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The Leader is the great cultivator; he cultivates the body politic of the fascist state. He leads that body like a great general - like a Caesar. And he also serves and cares for that body like a great redeemer, like a Christ.
The Leader is a synthesis of both Caesar and Christ, as he works with his people like an artist creates with his medium.
The ancient tales tell us that the great teacher Jesus Christ set foot on Albion, as Blake recounted in his patriotic Jerusalem. And history tells us too, that the pagan dictator Julius Caesar came to these shores, bringing the first taste of Roman civilisation - and therefore of fascism - to the British Isles, more than 2, 000 years ago.
This is how Fascism unites pagans, agnostics, atheists and Christians. All these are united under the Creative Will of the Leader!
Listen to what Hilaire Belloc says here;
"The Roman Empire might have remained, and so one would think it naturally would have remained, a Mediterranean thing, but for that capital experiment which has determined all future history - Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul - Gaul, the mass of which lay north, Continental, exterior to the Mediterranean Gaul which linked up with the Atlantic and the North Sea: Gaul which lived by the tides: Gaul which was to be the foundation of things to come. It was this experiment - the Roman conquest of Gaul - and its successes [including the conquest of Britain] which opened the ancient and immemorial culture of the Mediterranean to the world. It was a revolution which for rapidity and completeness has no parallel."
Fascism is the Fruit of this revolutionary conquest, and its subsequent synthesis of North and South!
The Christ/Caesar formula has interested many thinkers and doers. Oswald Spengler, for instance, proclaimed his historical/philosophic doctrine of 'Caesarism';
"The coming phase of history will henceforth be lived out far above economic crises and the ideals of domestic politics. Elemental forces of life itself are now entering the fray where the stakes are all or nothing. The prototypes of Caesarism will soon become more clearly defined, more conscious, and more brazen. The masks surviving from the parliamentary age of transition will fall away entirely. All attempts to determine the shape of the future within political parties will be forgotten. The fascist formulations of these decades will turn into new ones as yet unpredictable, and even nationalism as we know it will disappear...The Legions of Caesar are reawakening ".
But we can see that Spengler's Caesarism lacks the mastery of the Christ Soul. It is a barren Caesarism. A quote from Karl Jaspers on the subject of Nietzsche and Christianity is very suggestive;
"The most amazing attempts to bring together again into a higher unity what Nietzsche has first separated and opposed to each other...the synthesis of the ultimate opposition".
My contention is that Spengler's Caesarism ignores the necessity of a Christ Soul. George Bernard Shaw's analysis of Caesarism naturally equated it to the Fascism of the 1930's;
"There is nothing new in Fascism ... Caesar, Cromwell, Napoleon, and his nephew Louis Napoleon are the bygone Fascist Leaders we talk most about; but they are only four out of innumerable able adventurers who have headed lawless revolts called coups d'etat, against governmental machinery that will not work fast enough to keep up with its job".
Shaw puts his finger on the problem of Caesarism/Fascism;
"The catch in it is that Fascist geniuses are not immortal, and, as happened to the Napoleons, may wear out before they die. If they leave Fascism in incapable or vicious hands, it may produce results which are at best deplorable and at worst diabolical".
This is what Nietzsche meant by the alarmingly chance nature of greatness. The project is to cultivate the great cultivators. To make greatness a product of Will. To be able to make certain that a Caesar will rule, and be followed by an unbroken succession of Caesars; this is the thrust of his philosophy. So, the Caesar must first of cultivate his Christ Soul - that is imperative.
And one “fascist genius”, Sir Oswald Mosley, did just this! Mosley, who imbibed Nietzsche, Spengler and Shaw [and was even a friend of Shaw], gave a lecture in 1933 called 'The Philosophy of Fascism', in which he described Fascism as being a “Faith”. The following section from it is quite revealing;
"In the 19th century, the major intellectual struggle arose from the tremendous impact of Nietzschean thought on the Christian civilisation of 2,000 years. That impact was only very slowly realised. Its full implications are only today working themselves out. But turn where you will in modern thought, you find the results of that struggle for mastery of the mind and spirit of man... I am not myself stating the case against Christianity, because I am going to show you how I believe the Nietzschean and the Christian doctrines are capable of synthesis".
Just as Belloc's work understands the world historical importance of Caesar and Christ, so Mosley here recognises the world historical importance of Nietzschean thought.
It seems that Mosley envisaged a combination of certain Christian virtues [e.g.,'service'], with Nietzschean ones [e.g., 'virility'], both taken forward into a 'higher synthesis'.
Christ was a God become man, while Caesar was a man become god.
The Fascist Leader is then a kind of demigod who embodies the genius of his people! Sir Oswald Mosley, by his deeds and words has shown that he was such a figure. A figure whose spirit lives on through those who carry on his work today!
Article also features in this month's NBU online journal, Blackshirt #72
