Fascism is the name of an ancient way of keeping a group of people together under a united goal. Dating back to the Roman Empire, political leaders like Julius Caesar used fascism as a way of maintaining a consensus between the individuals in his land, as well as establishing the kind of self-sacrificing heroism that has always defined the basis for Indo-European culture. Fascism puts focus on the whole, which includes people, culture, religion and nature.

It is therefore totally opposed to liberalism, which claims that the freedom of the individual is of highest importance. It can be said that the essence of fascism is that of an integralist tradition: each nation is seen as an organic entity, meaning that there are no internal conflicts between man and nature, nor man and state. In liberal democracies, there is a constant conflict between the state and the individual. Left wants to increase the power of the state, while the Right wants to do the opposite. Fascism solves this by simply equating the state with the people: what the state wants, the people want, and vice versa.

Thus fascism is a way of finding a balance between the needs of different individuals and having them work towards shared goals. This will always remain as the stable foundation to healthy civilizations. As soon as a house needs to be built it's absolutely necessary to let all parts involved focus on their task and work together in order to fulfil each other with their respective specialization. Opposed to the democratic view on work, where each individual is assumed to be able to control and handle any given task, fascism claims the opposite: only those who are in accordance with the natural abilities of a specific task may fulfil them with the greatest perfection in art. Anyone can build a fairly functioning place to stay, but how many have the inherent skills to make it last for several years? It's thus not about "who can do what", but merely "who can do it best". As seen from a democratic point of view, this is promotion of "inequality". Fascism sees it as natural and is not bound to moral obligations: each individual has a unique ability and should thus work towards improving it.

Put into a pragmatic context, this form of political specialization is solved through the traditional system of guilds, or "corporativism", as it is also called. This means that all carpenters will unite under a union for carpenters, all leaders will unite under a union of leaders etc. The benefits of this are many, but practically it is a fully mature way of combining cheap and effective education with an economic stability for all parts involved. It develops each respective craft and creates a sense of pride in one's own ability and art. The fascist form of corporativism is therefore a close relative to the caste society, which focuses on individual specialization and denies the democratic-capitalist way of valuing people according to money. Within fascism, the natural ability of the individual is not seen as an economic question, but a purely pragmatic one, leaving space for individual improvement and development.

It must therefore be said that fascism is totally against the political system of socialism, which sees all individuals as equal in ability, but most importantly, divides the people up into economic groups called "classes", where the working class is seen as suppressed by the bourgeois class. Fascism wants to erase this clash and unite the people under the things that ultimately bind them together: history, culture and religious belief. In relation to this we can thus address another common misconception about fascism: it is not simply a political stance, but an overtly spiritual and transcendentalist outlook on life:

"Thus many of the practical expressions of Fascism such as party organization, system of education, and discipline can only be understood when considered in relation to its general attitude toward life. A spiritual attitude. Fascism sees in the world not only those superficial, material aspects in which man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self-centred, subject to natural law, which instinctively urges him toward a life of selfish momentary pleasure; it sees not only the individual but the nation and the country; individuals and generations bound together by a moral law, with common traditions and a mission which suppressing the instinct for life closed in a brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on duty, a life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self-sacrifice, the renunciation of self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists." ¹

From above we can draw the fair conclusion that fascism is seeking to place man before competition and natural selection, as it strives towards a society in accordance and symbiosis with the laws of nature:

"Fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace. It therefore discards pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciation in contradistinction to self-sacrifice. War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it. All other tests are substitutes which never place a man face to face with himself before the alternative of life or death." ²

From this arises the need to transcend material boundaries, as manifested in the physical body and its surrounding environment. Fascism is essentially a will to conquest, a will to go beyond the possibilities of one's own will and character, go beyond oneself and become part of something greater and stronger. This is why pacifistic political systems like democracy often regard fascism as an ideology glorifying war: fascism does not revolve around material happiness, but believes that life as a whole only becomes meaningful and worth living, after it has entered a new level of human existence where it becomes part of the organic system of our natural world.

"Fascism denies the materialistic conception of happiness as a possibility, and abandons it to the economists of the mid-eighteenth century. This means that Fascism denies the equation: well-being = happiness, which sees in men mere animals, content when they can feed and fatten, thus reducing them to a vegetative existence pure and simple." ³

The most noticeable difference between liberal democracy and a fascist society, is however the question of leadership. Democracy is built around the assumption that numerical votes automatically can decide which idea is the one worth striving towards. Fascism claims the opposite: no numerical votes or principle of the majority can find the best solution to our problems. Only by recognizing the inherent variation in ability among individuals, including leadership, may we find a way of controlling and managing the issues of the state and its different organs. Therefore, all traditional fascist societies have been ruled by political leaders and not by the people, although the general goals and ideals of both parties remain the same. Note that this is not an actual hierarchy, as it is often presented from a democratic point of view: a leader is just as worthy and useful for society as a whole as a carpenter or an engineer. Corporativism wants each individual to see his or her own specific place in the organic order as a whole. Only through this view can we at last lay the clashes between classes aside and start working for common goals again.

There is also a popular misunderstanding regarding the individual freedom within fascist societies. It is claimed that democracy offers the people freedom of speech in expression, while fascist societies deny them this “human right”. Of course this is not the case. No political regime allows the individual to fully express what he or she wishes to say. No political state allows any opinion to be voiced. Democratic states deny anti-democratic opinions, including fascism, in order to maintain the notion of democracy. Fascism does not concern itself with freedom of speech, as it focuses on the unity of people. Democracy is inherently founded upon individualism, whose main priority is for each individual to appear with a "unique" opinion and lifestyle of choice. Fascism regards an outlook agreed upon by the people as most important in any political or cultural context. It is thus not a question of "individual freedom", but merely the "freedom" of the nation and its people as a whole.

While many seem to regard fascism as a philosophy inherently founded upon absolutism, the truth is another. Fascism is not absolutistic, neither in its ideals nor in its basic political foundation. While the fascist leader from a democratic point of view may appear as an absolute God, the truth is that the leader is not a moral constant but a man specialized in his profession. A leader more fit for the task can at any time replace him. His orders and decisions are based, not on egoism or unearthly laws, but on simple and practical solutions to day-to-day problems that any nation has to face, regardless of political stance. Fascism is actually a form of futuristic movement, both in political and spiritual account:

"We do not believe in a single solution, be it economical, political or moral, a linear solution of the problems of life, because of illustrious choristers from all the sacristies life is not linear and can never be reduced to a segment traced by primordial needs." ⁴

Ultimately fascism is a philosophy for the future of modern civilizations. Not until we dare to face the inherent problems with democracy and its ways of creating moral illusions, can we find a political system based on natural reality. Fascism recognizes the potentials in the order of people working towards shared goals and avoids the kind of political slogans that today have driven us into foreign wars of unknown intentions, the slow decay of once great and noble cultures, the exchange of value in ideals to value in the material and money-centred, the great tyranny of the unsuspecting masses, hiding behind a political façade of collective irresponsibility. Fascism is a brave and honest hope for the future of Western civilization and its potential in cultural as well as idealistic development.

¹ ² ³ Mussolini, Benito - The Doctrine of Fascism

⁴ (Navigare necesse, in Diuturna, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 233)