/lit/ - Literature

>>16373929
The way people (Marxists) talk about fascism (the Italian political movement) like it's some kind of ahistorical phenomenon with no connection to a particular time, place, or intellectual culture is obviously nonsense, but I'm still not convinced that any fascist or fascist-adjacent intellectual had more influence on the movement than Mussolini himself.
I read the A. James Gregor book on fascist intellectuals people are always recommending on here, and the biggest connection he provides between the various thinkers mentioned in the book is that they influenced Mussolini. Few of them had direct control over the policies of the Italian government while the fascist party was in power, and those that did eventually got replaced when their ideas stopped aligning with the goals of the government.
I can see why it's productive to cite guys like Gentile and Panunzio because they debunk so many popular myths about fascism, but in the end it still seems to me that the Grand Council of Fascism and Mussolini himself were the ones really responsible for developing fascist doctrine. Putting too much emphasis on the intellectuals leads to strange conclusions such as stating fascism itself didn't fully mature until the creation of the Italian Social Republic, when Mussolini had no real power and the intellectuals were free to come up with political schemes that had no real connection to reality.

>>16374029
>I think the main problem is that Fascism (being the policy of the Italian party), or fascism (being the pejorative of the anti-fascists) and fascism of philosophical/political theory are all entirely different things.
That's great way of summing up the problem.