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Title: Why Fascism Won
Author: Errico Malatesta
Date: 1923
Language: en
Topics: fascism, antifascism, anti-fascism
Source: Translated on 2020 by João Black from Errico Malatesta, “Il Buon Senso della Rivoluzione,” ed. Giampietro N. Berti: https://www.eleuthera.it/files/materiali/Malatesta_Il_Buon_senso_della_rivoluzione.pdf
Notes: Originally published as “Perché il fascismo vinse” in Libero Accordo, August 28th 1923.

Errico Malatesta

Why Fascism Won

Material force can prevail over moral force. It can even destroy the

most refined civilization, if it doesn’t know how to defend itself with

appropriate means against the offensive returns of barbarism.

Any ferocious beast can rip a gentleman to shreds, even if he is a

genius, a Galileo or a Leonardo, if he is naive enough to believe that

he can curb the beast by showing it a work of art or announcing a

scientific discovery.

But brutality hardly triumphs, and in all cases its successes have never

been general and lasting, when it fails to achieve a certain moral

consensus, when civilized men recognize it for what it is and, even if

powerless to eradicate it, move away from it as a dirty and repugnant

thing.

Fascism, which summarizes in itself all the reaction and calls back to

life all the dormant atavistic ferocity, has won because it has had the

financial support of the fat bourgeoisie and the material aid of the

various governments who wanted to use it against the pressing

proletarian threat; it won because it found against itself a tired mass,

disappointed and made imbellic by a fifty-year-old parliamentary

propaganda; but above all it won because its violence and crimes,

although provoking hatred and spirit of revenge in the offended, have

not aroused that general reproach, that indignation, that moral horror

that seemed to us should arise spontaneously in every gentle soul.

And unfortunately there will be no material fight back if there is no

moral revolt first.

Let’s say it frankly, no matter how painful it is to see. There are also

fascists outside the Fascist party; there are some in all classes and

parties: that is, there are people everywhere who, although not

fascists, even anti-fascists, have a fascist soul, have the same desire

of abuse that distinguishes the fascists.

We happen, for example, to meet men who call and believe themselves

revolutionaries, and perhaps anarchists, who in order to resolve any

question affirm with a proud frown that they will act fascistically,

without knowing, or knowing too well, that this means attacking, without

concern for justice, when one is sure of not being in danger, or because

one is much stronger, or because one is armed against a defenseless

person, or because one counts on many against only one, or because one

has the protection of the public force, or because one knows that the

victim is averse to denunciation — in short, it means acting as a

camorrista and a policeman. Unfortunately it is true: one can act and

often one acts fascistically without having to join the fascists; and it

is certainly not those who act or propose to act in this way that can

cause the moral revolt, the sense of disgust that will kill fascism.

And don’t we see the men of the Confederazione [Confederation],

D’Aragonese, Baldesi, Colombino, etc., licking the feet of the fascist

rulers, and then continuing to be considered, even by political

opponents, as gentlemen and noblemen?

These considerations, which we have made many times, came to our mind

when reading an article in “L’Etruria Nuova” [The New Entruria] from

Grosseto, which we were amazed to see complacently reproduced by “La

Voce Repubblicana” [The Republican Voice] of August 22. It is an article

by “its valiant director,” the good Giuseppe Benci, the dean of

republicans of the strong Maremma (just to use the words of the “Voce”

[Voice]), which seemed to us a document of moral baseness, which

explains why the fascists were able to do in Maremma what they did.

The brigand exploits of the fascists in the unfortunate Maremma are

known. There, more than anywhere else, they vented their evil passions.

From the brutal murder to the bloody canings, from the fires and

devastations to the petty tyrannies, the small harassments that

humiliate, the insults that offend the sense of human dignity, they have

committed everything without knowing limits, without respecting any of

those feelings that, as well as being a condition of all civilized life,

are the very basis of humanity inasmuch as it is distinct from the

lowest bestiality.

And that proud republican from Maremma speaks to them in a humble tone

and treats them as “people of faith,” and begs for their tolerance and

almost their friendship for the republicans, citing the patriotic merits

of the republicans themselves.

He “admits that the government (the fascist government) has the right to

guarantee the free development of its action” and suggests that when the

Republicans come to power they will do more or less the same thing. And

he protests that “no one will be able to admit that from here (from

Grosseto) the republican party has attempted by any act to obstruct the

experience of the dominant party” and boasts about “not having hindered

the action of the government at all, even withdrawing from the electoral

struggles to wait for the experiment to be accomplished.” That is, to

wait for the accomplishment of the experiment of domination over the

entire Italy by those people who have tormented his Maremma.

If the state of mind of that Mr. Benci corresponded to the state of mind

of republicans and the fate of the fascist government were to depend on

them, Mussolini would be right when he says he will remain in power for

thirty years. They could even remain for three hundred.