Yes, It's Fascism, but That Doesn't Mean We're Cooked (The New Republic)

[usonian]

https://newrepublic.com/article/206402/trump-fascism-yes-benedetto-croce

The philosopher and liberal politician Benedetto Croce laid it out in (where else?) The New Republic in 1937, galvanizing his Italian comrades.

Born in 1866, Croce was an Italian philosopher, famous for his 1938 work History as the Story of Liberty. His case against fascism was straightforward. Fascism, he wrote, is “the debasing of men until they are either a flock to be led to pasture, or captured, trained animals in a cage.” He served in the Italian government, as an antifascist liberal, from 1910 to 1952.

Croce the philosopher considered himself an idealist. His passion was for the human imagination. But as fascism under Mussolini aimed to stifle imagination in the 1920s and 1930s, Croce began making a vigorous, even relentless, case for its opposite—liberal democracy, which he considered the best guarantor of free minds.

In 1937, while a senator in what was then the Kingdom of Italy, Croce made this case in the pages of The New Republic. His article was assigned by Bruce Bliven, who edited this magazine from 1930 to 1946 and moved its editorial stance leftward, from neutrality and bothsidesism to strong support for FDR and the policies of the New Deal. “The Future of Democracy” ran as a symposium on April 7, 1937, and Croce wrote the lead article.

Above all, Croce was impatient with those who pitted fascism against antifascism as if they were soccer teams: “The choice between liberty and suppression of liberty is not on the same plane as a choice between things of different values, one of which may reasonably be preferred to the other.” Liberty, he wrote, means human dignity. The suppression of liberty degrades and demeans us.

Here is the 1937 article.


Benedetto Croce
April 7, 1937
TNR Archives
https://newrepublic.com/article/206407/future-democracy
The Future of Democracy
👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆
THIS IS AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE


The Italian partisans took care of "Il Duce"



Say, where did Stephen Miller get his good looks?

[dweller]

1. His passion was for the human imagination

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