Today:
AskHistorians is filled with questions seeking an answer. Saturday Spotlight is for answers seeking a question! It’s a place to post your original and in-depth investigation of a focused historical topic.
Posts here will be held to the same high standard as regular answers, and should mention sources or recommended reading. If you’d like to share shorter findings or discuss work in progress, Thursday Reading & Research or Friday Free-for-All are great places to do that.
So if you’re tired of waiting for someone to ask about how imperialism led to “Surfin’ Safari;” if you’ve given up hope of getting to share your complete history of the Bichon Frise in art and drama; this is your chance to shine!
I: PREAMBLE – TACKLING THE ‘LIES’ VIDEO
There will be a few marked differences to this part compared to previous ones. Notably, the format is going to be a bit more bite-sized, with individual chunks being commented upon rather than a longer running argument. There are a few reasons:
Firstly, unlike the four previous parts in this series, this part was not written by adapting my draft /r/badhistory posts, as I had not got round to drafting Part V by the time I started to revamp Part I for this sub. As a result, I didn’t write this part with existing chunks of quote-criticism-citation that could be adapted for a different format, and so this will be more of a first draft than the more revised and polished affairs of previous parts.
Secondly, the format of the ‘Lies’ video itself forces a more eclectic approach, as it provides corrections and addenda across all parts of the main series, and so does not follow the stricter narrative like those parts. Additionally, by being twice the length it means that there’s more to cover.
Thirdly, I was a bit more strapped for time on this than I would have liked. As I am going to be abroad for two months starting next week, and I am not going to be bringing books which I have already read with me during that time, this will be the last opportunity for some time in which I will have access to the sources I have been using.
In addition, I don’t think this will quite be the end of the story. As with /u/Chamboz I will contact Extra Credits and ask some questions about the process behind the videos, in part out of morbid curiosity, in part to either confirm or disprove some of my suspicions, and in part in the (possibly vain) hope that there has been some change. However, that part could be a long time coming, and will definitely be on /r/badhistory instead of here for the rather obvious reason that it will break most of this sub’s rules.
With that out of the way, we move into the final (main) part of the series.
Week 40
Throughout its first (almost) four years of existence, Mussolini's Il Popolo d'Italia had come out every day with a subtitle declaring its nature of “socialist newspaper”.
On August 1^st – I know, we are a bit early, but this will be a two parter – the subtitle was replaced with a new one: “the newspaper of the combatants and the producers”. Mussolini himself (after all he was the Chief Editor) explained his choice:
Today, after four years, the subtitle socialist disappears from the headline of this newspaper. It is replaced by a new one that I like better and that our readers – I believe – will like more. From now on this newspaper will be the newspaper of the combatants and the producers... That “socialist” on the header made sense in 1914 and meant that in 1914 one could be socialist […] and at the same time in favor of the war. But since then that word “socialist” had become obsolete. It meant nothing to me any more. Rather it produced all the inconveniences coming from the possible mix up with the “others”... All that repeating that the true, authentic, genuine socialism – according to the letters, the saints, the apostles – was ours, only ours, in opposition to the others who claimed just as much truth and authenticity for their socialism, had become in the end ridiculous and farcical like the squabbles of two shop owners. This one is not a shop […] it replaces its signboard and leaves the market to the others. And truly it must be hard for them to sell their goods, its cheap stuff. Still second hand from before the war... Combatants and producers. I mean to defend the rights and interests of both. Combatants and producers, which is fundamentally different from saying workers and soldiers. Not every soldier is a combatant and not every combatant is a soldier. Combatants means from Diaz to the last grunt. Producers, that is whoever produces, whoever works, but not only with their arms... To defend the producers means to fight back against parasites […] among which the socialists are first in line […] To defend the producers means allowing the bourgeoisie to accomplish its historical function – there are still two almost untouched continents awaiting to be swept up in the whirlwind of capitalistic civilization – and means as well to help the workers towards the achievement of the maximum wealth for the maximum number and the development of all those abilities that can, at a given time, build out of the working masses the new ruling aristocracies of the nation. Within worker's unionism, that which has resisted the infection of political socialism, within that unionism which is working and fighting, there is a sparkle and a deep reason of life.
Like many other things, Mussolini's Popolo d'Italia had been born of the war. In July 1934 Mussolini would tell his biographer, Y. De Begnac, that the idea had come to him in early November 1914.
During the build up to the conflict – and especially in the final escalation following the Austrian ultimatum of July 25^th – Mussolini had kept entirely and unambiguously within the official line of the Italian Socialist Party: absolute neutrality. His opposition to the imperialistic war was also consistent with his previous position on the Libyan War of 1911-12, when Mussolini's intransigent attitude had contributed to his growing prestige within the Italian socialist movement. Soon after (after the famous Reggio Emilia Congress of 1912 in fact – when Mussolini had driven the reformers out of the Party) he had been appointed Chief Editor of the official party newspaper, the Avanti!. It was therefore from the front page of the Avanti! that Mussolini – who had like many others initially dismissed the relevance of the Serbian crisis (the Italian socialist world was at the time coming out of the infamous “red week” of June 7-14 1914) – proclaimed his “Down with war!” in the issue of July 26^th as a reaction to “just another slaughter of peoples”. Not only was neutrality the official line of the Party and the socialist newspaper, but it was “Italy's duty: neutrality under any circumstance”.
With the expiring ultimatum, “it was time for the armies to take the scene: it was war!” And the responsibilities fell “for the most part on Austria-Hungary”. The piece explained the danger of the local conflict becoming an European war if Russia had joined the Serbian side; but the Italian duty was nonetheless that of “absolute neutrality – either the Government accepted this fact, or the proletariat was going to make it accept it, by any means necessary”.
While the position was quite upfront, the action behind the curtains was a bit more chaotic. What were the Austrian socialists doing? Was the Second International going to keep together? Even more, what was the very influential German socialist group going to do, if Germany joined the war, as Mussolini seemed to believe? And if they declared for their national government, what were the Italian socialists supposed to do?
On July 28^th Mussolini had expressed his impatience (in a letter to the Party Secretary Costantino Lazzari) for the fact that the Party Direction had not yet met, unlike the parliamentary group (that is, the reformers), to take a clear position on the current events – of course, the Direction needed at least to know what the current events were, to know the reaction of the Austrian and German socialists first, as Arturo Vella explained to Mussolini during the following night. A decision was obviously required over the possibility of proclaiming a general strike (an insurrection) in the eventuality that Italy had joined the war – a possibility suggested by Mussolini himself during the meeting of the parliamentary group (Mussolini had been allowed to the meeting as representative of the direction; but the meeting had been held in Milan, within the Avanti! building, and no one was going to ask Mussolini to leave, so that one should not conclude that the proposal had been met with approval by the reformers fraction, and in fact had been left out of the summary published on the 29^th ).
R. De Felice, who is notoriously critical of the conduct of the Socialist Party during the period of the “neither support nor sabotage” line, observes how the Direction met only on August 3^rd when the international crisis had more or less solved itself and the chance of a proactive effort was lost. Not that the troubles of the Italian socialists were any worse than that of their fellow European parties – with the main currents in France and Germany falling in line behind their government in a cooperation vaguely inspired to principles of national unity.
The dissolution of the Second International took place while Mussolini could sarcastically observe that it had been the Italian Government – which had declared the Italian neutrality on August 3^rd – to dictate the socialist agenda. With the result of forcing the socialists to remark frequently how “their neutrality was not the same thing as the government's neutrality” [see for instance the declaration following the visit of the German socialist Südekum, issued on September 2^nd ]