Reviews for Benito Mussolini: The First Fascist

The average rating for Benito Mussolini: The First Fascist based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-05-05 00:00:00 Jill Wade Anthony Cardoza's Benito Mussolini, the First Fascist has written the short introduction to the rise of Mussolini and his creation of the political movement called Fascism. This is a meaty book if deliberately incomplete. It fits well into the category of the one Mussolini you need to read if you are to have an idea of the man and his politics. It is not the definitive, exhaustive biography or political analysis. It is very accessible to the general reader and well designed as additional reading for a good undergraduate modern history class. The biography portion covers the essentials. Early life in a remote Italian Village, a trouble maker, but intelligent student. Later a teacher with too many bed partners to stay at home or anywhere for long. His father a communist and initially Benito follows his father's politics, becoming a leader and a publisher for communistic causes. He was originally nicked named El Duce (the Leader) in his Communist identity. The emerging pattern is an ideologue of convenience. His purpose was power politics were important only if he was the leader. And even better the leader with the chance to use violence to impose and keep power. As so to the invention of Fascism. Of the best known modern political theories, Fascism seems to be the one with the least definition. What Cardoza documents is that it inventor, Mussolini was not much of a political theorist. He was a guy who wanted power and would get and hold it by cobbling together slogans and deals with those who could further his hold on power. His power was backed by his Brown Shirts. Bully boys who turned to him in an economy weak on jobs and a culture tolerant of violence. It mas masculine, because the Italians wanted a manly leader. One with many mistresses to prove his manliness. In a like manner it had to be nationalistic, even to the point of being chauvinistic and therefore militaristic. Industrialists held more money and more influence and so he chose the money men over his previously 'beloved' labor. Likewise he would make compromises with the Catholic Church. Previous to the rise of El Duce (the leader) the Church had not recognized Italy as a united nation). El Duce had not been a royalist, but being a nationalist and a compromiser, he would try and curry favor with the usually weak King Victor Emmanuel III. The summary is that Fascism as a theory is a nailing together of convenient parts rather than a systematic theory. The preference is for industrialists and bankers and an assumption that violence is a desirable means to ending debate. It is atavistic and nationalistic and emotional rather than logical or systematic. How true is it that El Duce made the trains run on time? Cardoza is not that certain, but he does make it clear that in the years before Mussolini started in on military adventuring he built a myth about himself. El Duce was so all present that he could convert the athletic achievements of Italian Olympian winners into extensions of Himself (capital 'H"). It is more than a little put about that Vesuvius held back on its destructive power in deference to the will of El Duce. By the end of this short book, 165 pages of text, World War II is collapsed into a few pages. There seems to be little to say about the collapse of his public support. For years Mussolini had been preaching war as the method for Italians to prove their vitality, even as his pro corporate policies produced more starvation and a physically weaker populace. He began as a model for Adolph Hitler and quickly became the weaker member of the Axis Alliance. Mussolini built a warrior reputation, until his policies required him to deliver.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-05-16 00:00:00 Steven Ritter Short, solid introductory biography, written with craftsman-like prose, which places Mussolini in historical context and is especially good at noting the political and cultural boundaries that limited his "totalitarianism."