Summary
Founder of Italian Fascism and head of the Italian government after the March on Rome of October 1922. In Brenner’s account the World Zionist Organization’s attitude to him was determined solely by his position on Zionism: hostile while he saw Zionism as a British cat’s-paw, warmly courted and lionised by Zionist leaders after his mid-1920s turn to pro-Zionism (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, PDF p.31-33).
Details
- Mussolini echoed right-wing anti-Semitic ideas after abandoning the left — a ‘Synagogue’ plot behind the Bolshevik victory in 1917, Jewish bankers behind Communism by 1919 — but five Jews were among the Fascist movement’s founders and anti-Semitism was not important to his ideology or well received by his followers (PDF p.31).
- His Popolo d’Italia favoured Zionism until 1919, when he concluded Zionism was merely a cat’s-paw for the British and began calling local Zionists ‘so-called Italians’; his position matched pre-Fascist governments and was motivated by imperial rivalry with Britain (PDF p.31).
- After the March on Rome his government assured Chief Rabbi Angelo Sacerdoti it would not support anti-Semitism; he received an Italian Zionist delegation on 20 December 1922 and Chaim Weizmann on 3 January 1923, without changing Italian policy (PDF p.32).
- In the mid-1920s Italian consuls in Palestine concluded Zionism was there to stay; at a conference on 17 September 1926 Mussolini offered to help the Zionists build up their economy, and after Nahum Sokolow’s visit of 26 October 1927 he was lionised by Zionism (PDF p.32-33).
- He repudiated Hitler’s Nordic racism and anti-Semitism in the early 1930s while talking of Europe going Fascist within ten years; Adolf Hitler, by contrast, called him the spiritual head of his own movement (PDF p.33-34).
Related pages
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, Fascism, World Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann