THE RIGHT’S INTELLECTUALS
I
t is sometimes said that classical fascism was antiintellectual. But like any ideological movement, it did have its thinkers. Swathes of European intellectuals, impressed by Mussolini and the fascist experiment more generally, not only affirmed the project but were enthusiastic participants within it. In power, however, fascism relegated philosophy well below force. Intellectuals, although crucial to the formation of fascism, were rapidly marginalised within the wider movement, and naked propagandists pillaged their work for simpler formulations. Some anti-intellectualism was also internal to fascist intellectualism itself. Confronted with the discursive complexity of modernity, as George Valois expressed, the answer of fascism was to ‘raise the sword’: “The bourgeois brandishing his contracts and statistics: – two plus three makes. . . . – Nought, the Barbarian replies, smashing his head in.”56
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