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7/22/2025, 11:00:32 PM
Benito Mussolini:
Speech of the Ascension, May 26, 1927
The Unitary State
>But in the meantime I come to an essential point of my speech: perhaps the most important. What have we Fascists done in these last five years? We did something huge, monumental, centuries in the making. What have we made? We have created the Italian Unitary State. Consider that from the time of the Empire onward, Italy was no longer a unitary State. Here we solemnly reaffirm our doctrine concerning the State; here I reaffirm my formula in the speech I delivered at La Scala in Milan: "Everything within the State, nothing against the State". I do not even think anyone in the 20th century can live outside the State, unless they are in a state of barbarism, a state of savagery.
>It is only the State that gives people a consciousness of itself. If the people are not organized, if the people are not a State, they are simply a population that will be at the mercy of the first group of internal adventurers or external invaders. Because, dear gentlemen, only the State with its juridical organization, with its military force, prepared at all times, can defend the national collectivity; but if the human collectivity is broken up and reduced to the mere nucleus of the family, a few hundred Normans will suffice to conquer Puglia.
>What was the State – that State which we took over as it was breathing its last breath, gnawed by constitutional crises, debased by its organic impotence? The State which we conquered at the time of the March on Rome was the one which has been handed down from 1850 onward. It was not a State, but a system of badly organized prefectures, in which the prefect had but one preoccupation: that of being an efficient electoral errand boy.
Speech of the Ascension, May 26, 1927
The Unitary State
>But in the meantime I come to an essential point of my speech: perhaps the most important. What have we Fascists done in these last five years? We did something huge, monumental, centuries in the making. What have we made? We have created the Italian Unitary State. Consider that from the time of the Empire onward, Italy was no longer a unitary State. Here we solemnly reaffirm our doctrine concerning the State; here I reaffirm my formula in the speech I delivered at La Scala in Milan: "Everything within the State, nothing against the State". I do not even think anyone in the 20th century can live outside the State, unless they are in a state of barbarism, a state of savagery.
>It is only the State that gives people a consciousness of itself. If the people are not organized, if the people are not a State, they are simply a population that will be at the mercy of the first group of internal adventurers or external invaders. Because, dear gentlemen, only the State with its juridical organization, with its military force, prepared at all times, can defend the national collectivity; but if the human collectivity is broken up and reduced to the mere nucleus of the family, a few hundred Normans will suffice to conquer Puglia.
>What was the State – that State which we took over as it was breathing its last breath, gnawed by constitutional crises, debased by its organic impotence? The State which we conquered at the time of the March on Rome was the one which has been handed down from 1850 onward. It was not a State, but a system of badly organized prefectures, in which the prefect had but one preoccupation: that of being an efficient electoral errand boy.
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