By Benito Mussolini
I asked myself this question in the second issue of Gerarchia, as if to signify the program of my magazine: "Which way is the world going? The world of ideas, the economic world, the political world?" And I responded: "The world is moving toward the right". When I say 'right', I mean anti-socialist and anti-democracy.
Four months later, after the Conference of Genoa and while the Hague was in a panic, this very strong orientation of European society toward the right began to convince even those writers who previously thought the world would move toward the left, i.e. toward an extreme democratic and socialist world.
We realized this shift before anyone else, which caused us to revise the historical and theoretical positions of Fascism from top to bottom. This is why Fascism has been gradually stripped of those primitive trappings which could make it seem like a left or semi-left movement.
To suggest that we should return to our origins, i.e. return to the program of 1919, whose partial realization, moreover, has already yielded ash and poisonous fruit (financial demagogy forced us into the current situation), is to demonstrate infantilism or senility. Fascism is and must be the organized expression of this tendency of the contemporary spirit, of this classic renewal of life against all theories and dispersed races, of this need which one might call the architecture of order, discipline, hierarchy, clarity, strength and quality, in opposition to all the chaotic advances, all the uncertain doctrines and all the crazy and stupid fears that poisons those people who are always afraid of not having sufficiently "advanced" ideas. If perhaps there is no need to take back everything that was given, it certainly is time to put a full stop to the competition of various demagogies, unless you want to see Western civilization — the most glorious civilization of human history — be completely destroyed.
That the world is moving towards the right is admitted by a writer of democratic origins, namely Virgilio Gayda. He sent these considerations to the newspaper Il Messaggero from the Hague:
"There is a general tendency. Movements everywhere are moving towards a tightening of protectionism, towards a closed economy, a clear rejection of any Communist principle, almost an exaltation of the individualist principle in thought and action, as a reaction to the bloody experience happening in Russia. Everywhere there is a profound crisis of extremist populist parties, an obvious gravitation of the masses towards conservatism. This is also the clear spirit of the Hague Conference. From Genoa to the Hague not even a full month has passed, and yet the general spirit of these countries seems to have transformed almost as if entire years have gone by. The reaction against Communism, its doctrine and its practice, the conservative preoccupation with ones own wealth and ones own regime, are obvious here in every manifestation of the Conference. France and Belgium are no longer isolated in their intransigence as they seemed to be a couple weeks ago at Genoa. England has now joined them. All those neutral countries that are now taking shape and power in European politics are for resistance, in defense of what they call the healthy European regime. One can say that Italy remains the most extremist country after Russia, and this explains the initial general mistrust with which Italy's delegation was greeted here.
Now, all this European development toward the right is a contemporary reality. This will be equally felt in Italy, if it does not want to isolate itself while fighting for European collaboration. More so than any other country it feels the national necessity. We must fully understand that European economic and financial cooperation first of all presupposes today a collaboration of regimes. The truth can be grateful or not: but this is it. And it explains the current impossibility of an agreement between Russia and Europe, which would like to look to The Hague, as it is one of the strongest reasons of isolation in which Italy, with all its impulses and all its national virtues, is still held in Europe."These statements by Gayda are honest and meaningful. For this same reason Francesco Coppola wrote these following words in his newspaper L'Idea Nazionale:
"...this is the supreme discovery and therefore the supreme liberation: the ex-belligerent countries and ex-neutral countries, governments and peoples, ruling classes and working masses, the whole of Europe, indeed the entire world except Russia (and perhaps even Russia) are irresistibly and unanimously...moving towards the right, both economically and politically, towards conservatism, towards "reaction". In other words, rapidly returning to certain immutable laws of history and civilization after a brief period of chaos."Well then, while Europe and the world moves towards the right, in Italy there are melancholic puppets operating in the theater of parliament planning leftist solutions. What imbeciles! The game would be useless and dull, and the Populars — the ugly disciples of Don Sturzo — will not admit their active and passive complicity with the so-called left. The Popular Party tries to compete with the Socialists, and this is why they tend towards the left. Within Sturzo's party there is even a tendency towards a sort of Black Communism led by Guido Miglioli and other comical apostles of his stature.
Now is the time for Italy to move towards the right. Now is the time to eliminate the political left. Experience is a teacher. ... Regardless of what people may say, the fact is that all the fresh, raging and most current forces of national society lean towards the right. It is the voice of a Europe which does not want to perish. Needless to say, the right does not necessarily mean stagnation or perpetual conservation, but means wisdom of reality and historical possibility. Thus measured, therefore, critical faculty and equilibrium and inexorable opposition will completely vanish.
