Benito Mussolini has an infamous place in modern history, as well he should. Nearly everyone knows Mussolini as the dictator of Fascist Italy and the ally of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. But that is only part of the story.

Mussolini began his political career as an avowed Marxist (defined as the atheist philosophy which holds that capitalism is bad because it enriches a few capitalists to the detriment of masses of laborers and that laborers should take control of all means of production — in order, in theory though not in practice, to be fair to the masses). Mussolini was not just a leading leftist in Italy, he was one of the most important communists in the world (communism is here defined as a system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy, and a single, often authoritarian party, holds power — in order, in theory, to be fair and spread all goods equally amongst the people).

In 1914, Mussolini organized “Red Week,” which was aimed at causing a violent revolution against the corrupt capitalist world. The very name “Duce” (an Italian word for leader) was given to him at a banquet hosted by Marxists after his release from prison for protesting the “imperialist” Italian war in Libya, at which one veteran socialist said: “From today you, Benito, are not only the representative of Romagna Socialists, but the Duce of all revolutionary Socialists in Italy!”

After the First World War began, Mussolini worked hard to get Italy to join the side of Britain and France. He succeeded. After the war, Fascism began to grow into a serious political movement in Italy, with Benito at its head. Hitler admired Mussolini intensely and considered Fascism in Italy to be a precursor to National Socialism in Germany. Mussolini brought Fascist Italy into the Second World War as an ally of Nazi Germany about the time that the Nazis defeated France in mid-1940.

Italy surrendered to the Allied Powers in 1943 and ousted Il Duce. But that is not the end of the biography of Benito Mussolini. Hitler had him rescued and set Mussolini up as the head of a puppet state in northern Italy, the Italian Socialist Republic. The constitution of this odd polity was written by Nicola Bombacci, a communist and a friend of Lenin. In February 1944, the Socialist Republic issued a “Legislative Decree for the Socialization of Enterprises” that provided that all enterprises with capital of over one million lire or employing more than a hundred persons would be run by a committee composed of an equal number of management and workers. After that it moved even more radically to the Left. In 1944, Mussolini praised Stalin and said that if he had to choose which nation should dominate Europe, it would be the Soviet Union. Both Mussolini and the movement he led were left-wing at their inception and even more left-wing extremist in the end.

Yet Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, claims:

The terms extreme right or ultra right are used by some scholars to discuss only those right-wing political groups that step outside the boundaries of traditional electoral politics. This generally includes the revolutionary right, militant racial supremacists and religious extremists, neo-fascists, neo-Nazis and Klansmen. In this usage, the terms are distinct from other forms of right-wing politics such as the less-militant sectors of the far right, right-wing populists.

Though this definition, which includes fascists and Nazis, is accepted and promulgated by media and educators, how does this fit into any rational system of understanding political ideology? It does not, of course, but whenever any group displays any activity that does not adhere to a politically correct agenda, and can be pronounced by liberals as being racist, sexist, bigoted, or intolerant — whether this description is accurate or not — the group is deemed “right-wing.” 

Such a definition of “right-wing” would lead one to believe that two of the vilest totalitarian regimes of the 20th century — Bolshevism and Nazism — were mortal enemies at opposite ends of a political spectrum. If such a contention is true, an argument could be made that neither a right-wing, “conservative,” limited-government ideology nor a left-wing, “liberal,” big-government one is more fundamentally sound than the other; therefore, there is no reason not to try to create an enlightened, all-powerful government.

But if Nazis and Bolsheviks were not mortal enemies, but were instead identical twins, then the whole argument of collectivists disintegrates. If moving in the direction of Barack Obama’s policies, for example, meant moving in the direction of both Stalin and Hitler, then only a madman or a monster would ever want what Obama wants for America. If embracing the small-government philosophy of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and other early American patriots always led away from Stalin and Hitler, then serious Americans would begin to cherish more deeply the legacy of our Founding Fathers.

Back in the Day
It is hard to find objectivity when talking about Nazism today. It was, of course, a ghastly movement that few defend. What most people know of it is disseminated by college professors, who tell their students that Nazism was a movement of the “Right” and that it was the tool of industrialists and religious extremists. This slant is seldom questioned; however, books written while the Nazis were in power tell a much different story. Contemporary authors — though of different religious beliefs, different partisan and political orientations, and different nationalities — all agreed that Nazis and Bolsheviks were identical twins, not polar opposites.

Consider the nature of Bolshevism and Nazism.

Herbert Hoover wrote in his 1934 The Challenge to Liberty that the systems running Germany and Russia were simply collectivist, whatever names were used. Max Eastman, an early communist who later saw the light and rejected communism, wrote in his 1937 book The End of Socialism in Russia that the Soviet Union was “a totalitarian state not in essence different from that of Hitler and Mussolini.” Eastman later wrote in a subsequent book, Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955): “Stalin’s totalitarian police state is not an approximation to, of something like, or in some respects comparable with Hitler’s. It is the same thing, only more ruthless, more cold-blooded, more astute, more extreme in its economic policies, more explicitly committed to world conquest, and more dangerous to democracy and civilized morals.”