Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy

5 Fascism as Discursive Regime

5 / Fascism as Discursive Regime Fascism, Rhetoric, Ideology In the most important of several speeches given on the eve of the March on Rome, the 1922 "Discorso di Udine," Benito Mussolini paints the relation between fascism and rhetoric as antagonistic: Con il discorso che intendo pronunciare innanzi a voi, io faccio una ec­ cezione alia regola che mi sono imposta; quella, cioe, di limitare al minimo possibile le manifestazioni della mia eloquenza. Oh, se fosse possibile strango­ larla, come consigliava un poeta, 1'eloquenza verbosa, prolissa, inconcludente, democratica, che ci ha deviate per cosi lungo tempo! Io sono quindi sicuro, od almeno mi lusingo di avere questa speranza, che voi non vi attenderete da me un discorso che non sia squisitamente fascista, cioe scheletrico, aspro, schietto e duro.1 [The speech that I intend to make today is going to be an exception to the rule that I have imposed upon myself of limiting the manifestations of my eloquence, as far as I can. Oh! if it were only possible to do as the poets advise and strangle the verbose, prolix, inconclusive, democratic oratory that has side­tracked us for so long! I am certain, or at any rate I flatter myself in hoping, that you do not expect anything from me in a speech that is not eminently fascist, that is to say straightforward, hard, bare facts.] Mussolini's disavowal of rhetoric is ambivalent at best. On the one hand, he claims that his speech must be antirhetorical, just as fascism is antirhetorical, nothing but the hard, bare facts. On the other, he admits both that this speech is an exception to his self­imposed rule limiting his speeches, and 114 Fascism as Discursive Regime / 115 therefore is guilty of the rhetorical excess banned by that rule, and that his personal rule is in any case impossible to enforce since it is not possible — it is contrary to the facts, given over to the optative subjunctive — to "do as the poets advise." It is as though the vain orator could only halfheartedly assume an antirhetorical stance; indeed, in the midst of his disavowal, he is unable to resist "flattering himself" and hence slides momentarily in the direction of epideictic. Yet Mussolini's antirhetorical stance is nevertheless philosophically necessary and becomes one of the most basic commonplaces of fascist discourse. If fascism presents itself as antirhetorical, antifascism occupies the posi­ tion that is, predictably, precisely the opposite (which is to say, the same); antifascist discourse claims for itself the neutrality of a "nonrhetorical" language and finds not only fascist discourse but fascism itself to be irre­ deemably rhetorical or, even worse, "degenerated rhetoric," as Umberto Eco puts it.3 Fascist and antifascist discourse join together in opposing their own nonrhetorical truth to the rhetorical lies of the other. While on the one hand this shared assumption is unremarkable, each claim for truth dis­ owning rhetorical bombast and sharing similar assumptions about language, on the other it has had remarkable consequences in studies of fascism. The question of the relation between rhetoric and fascism has been an­ swered in a way that resembles, indeed comes to be implicated in, the answer given to the question of the relation between fascism and ideology: fascism has no ideology, the argument goes, but is instead sheer "rheto­ ric"— by which is meant bombastic, insincere speech that can be opposed to some nonrhetorical (antifascist) use of language. Onto this opposition is superimposed another opposition: rhetoric is identified with an irrational use of language, while the (antifascist) "nonrhetorical" use of language is dubbed a "linguaggio razionale" [rational language].4 This is, of course, a strategic account whose reasoning goes as follows: there were no ideas, and hence no appeal to rational faculties, in fascism; there was only rhetoric, and behind that rhetoric, violence first illegal and then of the state. Sup­ porters of fascism and, ultimately, reason itself (as well as the possibility of "nonrhetorical, rational" language) are thereby saved from the taint of complicity, for reason and rational belief had, according to this account, no part in fascism. This view opens the •way to the various theories of bedaz­ zlement according to which the supporters of fascism were hypnotized and spell­bound by the leaders' "rhetoric" and hence oblivious to the violence done to them and to reason.5 Its strategic value is clear: if fascist ideology is irrational, the "institutionalized unconscious," asJulia Kristeva puts it, or [18.223.172.184] Project MUSE (2024-04...