Monday, October 16, 2017

For the record: We have always been at war with D'Souza

Just sayin. Who knows if he does it on purpose? Via KnightErrant at Kos.


That's not correct; it was in 1914 that he was thrown out of the Partito Socialista Italiano, of which he was at 31 one of Italy's most prominent members, after starting a newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, supporting Italian participation on the Allied side in the Great War, which the party regarded (with some justice) as a disgusting and immoral imperialist-capitalist adventure on both poxed sides, and called for strict neutrality. That was in November, and by December he was denouncing "orthodox" socialism and its focus on class struggle and egalitarianism in favor of a patriotism of language and culture and race:

The nation has not disappeared. We used to believe that the concept was totally without substance. Instead we see the nation arise as a palpitating reality before us! ... Class cannot destroy the nation. Class reveals itself as a collection of interests—but the nation is a history of sentiments, traditions, language, culture, and race. Class can become an integral part of the nation, but the one cannot eclipse the other.
The class struggle is a vain formula, without effect and consequence wherever one finds a people that has not integrated itself into its proper linguistic and racial confines—where the national problem has not been definitely resolved. In such circumstances the class movement finds itself impaired by an inauspicious historic climate.
And an idea that the "strong" of whatever class should be the ones to lead society forward, inspired by Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals with its "blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and lords", which he had already elaborated in a 1908 essay on "La filosofia della forza", the "philosophy of strength", against the "mediocre" in favor of "hard men beyond good and evil", with its concomitant anti-Semitism ("the inversion of moral values was the chief work of the Hebrew people"), etc., etc. Long before he left the socialist party Mussolini had become a man of the Right in the most important sense, condemning ideas of social justice and worshiping inequality and violence. Which the Fascist Party applied against working people and egalitarians. You need to look at the attached texts to understand that this was systematic terror.

Pastor Niemöller, to his credit, never tried to hide it: "First they came for the" socialists and trade unionists, whether it was Hitler or Franco, Mussolini or Suharto, that was where the methodical and remorseless violence always began.

It didn't occur to me that D'Souza could be lying about Lenin—I knew many socialists I admire a lot more than I do Lenin had been shamefully fooled by the Duce (like H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw)—but I did think I should check what exactly Lenin said, and was startled to find that Lenin had an extremely clear sense of the reactionary character of Italian warmongering inside the Socialist Party in the war period and of the dangerous character of fascism afterwards.




Fanboys came out to defend the master...



He finally got back to me on the issue of fascists' nearly successful to destroy socialism and unionism root and branch, with the worst state terror the Mussolini regime ever released, dismissing it as "rival clashes", but I didn't let it distract me:

Haven't heard back. I think we won another round.
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