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Dom, excuse me, but.........now I have to do something that makes my red heart of a communist weep. I will have - for the first time in my life - do something that a few years ago would have been inconceivable for me. I have to spend I few words to clarify all the misunderstanding of what Fascism has been for pre-war Italy. Dom, Mussolini started his career of a politician as a socialist. He advocated the change of Italian society towards modernism and wished to improve the Nation's self image. He was not (and in saying this, my very skin will spontaneously crack and bleed as under flagellation) ...he was not completely stupid. He posed a great emphasis on the contribution of all Italian men and women into the accomplishment of such an (absolutely) new State. He also advocated the total participation of what he used to call the Italian female comrades to the creation of this new order of things. The girls were colled "The young daughters of the female wolf". All girld had an uniform made of a very short black skirt and a little white top, and were solicited to practise sports - since the ideal model was the physical beauty and health of the antique Greeks. My mother used to tell me how happy girkls were at the time, when relieved of all tabus around them being women. FDuring pre-fascist Italy, women were supposed to play an important part in society development. And not only as mothers, but as workers. Of course , Mussolini was not the original author of these theories, which came almost totally from the Italian Futurist Artist and art rhetorician, FILIPPO TOMMASO MARINETTI, the sole promoter of what became lately the European and Italian Futurism (see Marinetti's manifesto) with his cult for the "Macchina" , the velocity, the modernity, the robustness of body and mind. At the time, Marinetti was hoping that the proletariat would become the new class of heros: and indeed, socialist pre-fascist Italy was PROFUNDELY "populist" in spirit and aims. Mussolini almost totally embraced Marinetti's aesthetics. He himself was merely resorting to these extremely modern theory (technology, in the first place) to let the country develop. (See the art of the Futurist artists Balla and Depero). Everything seemd fine until the March on Rome and the unexpected dictatorship. Say, after the march on Rome (the Coup d'Etat) which artists as Pirandello would totally support, to get rid of the King and of the Monarchy. This is when Fascism came to life. During the initial years of Fascism (from Fasci= Bunch: the icon showing a bunch of wheat, gathered together) and before the outbreak of the war, Italy was in fact experiencing a relatively happy period of national wealth. One should be aware of the fact that Mussolini supported greatly in all possible ways the proletariat (he needed probably to instill a sense of participation in young Italians to, lately, send them to war: silly Mussolini: he did not understand that his conationals were the less motivated of all soldiers in the world and that they could nor care less about restoring the lost Roman Empire!!!! So , he rightly lost the war, the tragic puppet. I am sure that what you are describing, in terms of sadistic mentality, cannot be applied to the pre-war Mussolini. Please, read Ezra Pounds' published letters to solicit Mussolini to get rid of Italian Jews. Noe here I am, with my sould coevred with sores for having spent a word in favour of the way Mussolini treated women. I had to learn to acknowledge the existence of possible qualities in my worst enemies . For all Mussolini's mistakes and pathetic/dangerous/disastrous choices, along with his growing unbearable fanatism and self-aggrandize, Mussolini was hung. Fair enough! But one could also see him as a tragically failed socialist. Erminia ----- Original Message ----- From: domfox <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 4:11 PM Subject: Re: re de sade et al... and Fyodor > > > - Therefore , you are against all "ideologies". > > Yup. See Stavrakakis, I., _Lacan and the Political_, for the account of > "phantasmatic politics" I am drawing on here. > > > - Therefore you should regard as dull also Ted Hughes, among the poets > of > > the > > "natural", > > dislike Rousseau and of course greatly dislike Heidegger. But, do you > > really??? I wonder. > > I certainly dislike Rousseau. Heidegger is more complicated, although more > obviously implicated in bad politics. And Hughes can be pretty Sadeian, > boringly so at times. Hill has called his version of the Oresteia > "Neronian"... > > > But it's a bait-and-switch operation: you > > > think you're getting a healthy dose of iconoclasm, when in fact what you > > end > > > up with is a fascist iconography. > > > > - fascism has become a too omnicomprehensive term to be use in a > meaningful > > way in this context. > > Very well: an iconography whose particular allure is the sexual allure of > violence and domination, as it is rather superbly described in Auden's _The > Orators_. By "fascist" I therefore mean to refer to a sexual identity: the > love of power, the erotic glorification of violence, and the belief that > succumbing to the allure of these things makes one more sexually > sophisticated, forthright and honest. Not all fascisms are sadisms, it must > be said; although Mussolini said that boxing is a supremely fascist sport, > and Hitler is alleged to have had a penchant for shitting on his > girlfriends, there have also been fastidious fascists who were not > especially stirred by the exercise of brute force. So perhaps there is more > to fascism as a political and historical phenomenon than the particular > forms of Sadeian depravity I'm thinking of. Nor do I believe that the > fascists' rise to power was an insurrection of perverts, or that there are > people who are innately fascistic because they are innately sexually > depraved. But it does seem fairly clear to me that fascism has a sexual > allure about it: that it is depraving, and that it appeals to a depraved > part of ourselves. I don't think an adequate account of fascism can be given > without taking into account its phantasmatic dimension, its libidinal > economy if you like. > > > Prostitution, in terms of exploitation of unwelthy prol;etarian women is > as > > much a problem now as it was then. > > True... > > - Dom > > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%