Speech at the Palazzo Vidoni in Rome, April 7, 1926

By Benito Mussolini

[...]

The Directorate is what one might call the Ministry of the Party. The Directorate is the soul of the Party, it is the element that directs, controls and coordinates the Party. Its function is therefore very important. Now, not only must we keep the Party in full working order, but this efficiency must be our daily effort. Anyone who thinks that the Fascist Revolution can now proceed without the Party is either deluded or suicidal.

The precise tasks of the Party were already clearly outlined by the Grand Council's Order of the Day. The Party is the political and spiritual reserve of the Regime, while the Guilds are the economic reserve and the Militia is the military safeguard. The Party must fascistize the Nation from top to bottom and from bottom to top. The Party must give the Nation and all its institutions a Fascist ruling class.

[...]

The transition from the old to the new Directorate must not be dramatized. I am an enemy of drama, even those that concern me. Thus everything that affects the life of the Party must be considered a fact and must be considered with that calm, cold blood, with that clear vision of events which must distinguish the Fascist mentality. After all, there is nothing new. There may be a change of temperament, and temperaments are personal matters; but there is nothing new as regards the general lines of the Party's activity. That is to say, we will continue to be intransigent. Intransigent, because one cannot help but be intransigent when one is a Fascist; because one cannot help but be intransigent against all the remnants of the old regime; because above all one cannot help but be intransigent against the democratic, Masonic, demagogic and plutocratic forces that try to encircle the Party.

[...]

Discipline! It must be understood: discipline cannot be merely a formal thing, it must be substantial. That is, one cannot be disciplined only when it is easy or convenient, because that is not true discipline. We must be disciplined especially when the discipline is sacrifice and renunciation. That is true discipline, Fascist discipline.

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We must remove from the Party those who cannot live without sowing discord, those who constantly quarrel and who create drama around themselves. We are numerous enough and the Regime is strong enough that we can completely rid ourselves of this human waste. [...] We must have a rigid discipline that manifests itself from top to bottom and from bottom to top, a substantial discipline which is deeply felt and profoundly moral. The Party must therefore free itself from all provincialism and uncertainties. Otherwise there will be a chronic state of chaos... Just as we have morally banished our adversaries, so from now on we will banish any unruly Fascist who gives Fascism an unworthy name.

Comrades, there is another point that needs to be clarified in very plain terms. The Government is the highest expression of the Regime. Consequently all that is connected with the Government is Fascist. Fascists must be doubly disciplined as Fascists and as citizens. It is wrong to conceive the grotesque and absurd anachronism that the Fascist State is an authority which one can disregard, thus falling into the foolish and anarchistic demagogy which we have cauterized with fire and sword.

The Fascist State is the Fascist Government, and the head of the Fascist Government is the head of the revolution.

We have very serious aims, aims by which our moral validity will be measured. We have buried the old demo-liberal State. We live in a Fascist State. We are a State that controls all the forces at work within the nation. We control the political forces, the moral forces, the economic forces. We are therefore in a full Corporative Fascist State. The Fascist aim is a serious one. We have raised a powerful edifice. The Party has assumed an enormous historic responsibility.

[...]

We have won our battle here in Italy. We can truly boast that the old political parties have been routed and that the old order is a thing of the past. But our battle is yet to be won abroad, where the fight has become more fierce for many reasons. We represent a new principle in the world. We represent the exact antithesis of the whole order of democracy, plutocracy, and Freemasonry, of all the immortal principles of 1789.

The great historian Sismondi said that peoples who at a given moment in their history seize the political initiative keep that initiative for two centuries. The French people, who seized the initiative in 1789, kept it for 150 years. Fascist Italy today has done what France did a century and a half ago. Italy has taken and will hold the initiative. She speaks with a new voice in the world.

Therefore, we must not be surprised that all the upholders of the immortal principles of unbrotherly fraternity, unequal equality, and tyrannical freedom are united against us. We have arrived at a stage in which the fight is becoming fierce and decisive. To scatter the remnants of the old parties in Italy has been a thankless task, but to uphold a new principle in the world and to make it triumph is an achievement which will blazon the name of a people and a revolution on the scroll of history.

I am not an optimist by nature. I do not like those men who, imitating Pangloss, always think that all is well. I foresee a difficult period, but this, instead of depressing us, ought to make us proud. It is inevitable, it is most superb that each revolution that triumphs has against it the entire old world. We shall break any possible encirclement with a triple action: by keeping intact our moral unity and that of the Italian people, and by taking as our basis the corporative system in such a way that no energy of Italian labour and production shall be lost. Moreover, if necessary, we will break also the political encirclement, because Italy exists and demands the full right to exist in the world.

Tomorrow on board the Cavour I will again speak briefly to you. I gave orders that the provincial Fascist hierarchs be greeted on arrival by cannon fire. I warn you that when the cannon is fired it is truly the thundering voice of the Fatherland. I will deliver a small supplement to this speech. Afterwards you will return to your provinces with the unshakable conviction that we are marching forward and that we shall push forward at any cost, with the determination to extirpate quarrels and all discords, with the conviction that all that happens around me leaves me indifferent. It is not by accident that I have chosen as the motto of my life: 'Live Dangerously', and I declare to you as an old soldier: If I advance follow me, if I retreat kill me, if I die avenge me.