"A Total Conception of Life"

From Gentile, Giovanni. "What is Fascism?" As reproduced in Fascism: A Reader, trans. Roger Griffin, ed. Roger Griffin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 53-54.

We see two Italies before us: an old one and a new one: Italy of the past centuries which is our glory but also a sad legacy which weighs on our shoulders and our spirits: let's be frank, it is also our shame, a shame we want to expunge and make up for. It is precisely that great Italy which occupies such an important place in the history of the world. The only Italy, one might say, which is known, studied, and researched by all civilized peoples, and whose history is not a particular history, but an epoch in universal history: the Renaissance. . . . The Italy of foreigners, and not of Italians. Italians without faith, and hence absent. Is this not the old Italy of decadence? . . .

Let us add new monuments to the old ones if we feel like it. Let us erect them on our squares to steel our characters, to honor the living more than the dead in the consecration of recent memories, which at bottom are more glorious than any which Italian history has to offer, and, paying tribute to generous memories, to raise our consciousness of being the free citizens of a great nation. For where "nation" is understood in this way, even liberty is less a right than a duty: a prize which is only achieved through the self-denial of the citizen prepared to give everything to his Fatherland without asking for anything in return.

Even this concept of the nation, which we see as central, is not a Fascist invention. It is the soul of the new Italy which slowly but surely will prevail over the old. Fascism, with its keen sense of the wave of nationalism which drew Italians to the fire of the Great War and enabled them to endure victoriously the tragic ordeal, with its reaction against the materialists of yesterday who tried to pooh pooh the value of that ordeal. . . . Fascism does everything to remind the people of the greatness and beauty of the sacrifice that has been made as its greatest legacy for the future. ...

How many times has Fascism been accused with obtuse malevolence of barbarity? Well yes: once you understand the true significance of this barbarity we will boast of it, as the expression of the healthy energies which shatter false and baleful idols, and restore the health of the nation within the power of a State conscious of its sovereign rights which are its duties. . . .

Do not forget, the ethical State of the Fascist is no longer the agnostic State of old liberalism. Its ethics derive from spirituality: a personality which is awareness; a system which is will. . . . The State is the will of the nation writ large, and hence its intelligence. It ignores nothing, and it involves itself in everything which has a bearing on the interests of the citizen--which are its own interests--either economically or morally. Nihil humani a se alienumm putat. The State is neither a huge facade, nor an empty building. It is man himself: the house is built, inhabited, and animated by the joys and sorrows which derive from the labor and from the whole life of the human spirit. . . .

Gentlemen, Fascism is a party, a political doctrine. But Fascism . . . while being a party, a political doctrine, is above all a total conception of life. Like the Catholic, if he is Catholic, invests with his religious feelings the whole of his life . . . so the Fascist, whether he is writing in newspapers or reading them, going about his private life or talking to others, looking to the future or remembering the past and the past of his people, must always remember he is a Fascist!

Thus he fulfills what can really be said to be the main characteristic of Fascism, to take life seriously. Life is toil, is effort, is sacrifice, is hard work; it is a life which we know full well is not for fun: there is no time for fun.

Before us there always lies an ideal to realize: an ideal which gives us no rest. We cannot waste time.