Shit disturbers

Ages ago, a Canadian friend at grad school used to refer to political activists of any stripe as "shit disturbers".

If our own politics don't seem to support quite such universal infamy there is always the story of Italian politics from the beginning of the 20th Century to the crisis at Fiume.

And beyond, of course.

But that's as far as I have got.

Reading Pierre Milza and Serge Berstein, Le fascisme italien, 1919-1945.

The political actors are all contemptible wretches, worst among them so far being the loonies of the right.

The Italian state at the time was extraordinarily undemocratic owing to numerous factors including a very narrow franchise and a very strong monarch facing a legislature of relatively limited power, independence, and representivity.

Recall that the war had begun with the Italian state betraying its alliance with Germany and Austria by not entering the war on their side.

As M and B tell it, the subsequent decision for Italy to enter the Great War on the side of the allies had virtually no popular support.

It was made by three conniving politicians, the king and two of his ministers, shielded by a furious nationalist and imperialist propaganda, in return for promises by the allies of wide expansion of Italian territory and imperial power into parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The promises were largely betrayed by Wilson, whose influence at Versailles was - inexplicably, to my mind - out of all proportion to the contribution of America to the war.

The Italian contribution was much greater.

The Italian right went nuts at Fiume.

The idea of a march on Rome to bring down the regime began to circulate, and seemed popular with everybody who had a voice but the Italian Socialist Party and the union with which it was affiliated.

And these refused any open or practical support to the "bourgeois regime", their sole objective being to imitate the Bolsheviks and force on Italy a revolutionary socialist dictatorship "of the proletariat".

Mussolini did not want the regime brought down by others and began to undermine the rebellion.

This is a significant fact, crucial to events in Italy, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere in Europe in those years.

A very large segment of the shit disturbers of the era and even some of the mass parties were expressly hostile to the regimes in place and hostile to democratic republics or constitutional monarchies in principle.

These include various tribes of socialists and anarchists as well as the sorts of right wingers who eventually lined up with fascists, nazis, and movements and regimes close to them.

Something to think about in the face of the political campaigns and commitments of The Donald and Bernie, and their supporters.