Dominic’s Reviews > Mussolini: A New Life > Status Update

“In 1933 the ninety-three most prolific mothers were summoned to Rome to meet the Pope and Mussolini, and receive cash prizes. The number of offspring each had produced varied between fourteen and nineteen.”

“The Roman genius impersonated in Mussolini, the greatest law-giver among living men, has shown to many nations how they can resist the pressures of Socialism and has indicated the path that a nation can follow when courageously led.” - Churchill 1933

“In class war, Capitalism, via the free market, gave the bosses the upper hand, and Communism, via the state, the masses. Fascism, via the corporate state, would incorporate both bosses and masses inside the state and so abolish class war.”

“If I had been Italian, I am sure I would have been wholeheartedly with you from start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism. But in England we have not yet had to face this danger in the same deadly form.” - Winston Churchill

“Gentile’s first reforms of the education system… made religious instruction in schools and universities mandatory and another new law insisted that the crucifix - banned until now - be displayed in classrooms, barracks, public buildings and courts. Contraceptives and swearing in public were also made illegal.”

“Like the Socialists, the Fascists wanted class war: theirs, however, was not a war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat but between productive people and parasitic people. They sought the victory not of the working class but of productive people from whichever class they came. This meant, for example, collaboration between productive employers and productive workers, not confrontation.”

“He [Mussolini] was also increasingly convinced that people were more attached to the idea of nation than class. He would soon fuse this second theory of revolution with nationalism. The German Socialists had decided to support war for nationalistic not revolutionary reasons. Their nationalism was stronger than their Socialism.”

“Tell me, Bissolati, how many times have you paid homage to a builder who has fallen from scaffolding? How many times to a muleteer fallen from his cart? How many times to a miner struck by a boulder?” - Benito Mussolini

“In 1918 the ‘left-wing’ revolutionary syndicalists, led by Filippo Corridoni, would even fuse with ‘right-wing’ nationalists to form a single group - the Sindacato Nazionale. Many of these people would then become Fascists.”