7.  Untruths of Democracy.

“Reason and science” says Renan (who had certain pre-fascist enlightenments) in one of his philosophical meditations, “are products of mankind, but to seek reason directly for the people and through the people is a chimera.  It is not necessary for the existence of reason that everybody should know it.  In any case if this initiation were to be brought about it could not be through low-class democracy, which seems to lead rather to the extinction of every difficult culture and of every great discipline.  The principle that society exists only for the welfare and liberty of individuals composing it, does not seem to conform with the plans of nature:  plans in which the species only is taken into consideration and the individual appears sacrificed.  It is strongly to be feared that the last word of democracy thus understood (I hasten to add that it can also be differently understood) would be a social state in which a degenerated mass would have no preoccupation other than that of enjoying the ignoble pleasures of the vulgar person.”

Thus Renan.  In Democracy Fascism rejects the absurd conventional falsehood of political equality, the habit of collective responsibility and the myth of indefinite progress and happiness.

But if there be a different understanding of Democracy if, in other words, Democracy can also signify to not push the people back as far as the margins of the State, then Fascism may well have been defined by the present writer as “an organised, centralised, authoritarian Democracy.”

8.  Against Liberal Doctrines.

As regards the Liberal doctrines, the attitude of Fascism is one of absolute opposition both in the political and in the economical field.  There is no need to exaggerate the importance of Liberalism in the last century—­simply for the sake of present-day polemics—­and to transform one of the numerous doctrines unfolded in that last century into a religion of humanity for all times, present and future.  Liberalism did not flourish for more than a period of fifteen years.  It was born in 1830 from the reaction to the Holy Alliance which attempted to set Europe back to the period which preceeded ’89 and had its years of splendour in 1848, when also Pius IX was a Liberal.  Its decadence began immediately afterwards.  If 1848 was a year of light and poesy, 1849 was a year of weakness and tragedy.  The Roman Republic was killed by another Republic, the French Republic.  In the same year Marx issued his famous manifesto of Communism.  In 1851 Napoleon III made his anti-Liberal coup d’etat and reigned over France until 1870.  He was overthrown by a popular movement, following one of the greatest defeats registered in history.  The victor was Bismarck, who always ignored the religion of liberty and its prophets.  It is symptomatic that a people of high civilisation like the Germans completely ignored the religion of liberty throughout the whole Nineteenth Century—­with but one parenthesis, represented by that which was called “the ridiculous parliament of Frankfurt” which lasted one season.  Germany realised its national unity outside of Liberalism, against Liberalism—­a doctrine which seemed alien to the German spirit essentially monarchical, since Liberalism is the historical and logical ante-chamber of anarchy.