Speech at the Augusteo in Rome, June 22, 1925

By Benito Mussolini

Comrades!

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The Party has found itself faced with accomplished deeds, with completed works; the National Fascist Party is today more granitic and unanimous than ever before.

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It is I who dreamed about the Italian generation of silent workers: it is I who willed it, streamlining my style and ridding it of all decoration, embellishment, superficiality, stripping it of all the seventeenth-century residues, all the vain babble, which was necessary when Italians gathered to discuss which of the immortal principles were rotten and which were still to rot. I am sure that those gentlemen who define themselves as officiating priests of a mysterious divinity called public opinion—and we do not care a damn about about public opinion—and I am sure that enemy journalists and even supporters will find that a Congress that does not speak—a Congress of soldiers, of non-politicians—is a kind of abomination. Fortunately, we are still an army.

I see that none of you have aged. However, I feared that four years had given your bodies that excess fat that accumulates once you pass the sad age of 40. You are still very quick, muscular, extremely agile, truly worthy of embodying the youth of Italy.

And this Congress, despite the passage of time, is even more Fascist than the Congress of four years ago. I am speaking to Fascists, therefore I will speak with precision. The General Secretary of the Party gave the directives, but I want to specify them again. I believe you all agree that we should no longer hand out membership cards ad honorem. We do not want to create the kind of Party that is full of senators and jubilants. From now on, in order to receive a membership card ad honorem, one must either: have written a poem more beautiful than the Divine Comedy, or discovered the sixth continent, or have found the means to cancel our debts with the Anglo-Saxons.

I believe that you all also agree that we despise petty violence, brute violence, unintelligent violence: this we cannot support, but must reject. The black shirt is not a shirt for every day and it is not even a uniform: it is a battle outfit and cannot be worn except by those who have a pure soul in their chest.

You know what I think of violence. For me it is perfectly moral, more moral than compromise or negotiation. But in order for it to have in itself the justification for its high morality, it is necessary that it be always guided by an idea, never by a low calculation or by petty interest. Above all, violence must be avoided against those who are not guilty, but rather are ignorant and fanatical.

Now I will confess something to you which will fill your souls with horror — and I thought about this carefully before saying it: I have never read a single word by Benedetto Croce. This tells you what I think of a Fascism that would be culturized by the German Kappa. Philosophers solve ten problems on paper, but are unable to solve one in real life.

I am not against Fascist intellect, I was in favor of the rise of intellectually combative newspapers and magazines, but I want them to sharpen their wits so as to offer a ruthless criticism of socialism, liberalism and democracy from the Fascist point of view. But if, on the other hand, they must use the ingestion of university culture, which I advise you to quickly assimilate and to expel no less quickly, if they do nothing but harass and over-criticize all that is to be criticized in a movement as complex as the Fascist movement, then I frankly declare to you that I prefer the active squadrist to the impotent professor.

Yesterday I told the Hon. Rossoni that it was necessary to defend work. This is true. But it is not true that I am skeptical of syndicalism. I wanted to see the numbers clearly; I am an old syndicalist. I believe that Fascism must exert much of its energy towards the organization and classification of the working masses, also because someone must bury bury liberalism. Syndicalism is the gravedigger of liberalism!

Syndicalism, when it collects the masses, the frameworks, the selections, and purifies and elevates them, is a creation that is clearly antithetical to the atomistic and molecular conception of classical liberalism. But now, dear comrades, is not the time to discuss the possibilities of syndicalism. As always in Fascism, deeds precede doctrine. It is necessary to implement syndicalism without demagogy, a selective educational syndicalism, a Mazzinian syndicalism, if you will, which, while speaking of rights, never ignores the duties that must necessarily be performed.

I wish to fight a small distortion that surfaces every now and then in the provinces. It is the result of a quip or a joke—when it does not derive from an impulse to intentionally spread distortion—which I fight against very rigidly: I am speaking of anti-Roman distortion. Gentlemen, I'm Roman! Gentlemen, it's time to put an end to municipalism!

In a well-ordered State there is only one capital, and when this capital is Rome, everyone has a duty to feel the ineffable pride of being gregarious in this immense and superb capital. First of all, it is not true that there is no Fascism in Rome, or that Rome is a kind of bilge. In any case the Italians would do it, because Romans are a minority in Rome. But all this, dear gentlemen, is an enemy of that conception of empire which is the basis of our doctrine. Rome is the only city on the shores of the fatal and magical Mediterranean that created the empire.

We have our dead, our most glorious dead, and it is not without emotion that I was leafing through the book dedicated to their memory yesterday. But we must not hold too many ceremonies for our dead. I beg you, after leaving this place, do not visit the Unknown Soldier. We should not give the impression that the Unknown Soldier has become a kind of obligatory trip. Everyone goes there now. Even those who are responsible for the death of so many unknown soldiers, sacrificed in the name of defeatism before, during and after the war.

And now that I've spoken to you, I will speak to the others. We are referred to as editors of the Statute, as tramplers of the Constitution, as tyrants who killed the goddess of liberty. There is a liberal Joshua who projects his eminent posteriorities on the horizon and shouts: move not, O sun! How many of these Joshua's we have among us! And the sun would have stood still on March 4, 1848 when the Statute was granted! Very well, I have a great veneration for all the things that represent a significant episode in the history of the Italian Nation. But the Statute, dear gentlemen, cannot be a hook upon which all Italian generations must hang. Cavour himself, after the promulgation of the Statute said: "the Statute can be modified". The same thesis was later supported by Minghetti, Crispi, Bertani and many others. The Statute was suitable for Piedmont in 1848; that Piedmont has many merits, but the Statute is not one of them. It was not Piedmont who gave the Statute to Italy, it was Italy who gave the Statute to Piedmont.

Note, dear gentlemen, that Piedmont has an extraordinary importance in the history of the Italian Nation, because for many centuries it was the only national State, the only State that made an international policy, the only State that had an army, which participated in all the great wars of Europe, the only State that in 1848 had the courage—a small State of a few million men—to go up against that great colossus that was Austria at the time. But the merit of the Statute does not belong to it. Day by day we must violate it. Woe to us if we brought it out into the open air! The Statute of 1848 did not include colonies. Perhaps, therefore, a colonial governor has no right to be part of the Senate?

Perhaps His Majesty the King has no right to command the Air Force, since the Statute did not include aviation?

And I could cite many more of these anachronistic cases. But then they still want to tell us that institutions cannot become Fascist! Not only can they, but they must.

Before 1848 the institutions were absolutist; after 1848 they adhered to liberalism. So why now—when we are a nation of 40 million inhabitants, when we still have Victory in our hands, when we are all trembling with new life and new forces—why now should we deny the possibility that the institutions adapt to the inextinguishable reality of Fascism? Sure, there are some novelties. Woe to the revolution if it did not bring novelties! The magic of this word would then become meaningless. The novelties are the following: We have tamed parliamentarism! The Chamber no longer gives the nauseating spectacle it had been giving for some time now. It discusses, approves, legislates, because this is precisely the duty of a legislative assembly. And we have brought executive power to the fore, intentionally, because bringing executive power to the fore is really one of the main points of our doctrine; because the executive power is the omnipresent and operating power in the life of the Nation, it is the power that exercises power at every minute, it is the power that in every moment is faced with problems that it must solve; it is, gentlemen, the power that decrees the greatest things that can happen in the history of a people; it is the power that declares war and concludes peace.

This executive power, which has all the armed forces of the State, and which day by day must carry on the complex machinery of State administration, cannot be reduced to a group of mannequins who the assemblies force to dance according to their whims. The executive power is the sovereign power of the Nation, so much so that its supreme head is the King.

And, naturally, all our legislation derives directly from this pre-eminence of the executive power. By approving the law on bureaucracy, the Fascist Government paid the highest tribute to bureaucracy: it raised it to the same level as itself.

Bureaucracy can be considered as a mass of domestic employees, who give a more or less commendable performance and then disappear from the plurality of citizens. Bureaucracy can be considered in the way that some ministers of the old regime considered it: as a collection of accomplices. We instead consider bureaucracy as an integral part of the State. Bureaucracy is the State; it is in the State and in the deep bowels of the State, and it cannot be estranged from its insertion. And if that is the case, and if it is true—and it is true—that the State is represented by the Government, it is evident that wanting the bureaucracy to have the Government's same directives, wanting the bureaucracy to consider itself as an army of collaborators, operating toward the same goal, the maximum praise is then given to the bureaucracy, it is brought to a far higher level than that in which the old Governments held it.

What do we want? Something superb: we want the Italians to choose. Gone are the days of small Italians who held a thousand opinions and none at all. We have carried the struggle over a terrain so clear-cut that by now one must be either with us or against us. Not only that, but that which is called our ferocious totalitarian will, will be pursued with even greater ferocity: indeed it will become the obsession and dominant preoccupation of our activity. We want, in short, to Fascistize the Nation so that tomorrow Italian and Fascist, almost like Italian and Catholic, are one and the same thing. Only by having a great ideal can one speak of revolution, can one employ this magic and tremendous word! We have already voted for the Fascist laws, for the laws of defense: next will come the laws of creation and construction. Our adversaries are still not convinced of the inevitable. They still hope. You understand... They have hope in the Senate.

A few years ago the Italian Senate—which had such noble traditions in the political history of the Nation—had fallen. Those of us who are young understood the importance of this assembly and we have restored its former splendor. The Senate will approve Fascist laws; first of all because the Government holds the majority; secondly because we will defend them; thirdly because the Senate, in its high patriotism, will certainly not want to take responsibility for a conflict, which would lead to a crisis of very serious consequences.

Today Fascism is a Party, it is a Militia, it a Guild. That is not enough. It must become a way of life! There ought to be Italians of Fascism, just as there have been characters who were unmistakably the Italians of the Renaissance and the Italians of Latinity. It is only by creating a way of life—that is, a manner of living—that we can make our mark on the page of history and not merely on the page of current news.

And what is this way of life? Courage, first of all; boldness; love of risk; repugnance for comfortable pleasures and peace-mongering; to be always ready to dare in the individual life as in the collective life; to abhor all that is sedentary; in relationships the utmost frankness, with direct conversations and not anonymous and cowardly clandestine vociferations; to have pride in every hour of the day in being Italian; discipline in work; respect for authority. The New Italian—and I already see a champion of it—the New Italian is De Pinedo!

By bringing into life all which would be a grave error to confine to politics, we will create a new generation through a work of strict and tenacious selection, and in this new generation everyone will have a definite task. Sometimes I smile at the idea of laboratory generations: of creating, in other words, a class of warriors, who are always ready to die; a class of inventors, who pursue the secrets of mystery; a class of judges; a class of great captains of industry; of great explorers; of great governors. It is through this sort of methodical selection that one creates great categories, which in turn creates the Empire.

This dream is superb, but I see that little by little it is becoming a reality. We do not deny anything of the past. We acknowledge that liberalism had its place in the history of Italy, even though it was the liberal governments that did not want Albania, that did not want Tunisia, that did not want to go to Egypt; and even though it was the liberal governments that in the post-war period had only one delirium: that of abandoning the lands we had conquered.

What then is our method? The watchword, dear Fascists, is this: absolute ideal and practical intransigence. The second is: all power to all of Fascism!

Those who have been given the task of leading a revolution by destiny are like generals who have had been given the task of leading a war by destiny. War and revolution are two terms that are almost always coupled: either it is war that determines a revolution or it is the revolution that leads to a war. The strategies of the two movements also resemble each other: just as in a war, so in a revolution there is not always an assault. Sometimes it is necessary to retreat for strategic reasons; sometimes it is necessary to stagnate for a long time in conquered positions; but the goal is the same: Empire! Founding a city, discovering a colony, establishing an empire, are the wonders of the human spirit. An empire is not only territorial: it can be political, economic, spiritual. An empire is not a sudden creation. England took Gibraltar after the peace of Utrecht, took Malta after Waterloo, took Cyprus in 1878. Two centuries passed before England had what are called the fundamental keys of its empire. This must be our aim. We must therefore abandon the entire phraseology and mentality of liberalism. The watchword can only be this: discipline. Discipline from within, in order to attain the granite block of a single national will when facing those from without.

Comrades, four years ago in this very room I said to you—and many of you were present and are now among those who could be called veterans of Fascism—I said: Get rid of me! It was not possible, because, obviously... (Cries of: "No! No!"; Rossoni: "It is not possible!").

Because obviously every great movement must have a representative man, who suffers all the passion of this movement, and carries all the flame. Well, dear comrades, return to your lands, which I love, and cry out in a loud voice and with a clear conscience that the flag of the Fascist revolution is entrusted to my hands, and I am willing to defend it against anyone, even at the cost of my blood!