ABSTRACT
Modern political movements and regimes, Fascist, democratic or Communist, need ideology, some set of ideas and myths, to inspire and motivate the ruling elite and to arouse and enthuse the masses. Material prosperity, leadership charisma, the cult of personality, even terror, are rarely sufficient to sustain them. But ideology can vary enormously from a few simple, compelling ideas and myths, easily reducible to propaganda slogans, to a complex and logically coherent system of ideas. It has often been said that Italian Fascism did not really possess an ideology, that it was essentially inspired by ‘the cudgel and castor oil’, or alternatively it has been argued that the ideas of Italian Fascism were almost all negative-anti-socialist, anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, anticlerical, anti-monarchist. Early Fascism was certainly characterised by all these sentiments, but it has to be stressed that Fascism, at all stages of its development, possessed ideology and that this ideology was more than just a set of negatives.
