LONDON, 3 July 2003 — Sometimes (often when you least expect it) you’ll happen across something — an idea or an article — which opens new doors and casts fresh light on old subjects. When this rare moment occurs, it becomes a duty to share it with one’s readers.
So, last week, trawling the press, I came across a long piece written by the British author of a new biography of the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini (‘Mussolini: A new life’ published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson) by Nicholas Farrell. This was something of a surprise in itself, since I’d just finished a new biography of Mussolini by RJB Bosworth (published by OUP), an Australian. Why another so soon?
But Farrell had not been content, like Bosworth, to keep his history located in the past; instead, he had brought it, struggling into the present.
For five years Farrell had lived in Mussolini’s home village of Predappio, from where he wrote last week that, “Every now and again, as I wander about town, my mind drifts from Mussolini and Fascism... to another matter: Tony Blair and New Labour.” Intrigued? I know I was.
It turns out that Farrell’s wandering mind was making these unlikely journeys, not because of incipient Alzheimer’s, but because he could not help noticing that “Blair and Mussolini have rather a lot in common. Blair, probably without even realizing it, does seem to have imbibed quite a few things from the Duce.”
That “probably” is a jewel. Blair “probably” didn’t deliberately imitate the old Fascist, but — Farrell implies — possibly he did. Maybe he watched old newsreels as a kid (All Our Yesterdays, or something like that) and saw Musso on the balcony in Florence or Rome, tassel swinging from his cap, his uniform aflame with braid, and imagined to himself a day when the people of Britain would (more discreetly, of course) yell, “Tone! Tone!”
If this seems a bit nuts, that’s only because I haven’t yet explained Farrell’s logic. Here, in a limpid piece of precis, is Farrell’s case: “Blair began as a left-wing pacifist and became a right-wing warmonger. He is dictatorial and ignores Parliament if he can and he is a master of propaganda (spin). He is also a bit of a musician — always a dangerous sign in a politician — and plays the electric guitar. So was Mussolini. He played the violin.”
This is a suggestive four points of similarity, which rises to five when you take into account the most damning of all — Blair’s adherence to a philosophy called the third way. Mussolini, you see, also called fascism the “third way” between Bolshevism and capitalism.
“When,” says Farrell, “during the second Bill Clinton presidency, Blair and Clinton started holding summits on the third way, they really were verging on the truly fascist.”
You might object that Blair’s third way has only the words “third way” in common with Mussolini’s corporate state. You may even think that what Blair has in mind is an updated social democracy, rather than fascism, black in shirt and heart. And when Farrell mentions that the prime minister “talks, with mounting frenzy, of ‘public- private partnerships”’, I confess I must have missed the most frenzied parts.
Even so, the comparisons are spooky. And in fact Clinton, with his Latinesque womanizing, rates a massive six points of similarity with Benito. The leader of the UK’s opposition Conservative Party Iain Duncan Smith does less well. Like Mussolini he is bald, and also spent part of his life in uniform (two). His father flew planes, as did Mussolini’s son (three). He is a fiery believer in national sovereignty (four), and I think there may be a ballet connection, but I’m not sure (four and a half). He may also (as Mussolini did) harbour murderous thoughts about some of the people in his own party, but that’s mere conjecture on my part.
When you start looking for these historical serendipities, you suddenly find them everywhere. Prince William is a member of a royal family, loves riding horses, blushes easily, gets kissed on both cheeks by outlandish and rather smelly men in beards and would be — initially at least — a reluctant monarch. All these things applied equally to Genghis Khan, the great Mongol leader. So watch out.
But I digress. Back to Blair, master of spin who, Farrell observes, “talks to the people direct, via television, as Mussolini did via the piazza”. And not by going down to the end of Downing Street (Blair’s London address) and shouting at the top of his voice, as a truly democratic politician might do. Mussolini came to power with the aid of armed squadristi riding from town to town, physically intimidating the opposition — there were 2,000 deaths in the two years before the March on Rome. Who in Britain can forget being assaulted by Things Can Only Get Better, the Five Pledges (on mugs) and — in 2001 — the genuine violence of John Prescott’s attack on that bloke with an egg and a mullet hairstyle? I’ll give you the sack of bleedin’ Empoli.
After his landslide victory in 1924, Mussolini had the leader of the opposition murdered. Blair, with infinitely more cruelty, allowed his vanquished opponent John Major to survive. Blair famously declared, “Education, education, education”. Mussolini’s slogan was “Believe, Obey, Fight”. Is there such a big difference between the two?
Of course, what Farrell apparently argues in his new biography is that fascism was really a left-wing thing, not a right-wing one (I would like to see how he explains the rather strange fact of right-wingers mainly supporting fascism and left-wingers being banged up or slaughtered for opposing it).
And he also claims (according to the London political magazine the Spectator) that Il Duce “refused to deport Jews to the Nazi death camps, thus saving thousands of Jewish lives — far more than Oskar Schindler”.
Well, of course. I mean, overrated old Schindler didn’t preserve that many, when all was said and done — although I suppose you could argue that his was a rather more precarious position than that of, say, supreme fascist dictator of the nation. And Schindler hadn’t himself promulgated anti-Jewish race laws, which Musso had (and which, Farrell may believe, Blair probably would, given half a chance).
As I wandered about my town, my mind also drifted. Might Farrell be the same former Sunday Telegraph man who — back in 1998 — helped on the notorious documentary, Diana: The Secrets Behind the Crash, and who speculated on whether British counter-intelligence (MI5) might not have been involved in a conspiracy? I phoned the publishers, but no one returned my call.
Mussolini, I remembered (from Bosworth’s excellent recent biography), had been both a journalist and a shameless self-publicist. Which is two for starters. And as we search for more, I invite readers to send in their own examples of historical characters with unlikely modern counterparts: Great kudos awarded for an eight or above.
