view, essentially ‘religious’; Mussolini was never. Hitler was much more complex (and effective) than Mussolini. Hitler was a ‘mystic’: a dreamer, and had a complex personality. By comparison, Mussolini was, in general, a swaggering oaf and gangster with little sensitivity."
http://www.abelard.org/briefings/fascism-is-socialism.php
Petr
Felix the Cat
11-17-2005, 04:15 PM
Abelard--
There was only ever one fascist state – Italy.
A true, important and often-forgotten fact
A mini-biography of one important Fascist Jew:
Guido Jung
by Vincenzo Salerno
Guido Jung was born in in Palermo 1876 and died there in 1949. He was a businessman and politician, and highly unusual for a Sicilian as a Jew in a part of Italy where most Jews had been forcibly converted to Christianity in 1493.
Jung's father had an export business specialised in oranges, lemons and dried fruit. While still in his early twenties, Guido was managing the family business and in 1906 he was made a knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy. Until the advent of Fascism, and then until the mid-1930s (when King Victor Emmanuel signed the infamous laws against Italian Jews), the Savoys were fairly tolerant of non-Catholics. Sadly, this was to change.
In 1913 Guido became president of the family firm, though he was already dedicating more of his time to politics. A nationalist, he served in the First World War and then participated in several peace conferences. He seems to have shared the conviction of many Italians that Italy failed to receive her "fair share" of the territorial spoils of war, and joined the Fascist movement. In 1924 he ran for office in Mussolini's party, and this led to numerous public posts, including, initially, directorship of the National Export Institute or INE (Istituto Nazionale per l'Esportazione) from 1924 until 1932. Envy prompted several Palermo businessmen to complain to Galeazzo Ciano that Jung was using his office to profit his export business.
In 1932 Jung became Finance Minister. His term was characterised by a reduction in military spending but an increase in funding for public works projects. In 1933 he approved establishment of the IRI (Istituto per la Ricostruzione) to address the effects of the international banking crisis on the Italian economy but also to industrialise the country as much as possible. This did achieve modest results, and it is one of the developments sometimes cited (often outside its actual context) in support of the "success" of Fascism. True, the IRI financed certain growth industries (and, after the war, the autostrada network of superhighways), but its lasting legacy was the nationalisation of numerous commercial (lending) banks and entire Italian industries --a socialist phenomenon whose adverse long-term effects are only now being addressed seriously.
In 1935 Jung resigned this position and volunteered for military service in the war in Ethiopia (a conflict which later earned Italy the world's first condemnation, under UN auspices, of any nation for "crimes against humanity"). In 1937, however, Jung was forced to face the social consequences of the infamous anti-Semitic laws proposed by the very political party he supported, which marginalised him from the government. Nevertheless, his moral position remains unclear to this day, hence his characterisation by some Jewish historians as a less than distinguished figure, effectively a "collaborator" willing, in his personal quest for prestige, to compromise his standing with other Jewish Italians.
That may well be true, but it is equally likely that Jung was simply an idealist who, like most Italians of his era, failed to foresee the worst consequences of racist nationalism and backed the wrong political horse, with tragic consequences. (Piazza Magione, right behind Jung's palatial residence, was virtually destroyed by Allied bombs in 1943 during the Second World War.) Sadly, there is little evidence to suggest that Guido Jung opposed the Italians' atrocities and massacres of innocent civilians in eastern Africa.
In September 1943, with Italy's change of alliance following the Allied occupation of Sicily and Mussolini's removal from power, Jung joined tha Badoglio government as an undersecretary and then a minister. However, with the Allies' appointment of the openly anti-Fascist Ivanoe Bonomi as provisional Prime Minister, Jung retired from public life. He died of a heart attack while seated at his typewriter.
Palazzo Jung (shown here), located in Via Abramo Lincoln near Palermo's botanical gardens, was recently restored and houses public offices.
About the Author: Palermo native Vincenzo Salerno has written biographies of several famous Sicilians, including Frederick II and Giuseppe di Lampedusa.
http://www.bestofsicily.com/mag/art256.htm
Petr
ogenoct
01-30-2010, 10:22 AM
Why do people call it "Judeo-Bolshevism" but not "Judeo-Fascism"?
A hypothetical question: would it have been possible for Hitler to recruit (at least some) German Jews to the Nazi Party, and concentrate on crushing just Communists - if he had only wanted or tried to? Both Italian and Croatian Fascists seemed to be able to do so.
It seems that there were at least some elements in Germany's early proto-Fascist scene that did not mind "Jewish cooties", like this guy for example - involved in one of the most spectacular right-wing extremist strikes in Weimar Republic, the assassination of Jewish foreign minister Walther Rathenau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_Rathenau):
Ernst von Salomon (September 25, 1902 – August 9, 1972) was a German writer and Freikorps member.
He was born in Kiel, the son of a criminal investigation officer. From 1913 he was a cadet in Karlsruhe and Berlin-Lichterfelde; starting in 1919, he joined the Freikorps ("Free-Corps") in the Baltic, where he fought against the Bolsheviks. Later he fought against Polish insurgents in Upper Silesia.
He received a five year prison sentence in 1922 for his part in the assassination of Walther Rathenau – he provided a car for the assassins. In 1927, he received another prison sentence for an attempted feme murder (paramilitary "self-justice"), and was released after a few months – he had not killed the severely wounded victim, Wagner, when he pleaded for his life, which was noted by the court.
After 1933, Salomon said, he did not support Nazism. He earned his living by writing film scripts. His wife, Ille Gotthelft, was Jewish but was protected due to his support. In his autobiography The Answers of Ernst von Salomon he described how both were mistreated by American soldiers when they were arrested, and called "Nazi swine."
Salomon was imprisoned by the Americans as POW from 1945–1946. The 1940 colonial film Carl Peters, which Salomon wrote the screenplay for, was forbidden by British occupation authorities, because of allegedly being "anti-English".
In 1951 he published the book Der Fragebogen ("The Questionnaire"), in which he gave his rather ironic answers to the 131 point questionnaire concerning their activities under Nazism. A famous public discussion of the book took place in the main train station of Cologne, organised by bookseller Gerhard Ludwig.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_von_Salomon
Here is a peeved Time review (1955) of von Salomon's bestselling book - he is seen as an example of insufficiently "de-Nazified" German:
In 1922 Ernst von Salomon was an accomplice in the murder of Germany's moderate Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau and became a hero to Hitler's followers. Von Salomon was sent to prison for five years, thus making his place in the National Socialist Valhalla secure. Yet, after he was released, he managed to stay out of the Nazi Party, while holding down a cushy job in the Nazi propaganda machine. He even managed to live with his Jewish mistress to the very end of World War II. From such a monstrous clever fellow it is reasonable to expect a monstrous clever book, and Ernst von Salomon has written it.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,861117,00.html
Petr
Here is another major player of Freikorps-era German "White movement" with intimate Jewish connections:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Graf_von_Arco_auf_Valley
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/Arcovalley.jpg
Anton von Padua Alfred Emil Hubert Georg Graf von Arco auf Valley (5 February 1897 – 29 June 1945), commonly known as Anton Arco-Valley, German political activist, is best remembered as the assassin of Kurt Eisner, the first republican premier of Bavaria, in February 1919.
Arco-Valley was born in Sankt Martin im Innkreis in Upper Austria. His father was a businessman and estate owner, while his mother, Emily Freiin von Oppenheim, was from the rich, Jewish, Oppenheim bankers family. After serving with a Bavarian regiment in the last year of World War I, he was demobilised and returned to study at Munich University, an angry and disillusioned German nationalist. As an aristocrat, a monarchist and a proclaimed anti-Semite despite his part-Jewish descent, he detested Eisner, the Jewish leader of the Bavarian socialists and Premier of Bavaria since the overthrow of the monarchy in November 1918.
"Eisner is a Bolshevist, a Jew; he isn't German, he doesn't feel German, he subverts all patriotic thoughts and feelings. He is a traitor to this land."
—Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley
Arco-Valley may have decided to kill Eisner to prove himself "worthy" after he had been rejected for membership of an ultra-nationalist group, the Thule Society, because he was partly of Jewish descent.[1][2][3]
On 21 February 1919 Arco-Valley, acting alone, shot Eisner dead on a Munich street. His action triggered bloody reprisals by communists and anarchists in Munich in which a number of people were killed, including Prince Gustav of Thurn and Taxis. Fighting broke out and the short-lived Bavarian Socialist Republic was established. Arco-Valley inspired the young Joseph Goebbels, who was in Munich at the time.
Arco-Valley was tried in January 1920. He was sentenced to death, but a conservative judge eventually reduced this to five years in prison. The State Prosecutor said of him, "If the whole German youth were imbued with such a glowing enthusiasm we could face the future with confidence."[4] He served his sentence at Stadelheim prison in cell 70, and in 1924 he was evicted from his cell to make way for Adolf Hitler. He was released in 1925, and was on probation until 1927, when he was pardoned.
Arco-Valley played no further part in politics, although he was decorated by the Nazi regime as a "hero of the movement."
Tellurocrat
08-07-2010, 04:17 PM
1. You're mixing the specific historical word Fascism with the generic fascism. That is, in seeking to condemn someone, you're following the standard "associate with historical Fascism" formula so as to end in the conclusion "he's a generic fascist (maybe racist, maybe totalitarian, maybe violent).
2. Fascism specifically refers to a national corporatist system of government, the harmonization of classes against communism's class warfare, aided by nationalism, and a system of state guilds (this is corporatism). It contains nothing of the negative connotation of generic fascism.
3. The Italian Fascist regime was totalitarian neither in spirit nor in practice. Apart from WWI, it did not affect the lives of its citizen a fraction of the way the Nazi regime or the Soviet regime. Indicatively, both those states controlled art and had their version of entertate kunst. Italy did not.
4. The Axis Pact is primarily of historical relevance, rather than ideological - although of course, both the communists and the liberals pushed the notion during and after the war, many communists and liberals commended the Fascist regime before the Axis Pact. There was also a point in time when Mussolini and Dollfuss were seriously contemplating invading Germany and toppling Hitler. Of course, after the coup and the Anschluss, Mussolini crapped his pants and went into Hitler's arms, but very reluctantly. Mussolini had always written clearly that Hitler was a dangerous man he wanted nothing to do with.
5. The first article you have up mentions the expulsion of the Jews without mentioning that this occurred after Fascist Italy became a Nazi puppet state. Before this, Fascists refused to enact any antisemitic policy prescribed by the Nazis, or even to hand over Jews in areas they "won", in France, for example.
Tellurocrat
08-07-2010, 04:34 PM
You give Jabotinsky only one mention, when he's the only major link between Zionism and Fascism. Jabotinsky adulated Mussolini and defended his regime amongst Jews, and eventually sought also to imitate his regime in Palestine, as a founder of Irgun. Like Mussolini however, he was fundamentally non-racist and his ideal Israel would have included complete equality and solidarity with Arabs.
Like Mussolini however, he was fundamentally non-racist and his ideal Israel would have included complete equality and solidarity with Arabs.
You sound naive here, anachronistically projecting post-1960s "non-racist" notions on both Jabotinsky and Mussolini.
Petr
Tellurocrat
08-07-2010, 04:42 PM
You sound naive here, anachronistically reflecting post-1960s "non-racist" notions on both Jabotinsky and Mussolini.
Petr
Possibly. In Mussolini's case, it was simply the fact that he institutionalized no kind of racial laws, even though he was pushed by elements within his own party and by his Nazi ally to do so. At the very best, he "instituted" a "racial law" put forth by Julius Evola, which was fundamentally anti-racist in that it defined race as spiritual rather than biological, and declared that individuals of different biological race could belong to the same spiritual race. He was certainly not politically correct, and probably also subscribed to beliefs of the time about races.
In Jabotinsky's case, it's as I said, an idealistic belief in convivence between two related (to some extent) races.
Tellurocrat
08-07-2010, 04:59 PM
"Hitler was, in my view, essentially ‘religious’; Mussolini was never. Hitler was much more complex (and effective) than Mussolini. Hitler was a ‘mystic’: a dreamer, and had a complex personality. By comparison, Mussolini was, in general, a swaggering oaf and gangster with little sensitivity."
This could further be shortened.
Hitler was a bourgeois madman. Mussolini was a sane peasant.
Kodos
08-07-2010, 06:29 PM
This supports my theory that the jews are not by nature hostile to the extreme right, they hate it mainly because it hates them.
Felix the Cat
08-07-2010, 07:04 PM
Italian nationalism will naturally be less hostile towards Jews than northern European nationalisms for obvious racial reasons.
Italian nationalism will naturally be less hostile towards Jews than northern European nationalisms for obvious racial reasons.
Yes, common sense says that Jews "blend in" easier among Meds than among Nordics...
Petr
Don Diego Vega
08-08-2010, 02:46 PM
Petr, I am constantly amazed at your scholarship. I asked you once to expound on another Italian topic, the Moorish raids on Italy in the middle ages, and you did. I assume you are a proffessor or educator of some sort.
Thanks for this info.
Yes it was a 'black' day when Fini went to Izrael and kissed every Zionist ass he could. :hurl:
Beware the power of the cabal.
Don Diego Vega
08-09-2010, 01:31 PM
Carlo Gambino
Mug Shot
Definetley looks more Jew than Italian
Felix the Cat
08-07-2011, 09:44 AM
Yes, common sense says that Jews "blend in" easier among Meds than among Nordics...So called "Jewish features" (noses, etc.) are not unusual among southern Europeans. These people probably have Jewish (or Arab) ancestors somewhere in their family past. This has no social or political relevance.
Cesare Lombroso (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Lombroso), a famous "proto-Fascist" eugenicist social researcher, was also an Italian Jew:
http://www.protocolz.com/victims/16.php
One of the most influential thinkers in the theory of a criminal typology in physical appearance was an Italian Jew, Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909). The founder of the "science of criminal law," Lombroso argued that "degenerate criminality" was expressed in physical traits (i.e., criminals looked like criminals). For example, in Lombroso's view, the same kind of ears were to be found in "criminals, savages, and apes." [MOSSE, G., 1978, p. 83-84] Lombroso wrote that criminals tend to be irrecoverably "born for evil;" their "atavism shows us the inefficacy of punishment for born criminals" and society should "eliminate them completely, even by death." He also labeled entire groups of handicapped people as criminals and that "almost every 'born criminal' suffers from epilepsy to some degree." Gypsies as a group were identified by Lombroso as inherently criminal: "They have the improvidence of the savage and that of the criminal as well." "The Nazi killers," says Henry Friedlander, "used the language of Lombroso to target the same victim groups, including Gypsies and the handicapped. Thus members of the judiciary considered the killing of convicted criminals if their 'physical shape no longer deserved to be called human.'" [FRIEDLANDER, p. 3]
Drieu La Rochelle
08-08-2011, 09:55 AM
http://www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx?id=300
Even under fascism, the loyalty of Italian Jews for their country did not wane. On December 18, 1935, Italian leader Benito Mussolini declared a national day of faith in which Mussolini requested the wedding rings of Italian women. The Day of Faith was called to show national solidarity in the face of international criticism over Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. On that day, virtually every Italian synagogue celebrated the day by playing the Royal March (the Savoy hymn) and the fascist song ‘Giovinezza.’ A patriotic sermon followed, and the women relinquished their wedding rings.
In a typical Day of Faith sermon, Rabbi Rosenberg of Ancona said: “Today is the sacred Day of Faith. Today is the thirty-first day of the economic siege, ordered to humiliate the Italian people and stop its march to victory. But Italy is demonstrating today to the entire world its firm will to defeat the ignoble siege . . . and you, wives and mothers, are in the vanguard. Following the august example of the Queen of Italy you have today placed on the altar of the Fatherland the most precious object you possess.... More than a gift of gold, it is a gift of the soul.” Rosenberg emphasized that Jews had an additional reason for giving: “for the honor of your religion.”
Rabbi Aldo Lattes of Rome encouraged Jews to continue their Italian patriotism: “Just as during the war of unification the Jews did not lag behind in their sacrifice of blood, so today they should be second to none in the resistance to the iniquitous sanctions. Brothers and Sisters! Falling short today in the duty we owe the Fatherland would be a betrayal not only before mankind but also before the Lord! ... Strip from your houses all foreign products, make every possible economy, and give, give gold to the Fatherland!”
Italian fascism had been in power since 1922, and it only became anti-Semitic in 1938. Until then, Jews, like other conservative Italians, were likely to be members of the Fascist Party. Italian Jews were spread among all political parties and took positions on fascism as Italians, not as Jews.
Ettore Ovazza was one of the 230 Italian Jews who participated in the October 1922 March on Rome that installed Mussolini in power. In fact, the number of Jews who signed up as fascists was disproportionately high. Ovazza started a Jewish fascist newspaper, “La Nostra Bandiera” (Our Flag) in an effort to show that the Jews were among the regime’s most loyal followers. They defended Jews from anti-Semitism and attacked Zionists and anti-fascist Jews. Ovazza’s father, Ernesto, was the leader of the Turin Jewish community. Not only was it not unusual that he was a fascist, he would probably be unable to hold this semi-public position if he had not been a member of the party.
The novelist Girorgio Bassani, author of “Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” grew up in Ferrara, a city known for a long tradition of tolerance for Jews. He has said that he does not remember a single Jew who was not a fascist.
Stille describes how widespread Jewish fascism was, “Although there are instances of Jews making compromises with fascism elsewhere in Europe, these were isolated cases of personal opportunism, of private pacts with the devil. In Italy, Jewish fascism was a real ideological movement, a mass phenomenon, as much as that was possible in Italy’s tiny Jewish population of 47,000. In 1938, at the beginning of the racial laws, more than 10,000 Jews-about one out of every three Jewish adults-were members of the Fascist Party.”
Ludwig von Mises, one of the founders of right-wing libertarian or minarchist "Austrian School (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School)" of economic thought, commended Italian Fascism (cautiously) for having acted as a bulwark against Communism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises
Ludwig von Mises was born to wealthy Jewish parents in the city of Lwów, in Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Lviv in Ukraine). The family of his father Arthur Edler von Mises had been elevated to the Austrian nobility in the 19th century, and was involved in building and financing railroads. Ludwig's mother, Adele (née Landau), was a niece of Dr. Joachim Landau, a Liberal Party deputy to the Austrian Parliament.[1] Arthur was stationed there as a construction engineer with Czernowitz railway company. At the age of twelve Ludwig spoke fluent Yiddish, German, Polish, and French, read Latin, and could understand Ukrainian.[2] Mises was the older brother of the famous applied physicist Richard von Mises, a member of the Vienna Circle. Another brother, Karl von Mises, had died in infancy from scarlet fever. When Ludwig and Richard were children, his family moved back to their ancestral home of Vienna.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2010/10/mises-on-fascism-in-1927-embarrassment.html
But in 1927 Mises published a book in German called Liberalismus (Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena). I quote from the 1978 edition called Liberalism: A Socio-Economic Exposition (Mission, Kansas, 1978). In this book, Mises gives a negative and critical summary of the characteristics of 1920s European fascism (and, to be fair, this was before the horrors of 1930s Nazism). Mises principally has in mind the Italian fascism of Benito Mussolini, who had become Prime Minister of Italy in 1922.
Mises notes the violent and murderous nature of revolutionary socialism in the Third International (pp. 47–49), and contends that fascism arose as a response to these tactics. Yet for Mises, “the great danger threatening domestic policy from the side of fascism lies in its complete faith in the decisive power of violence” (p. 50). Mises even notes that ideas are more important weapons than violence, and that classical liberalism is the “only one idea that can be effectively opposed to socialism” (pp. 50–51).
How surprising it is, then, to read this conclusion to Mises’ section on fascism (I include the original German):
“Soviel über die innerpolitische Stellung des Faszismus. Daß er außenpolitisch durch das Bekenntnis zum Gewaltprinzip im Verhältnis von Volk zu Volk eine endlose Reihe von Kriegen hervorrufen muß, die die ganze moderne Gesittung vernichten müssen, bedarf keiner weiteren Ausführung. Der Fortbestand und die Fortentwicklung der wirtschaftlichen Kultur der Gegenwart verlangen Sicherung des Friedens zwischen den Völkern. Die Völker aber können sich nicht vertragen, wenn sie von einer Ideologie beherrscht werden, die glaubt, durch Gewalt allein die Stellung des eigenen Volkes im Kreise der Völker sichern zu können.
Es kann nicht geleugnet werden, daß der Faszismus und alle ähnlichen Diktaturbestrebungen voll von den besten Absichten sind und daß ihr Eingreifen für den Augenblick die europäische Gesittung gerettet hat. Das Verdienst, das sich der Faszismus damit erworben hat, wird in der Geschichte ewig fortleben. Doch die Politik, die im Augenblick Rettung gebracht hat, ist nicht von der Art, daß das dauernde Festhalten an ihr Erfolg versprechen könnte. Der Faszismus war ein Notbehelf des Augenblicks; ihn als mehr anzusehen, wäre ein verhängnisvoller Irrtum” (Mises 1927: 45).
“So much for the domestic policy of Fascism. That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one's own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone.
It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error” (Mises 1978: 51).
...
In another passage, Mises contended that the violence and authoritarianism of fascism had been provoked by the equally violent and brutal nature of revolutionary socialism:
“The deeds of the Fascists and of other parties corresponding to them were emotional reflex actions evoked by indignation at the deeds of the Bolsheviks and Communists. As soon as the first flush of anger had passed, their policy took a more moderate course and will probably become even more so with the passage of time” (Mises 1978: 49).
...
MISES AND THE AUSTRO-FASCISM OF DOLLFUSS
An interesting addendum to the post above is Mises’ attitude to the fascist regime that took over Austria in 1933.
Engelbert Dollfuss had been a member of the Austrian Christian Social Party, and became Chancellor of Austrian in 1932. In March 1933, Dollfuss took advantage of the political turmoil in the Austrian parliament, effectively abolished democracy, and established an authoritarian regime. While Dollfuss was an opponent of the Austrian branch of the Nazi party (the Austrian National Socialists or DNSAP), he banned other political parties and established his own peculiar fascist political alliance called the “Patriotic Front” (Vaterländische Front), which included the Christian Social Party and other nationalists and conservatives. Dollfuss was assassinated in July 25, 1934 by Austrian Nazis, but was succeeded by Kurt Schuschnigg, who was Chancellor from July 1934 to the Anschluss in March 1938.
Around March 1934, Mises moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where he taught at the Graduate Institute of International Studies. However, he continued to visit Austria in subsequent years, and still worked part time for the Vienna Chamber of Commerce (Hülsmann 2007: 684). It is claimed that before 1934 Mises had become an adviser to Dollfuss (see Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “The Meaning of the Mises Papers,” Mises.org, April 1997). Even as late as autumn 1937 Mises considered returning to Austria to work for the Austrian Chamber of Commerce full time (Hülsmann 2007: 723), and only finally fled Austria permanently on one of his regular visits in March 1938 before the Nazi takeover. I quote from J. G. Hülsmann’s biography of Mises:
“Mises later said that it was the growing power of the Nazi party in Austria that prompted him to leave the country. With this remark, he did not refer to the government of Engelbert Dollfuss, which had reintroduced authoritarian corporatism into Austrian politics to resist the socialism of both the Marxist and the Nazi variety. Mises meant the Austrian branch of the National Socialist German Workers Party, which enjoyed strong backing from Berlin and fought a daily battle to conquer the streets of Vienna. Dollfuss’s authoritarian policies were in his view only a quick fix to safeguard Austria’s independence—unsuitable in the long run, especially if the general political mentality did not change” (Hülsmann 2007: 683–684).
If correct, then Mises saw Dollfuss’s fascism in much the same way as Mussolini’s fascism: as an “emergency makeshift.”
Felix the Cat
09-11-2011, 07:53 AM
So called "Jewish features" (noses, etc.) are not unusual among southern Europeans. These people probably have Jewish (or Arab) ancestors somewhere in their family past. This has no social or political relevance.More on this
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