Flirting with Fascism

Neocon theorist Michael Ledeen draws more from Italian fascism than from the American Right.

On the antiwar Right, it has been customary to attack the warmongering neoconservative clique for its Trotskyite origins. Certainly, the founding father of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, wrote in 1983 that he was “proud” to have been a member of the Fourth International in 1940. Other future leading lights of the neocon movement were also initially Trotskyites, like James Burnham and Max Kampelman—the latter a conscientious objector during the war against Hitler, a status that Evron Kirkpatrick, husband of Jeane, used his influence to obtain for him. But there is at least one neoconservative commentator whose personal political odyssey began with a fascination not with Trotskyism, but instead with another famous political movement that grew up in the early decades of the 20th century: fascism. I refer to Michael Ledeen, leading neocon theoretician, expert on Machiavelli, holder of the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, regular columnist for National Review—and the principal cheerleader today for an extension of the war on terror to include regime change in Iran.

Ledeen has gained notoriety in recent months for the following paragraph in his latest book, The War Against the Terror Masters. In what reads like a prophetic approval of the policy of chaos now being visited on Iraq, Ledeen wrote,

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence—our existence, not our politics—threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.

This is not the first time Ledeen has written eloquently on his love for “the democratic revolution” and “creative destruction.” In 1996, he gave an extended account of his theory of revolution in his book, Freedom Betrayed — the title, one assumes, is a deliberate reference to Trotsky’s Revolution Betrayed. Ledeen explains that “America is a revolutionary force” because the American Revolution is the only revolution in history that has succeeded, the French and Russian revolutions having quickly collapsed into terror. Consequently, “[O]ur revolutionary values are part of our genetic make-up. … We drive the revolution because of what we represent: the most successful experiment in human freedom. … We are an ideological nation, and our most successful leaders are ideologues.” Denouncing Bill Clinton as a “counter-revolutionary” (!), Ledeen is especially eager to make one point: “Of all the myths that cloud our understanding, and therefore paralyze our will and action, the most pernicious is that only the Left has a legitimate claim to the revolutionary tradition.”

Ledeen’s conviction that the Right is as revolutionary as the Left derives from his youthful interest in Italian fascism. In 1975, Ledeen published an interview, in book form, with the Italian historian Renzo de Felice, a man he greatly admires. It caused a great controversy in Italy. Ledeen later made clear that he relished the ire of the left-wing establishment precisely because “De Felice was challenging the conventional wisdom of Italian Marxist historiography, which had always insisted that fascism was a reactionary movement.” What de Felice showed, by contrast, was that Italian fascism was both right-wing and revolutionary. Ledeen had himself argued this very point in his book, Universal Fascism, published in 1972. That work starts with the assertion that it is a mistake to explain the support of fascism by millions of Europeans “solely because they had been hypnotized by the rhetoric of gifted orators and manipulated by skilful propagandists.” “It seems more plausible,” Ledeen argued, “to attempt to explain their enthusiasm by treating them as believers in the rightness of the fascist cause, which had a coherent ideological appeal to a great many people.” For Ledeen, as for the lifelong fascist theoretician and practitioner, Giuseppe Bottai, that appeal lay in the fact that fascism was “the Revolution of the 20th century.”

Ledeen supports de Felice’s distinction between “fascism-movement” and “fascism-regime.” Mussolini’s regime, he says, was “authoritarian and reactionary”; by contrast, within “fascism-movement,” there were many who were animated by “a desire to renew.” These people wanted “something more revolutionary: the old ruling class had to be swept away so that newer, more dynamic elements—capable of effecting fundamental changes—could come to power.” Like his claim that the common ground between Nazism and Italian fascism was “exceedingly minimal”—Ledeen writes, “The fact of the Axis Pact should not be permitted to become the overriding consideration in this analysis”—Ledeen’s careful distinction between fascist “regime” and “movement” makes him a clear apologist for the latter. “While ‘fascism-movement’ was overcome and eventually suppressed by ‘fascism-regime,’” he explains, “fascism nevertheless constituted a political revolution in Italy. For the first time, there was an attempt to mobilize the masses and to involve them in the political life of the country.” Indeed, Ledeen criticizes Mussolini precisely for not being revolutionary enough. “He never had enough confidence in the Italian people to permit them a genuine participation in fascism.” Ledeen therefore concurs with the fascist intellectual, Camillo Pellizi, who argues—in a book Ledeen calls “a moving and fundamental work”—that Mussolini’s was “a failed revolution.” Pellizzi had hoped that “the new era was to be the era of youthful genius and creativity”: for him, Ledeen says, the fascist state was “a generator of energy and creativity.” The purest ideologues of fascism, in other words, wanted something very similar to that which Ledeen himself wants now, namely a “worldwide mass movement” enabling the peoples of the world, “liberated” by American militarism, to participate in the “greatest experiment in human freedom.” Ledeen wrote in 1996, “The people yearn for the real thing—revolution.”

Ledeen was especially interested in the role played by youth in Italian fascism. It was here that he detected the movement’s most exciting revolutionary potential. The young Ledeen wrote that those who exalted the position of youth in the fascist revolution—like those who argued in favor of his beloved “universal fascism”—were committed to exporting Italian fascism to the whole world, an idea in which Mussolini was initially uninterested. When he was later converted to it, Mussolini said that fascism drew on the universalist heritage of Rome, both ancient and Catholic. No doubt Ledeen thinks that the new Rome in Washington has the same universalist mission. He writes that people around Berto Ricci—the editor of the fascist newspaper L’Universale, and a man he calls “brilliant” and “an example of enthusiasm and independence”— “called for the formation of a new empire, an empire based not on military conquest but rather on Italy’s unique genius for civilization. … They intended to develop the traditions of their country and their civilization in such a manner as to make them the basic tenets of a new world order.” Ledeen adds, in a passage that anticipates his later love of creative destruction, “Clearly the act of destruction which would produce the flowering of the new fascist hegemony would sweep away the present generation of Italians, along with the rest.” And Giuseppe Bottai, to whom Ledeen attributes “considerable energy and autonomy,” was notable for his belief that “the infusion of the creative energies of a new generation was essential” for the fascist revolution. Bottai “implored the young … to found a new order arising from the spontaneous activity of their creation.”

One of the greatest exponents of such youthful vitalism was the high priest of fascism, the poet and adventurer Gabriele D’Annunzio, to whom Ledeen devoted an enthusiastic biography in 1977. Years ago, I visited D’Annunzio’s house on the shores of Lake Garda: there is a battleship in the garden and a Brenn gun in the sitting room. D’Annunzio was an eccentric and militaristic Italian Nietzschean who “eulogized rape and acts of savagery” committed by the people he called his spiritual ancestors. The poet was also an early prophet of military intervention and regime change: he invaded the Croatian city of Fiume (now Rijeka) in 1919 and held the city for a year, during which he put into practice his theories of “New Order.” In 1918, moreover, D’Annunzio had dropped propaganda leaflets over Vienna promising to liberate the Austrians from their own government, something Ledeen hails as “a glorious gesture.” D’Annunzio’s watchword was “the liberation of human personality.” “His heroism during the war made it possible,” Ledeen writes, “to bridge the chasm between intellectuals and the masses. … The revolt D’Annunzio led was directed against the old order of Western Europe, and was carried out in the name of youthful creativity and virility.”

As Ledeen shows, the Italian fascists expressed their desire “to tear down the old order” (his words from 2002) in terms that are curiously anticipatory of a famous statement in 2003 by the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. In 1932, Asvero Gravelli also divided Europe into “old” and “new” when he wrote, in Towards the Fascist International, “Either old Europe or young Europe. Fascism is the gravedigger of old Europe. Now the forces of the Fascist International are

You're not extremists, just losers.

Devastatingly BRILLIANT rebuttal. My mind is completely changed now. After such expert argumentation, how can anyone not want to be a cheerleader for the cause of neo-conservatism.

You've really got those damn libertarians on the run now...

"Ledeen supports de Felice’s distinction between “fascism-movement” and “fascism-regime.” Mussolini’s regime, he says, was “authoritarian and reactionary”; by contrast, within “fascism-movement,” there were many who were animated by “a desire to renew.” These people wanted “something more revolutionary: the old ruling class had to be swept away so that newer, more dynamic elements—capable of effecting fundamental changes—could come to power.”

The authors argument is very weak...indeed any movement is seen by the "people" as a catalyst for change. Heck...most of us on the right saw the 2000 election as a way to sweep away the old regime. Does that make us revolutionary? Historically speaking, the author also fails to mention that the fascists and National Socialists were both vehemently anti-capitilist and pro-worker.

The author manages to manipulate semantics on the same grounds the left frequently does...which is why I never use the term conservative or liberal...because those terms do not actually mean what they say.

Lyndon LaRouche says that Ledeen is a "fascist-phile." That ought to calibrate you. I haven't read "Universal Fascism" but I have read quite a number of Ledeen's op eds and his book on terrorism. Based on the content of those works, I truly doubt he advocates fascism. If you have specific quotes from Ledeen's work I could be convinced, but I rather doubt they can be found. This is a hit piece on the neocons and that is about the best that can be said for it.

To look at the content of the "article" in question - for comparisons sake, could Jefferson be called a revolutionary? Undoubtedly. So when Ledeen is quoted “Of all the myths that cloud our understanding, and therefore paralyze our will and action, the most pernicious is that only the Left has a legitimate claim to the revolutionary tradition.” I certainly agree with that statement and don't think it a bad thing. Life, liberty and the persuit of happiness ARE revolutionary to dictators, statists theocrats.

Larouche? How would anyone know what he says other than his cultist followers? Isn't he like 90 anyway? If a communist called Hitler evil he wasn't wrong. Leeden scares me. There seems to be nothing about him that can be called conservative unless supporting "destructive" global wars and unquestioning support of Israel are your definitions of "conservative" (and they seem to be among a lot of freepers.)

My point is that this article is a hit piece, not that LaRouche has anything to add to the discussion. We can and should have a long and productive debate about policy issues. Having read Ledeen's book I don't consider him scary. Like you I am not one of those conservatives who consider Israel to be the 51st state. I do consider them a democracy (if a socialist one) in a sea of hostile dictatorships. With respect to the isolationism proposed by many paleocon Buchananistas it seems clear to me that we should not allow muslim fundamentalists (or anyone else) to get the idea that they can kill Americans and get away with it. Better to be feared than loved in this sad old world of ours.

If you misinterpret my "calibration" of LaRouche as positive, don't. I think he is a nut job. Back to the topic at hand, what specific policy proposals is Ledeen making that you don't like? What I have read recently is that he supports covert action against the mullocracy in Iran. As far as I am concerned they committed an act of war by occupying our embassy. Give 'em hell, I say.

Obviously this is a hit piece, but they are damning him with his own academic record to (see the first line) demonstrate that his intellectual history does not put him square as a man of the American right.

That you argue that this is a hit piece, and then try to obfuscate the debate that much more by bringing Larouche into really destroys any credibility you may have had. You seem to rationalize this tactic, which you seem to acknowledge is wrong, by saying you disagree with Buchanan's policies.

So basically, you are defending Ledeen by slamming his critics as loons, kooks and Marxists rather than address whether Ledeen's intellectual history makes him a member of the American Right.

Well- let's debate policy. I don't think our security is served very well by men who write:

That is just plain scary. It makes the "Best and Brightest" of Kennedy look like Taft isolationists.

You saying that my credibility is destroyed is an unsuported assertion. And not true. With respect to academic record, as I have said, I have not read the book in question. What I do note is that the article lacks, to use the vernacular, "the smoking gun." Ledeen's arguments are summarized (which summarization may or may not actually conform to the substance of the text in question), and the significant quotes given are benign. That Ledeen studied fascism (academically) is quite different than proving that he advocates it. I think the issue at hand here is really, does American conservatism persue an isolationist path or should we take an active role in world affairs? Some would call the active role an "empire." The paleos sure do, at every opportunity.

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