Faux Anti-War Fascists: From Mussolini to Present Day

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump spoke frequently about the importance of averting World War III.  Later, during his inaugural address, he remarked, “we will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”  Trump added, “my proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”  Just why the president was ever considered a foe of boondoggle military adventurism and foreign wars, however, has always been a bit of a mystery.

As early as his first term, Trump reduced Raqqa to rubble, with eighty percent of the Syrian city destroyed or rendered uninhabitable.  Emerging from the wreckage, civilians wondered why U.S.-led coalition forces destroyed the city in the name of liberating them from Islamic State, or IS.  Raqqa, originally home to 220,000 people, became a “wasteland of smashed concrete.”  In all, it is believed 1,400 civilians perished in Raqqa as the result of coalition air and artillery bombardment, though the figure is likely higher.

The U.S., which was responsible for tens of thousands of air strikes, claimed it was conducting “precision” bombing.  Such claims, however, do not hold up to scrutiny, as Trump may have violated international humanitarian law amounting to war crimes.  On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump repeatedly boasted he would loosen restrictions protecting civilians during attacks, while “bombing the shit out of ISIS.”  Once in office, he claimed credit for such attacks, attributing IS defeats to his top brass’ increasingly more indiscriminate approach.

Downplaying the sheer carnage, the New York Times remarked that U.S. airstrikes had “raised concerns” whether the U.S. military had become “less careful, or less selective, in its targeting.”  The Guardian was far less charitable: under the headline “U.S. Air Wars Under Trump: Increasingly Indiscriminate, Increasingly Opaque,” the paper reported that Trump’s airstrikes in Iraq and Syria had resulted in a massive increase in civilian deaths.  Trump moreover ramped up strikes in Yemen, a trend which has continued during his second term.

Considering the above, it is hardly surprising Trump has now launched airstrikes against Iran, which threatens to plunge the U.S. and the wider region into yet another destructive war.  Trump’s hypocrisy on the Middle East is nothing new: though the president has repeatedly claimed he opposed Bush’s war in Iraq, he initially expressed lukewarm support.  In 2003, Trump regretted U.S. military spending on the war, remarking “the question is whether or not we should have been in Iraq in the first place, [but] I don’t think that this president can do anything about that.  He is really – he is on a course that has to stay.”  Later, he added the war had been “tougher than people thought,” but “it just seems to be something that, we are there now, we have to stay, we have to win, otherwise we just won’t have the same respect.”  It was only later, in 2004, that Trump came out against the conflict, though by that point many Americans had turned against the war anyway.

As history has shown, fascists may initially depict themselves as anti-war, only to later morph into ultra-militaristic figures.  In this sense, Trump is nothing new.  Take, for example, the case of Benito Mussolini, who ironically started off as an anti-imperialist.  Young Benito was influenced by his socialist father, who had admired anarchists as well as republican nationalist Guiseppe Garibaldi.  In September 1911, the future fascist leader found himself editing La Lotte di Classe (Class Struggle), an obscure socialist newspaper.  Then, however, he participated in a riot against the Italian war in Libya, an action which would shape his future destiny.  At the time, the Italian Socialist Party was divided on the issue of imperialistic expansion in North Africa.  Ultimately, however, socialists opposed military intervention in Libya, an area regarded as a “big sandbox” holding few economic rewards for Italy.

Mussolini denounced the conflict as imperialist and, after calling for a general strike, the authorities arraigned him.  The following month, Italy sent in its navy and troops attacked the coastal Libyan cities of Benghazi and Tripoli.  Then, for the first time in any war, the Italians deployed their air force.  In November, Mussolini was sentenced to a year in jail, which was subsequently reduced to five months.  Hardly a household name, Mussolini was now propelled to political stardom by the Libyan affair, and upon release he was appointed editor of Milan-based socialist newspaper Avanti! (Forward!), whose circulation rose from 20,000 to 100,000 under the upstart’s leadership.  After leaving jail, Mussolini helped oust socialists who had supported intervention in Libya.

In an ominous foreshadowing of what was in store, however, Mussolini became an “authoritarian communist.”  When war broke out in 1914, Italian socialists were again divided, though the party eventually decided to oppose the conflict.  In line with his earlier anti-militarist stance, Mussolini initially opposed the war, but then dramatically reversed himself by supporting conflict.  Expelled by the party, he formed the fascist movement and started a pro-war newspaper funded by the likes of wealthy industrialists.  In a total repudiation of his earlier positions, Mussolini now advocated an aggressive foreign policy based on spazio vitale (“living space”).  Fascist blackshirts, meanwhile, clashed with communists, socialists and anarchists, and in a further note of irony, Mussolini’s hooligans even attacked offices belonging to Avanti!.

After a fascist coup in 1922, Mussolini became prime minister and eventually turned Italy into a totalitarian dictatorship while cracking down on leftists.  In yet another reversal, Il Duce became a complete warmonger in Libya, and during the Italo-Senussi War of 1929-1934, Italian colonial authorities killed between 20,000 and 100,000 Libyans.  The conflict is known in Libya as the Shar, which in Arabic means “Evil.”  During this genocide, Arabs were deported and relocated to concentration camps.  The conflict was marred by Italian war crimes, ethnic cleansing, forced death marches, settler colonialism and use of chemical weapons.  Mussolini was personally responsible for poisoning wells, bombing villages with mustard gas, killing thousands of sheep and camels, and building a vast barbed wire fence to prevent border crossings from Egypt.

In developments which hark back to the Mussolini era, there’s also been something of a rightist-leftist convergence on foreign policy within the U.S., not to mention elsewhere.  Indeed, when it comes to authoritarian governments such as Russia, some within the hard right and left dismissed “Russia Gate” during Trump’s first term while deploring the “Deep State.”  Coining new tongue-twisting terminology, New York Magazine referred to the “anti-anti-Trump left,” a constituency which criticized Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.  Such folk saw the Russia and Ukraine scandals as a tainted attempt by Democrats to extol the foreign policy establishment.

“This is less an argument than an expression of mood,” noted the publication.  “The scandals have reordered the contestants in the political drama in a way anti-anti-Trump leftists simply can’t stomach.  The spectacle of Democrats lionizing intelligence officials and other cogs in the security state creates an irrepressible gag reflex.  But what brought them to this strange place is their hatred for the center-left, which blots out any sense of proportion of the danger Trump poses.”  Going further, the publication adds, “somehow, the emergency of [Trump’s] growing authoritarianism has not concentrated every mind, and the election of Trump has not dispelled the fantasy that his destruction of the center and the center-left will lead ultimately to a better world.”

In accordance with this mindset, even suggesting impeachment was bizarrely regarded as reactionary, since “Trump, while bad, is merely a meta-phenomenon of the larger failure of the Democratic Party and the political and economic Establishment.  And so, to the extent that investigating Trump’s scandalous behavior allows Democrats to discredit Trump without undergoing revolutionary internal changes, it is counterproductive.”

The political realignment made for strange allies, as evidenced by a rapprochement between Steve Bannon, representing MAGA’s isolationist wing, and Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, a former Congresswoman, Bernie Sanders supporter and critic of foreign military adventures.  Channeling Mussolini in 1911, Gabbard even criticized U.S. assistance to rebels in Libya following Arab Spring protests.  In 2016, shortly after the presidential election, Bannon set up a meeting between Trump and Gabbard.  Reportedly, Bannon “loved” Gabbard and regarded her as “beyond a rock star” owing to her criticism of Obama’s militaristic foreign policy.

Later, in 2020, Gabbard’s presidential campaign fused “progressive policy stances with the kind of patriotic displays sometimes more associated with Republican campaigns.  Before she makes her hour-long pitch to voters at rallies throughout New Hampshire, her audiences are often instructed to stand for the pledge of allegiance or bow their heads for a moment of silence.”  During the campaign, Gabbard’s foreign policy views were subjected to scrutiny, and she was criticized on the debate stage by Kamala Harris, who declared the Congresswoman had been soft on Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Though Gabbard lost the Democratic nomination, Bannon believed she might have damaged Trump in the 2020 election if she had chosen to run as an independent, since the Congresswoman was a “real populist-nationalist” and appealed to MAGA voters.  Gabbard later abandoned the Democratic Party, which she regarded as “an elitist cabal of woke warmongers,” campaigned for the Republicans in the 2022 midterms, and endorsed Trump during the 2024 election.

During Gabbard’s endorsement, Trump claimed Democrats and Independents would vote for him because he sought to put an end to war.  “When I’m back in the White House,” he said, “we will expel the warmongers, the profiteers … and we will restore world peace.”  Gabbard agreed, remarking “I am confident that his [Trump’s] first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war.”  She added, “we cannot be prosperous unless we are at peace.”

Trump critics saw Gabbard’s move as opportunistic, arguing she was merely interested in staying relevant and pursuing a new role within a Republican party that had become increasingly “Putin friendly.”  Speaking with former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, Gabbard would not rule out running for president herself in 2028.  Mincing no words, some D.C. insiders saw Gabbard as lacking any “soul, conscience or moral code.”

After the election, Trump appointed Gabbard to be director of National Intelligence (DNI).  Carving out an “unusually public role for a spy chief,” she regularly appeared on Fox news where she promoted her work with the administration.  Gabbard also dutifully revoked clearances of Trump’s enemies and attacked some staff working beneath her.  Performing the president’s dirty work, Gabbard also fired officials who had compiled an intelligence assessment undercutting Trump’s rationale for mass deportations of Latin American migrants.

Perhaps, however, the partnership was always going to be fraught, since neither Trump nor Gabbard had been longtime allies.  Indeed, as far back as 2019, Gabbard had criticized Trump for escalating tensions with Iran, and the former Congresswoman favored the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, an agreement which sought to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions.  In addition, Gabbard worked behind the scenes to find a diplomatic solution to the Iran crisis, even going so far as to enlist European allies who maintained open communication channels with Teheran.

Traveling to Hiroshima, Japan in June, Gabbard visited the blast site from one of the two atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on the city, a trip which perplexed the White House.  Then, in an enigmatic video, she warned of war in the nuclear age, claimed “political elites and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tension between nuclear powers,” and spoke in graphic terms of weapons “vaporizing entire cities.”  Gabbard posted her video just a few days after Israel hawks had met with Trump at the White House, and in MAGA World the DNI’s video was interpreted as a sign she was trying to prevent the president from greenlighting an Israeli attack on Iran.

Within the president’s orbit, however, Gabbard was seen as meddlesome and getting ahead of White House messaging.  Trump, who does not like to be corrected, viewed Gabbard’s video as a self-aggrandizing PR stunt.  Moreover, as far back as 2016, Trump called Obama “pathetic” for visiting Hiroshima, since the U.S. should not apologize for anything it did during World War II.  Flying into a tiff, Trump reportedly admonished Gabbard, remarking that if she wanted to run for president, she shouldn’t be in his administration to begin with.

If Gabbard thought she could find some leftist-rightist common ground with Trump on foreign policy, she was sorely mistaken, or perhaps the former Congresswoman was simply naïve.  In March, she testified to Congress that Iran wasn’t pursuing nuclear weapons through refinement efforts.  Trump, who has argued that Iran poses a threat due to its nuclear program, said Gabbard’s claims were false.  Going yet further, the president remarkably declared of his own DNI, “I don’t care what she says.”  Jettisoning the Bannon isolationist wing of the party, Trump attacked Iran, which put him at odds with earlier boasting on the campaign trail about being a peacemaker.

Internecine feuds within the administration have led to speculation about Gabbard’s own political future.  In the hours after Trump authorized airstrikes on Iran, the DNI was not present in the Situation Room.  Gabbard was also absent from another meeting at Camp David between the president and his national security team.  Clearly displeased with his DNI, Trump has mused about nixing Gabbard’s office altogether, or folding her portfolio into the CIA or other agencies.  Lamely, Gabbard has tried to make her way back into Trump’s good graces by claiming the “dishonest media” had distorted her congressional testimony, and that, indeed, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months.

The Iran imbroglio has exposed internal fissures within the MAGA movement.  When Gabbard was appointed, the move “was seen as an injection of ideological diversity” and an expression of “heterodox views.”  However, the DNI is now an outsider within an administration coalescing around hawkish elements.  Though Bannon still wields influence, the isolationist wing has been eclipsed by militarists such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio.  Though Vice President J.D. Vance is said to be anti-interventionist, he has chosen not to question his boss on the Iran strikes.  Like Mussolini before him, Trump may purge the “heterodox” elements within his MAGA coalition in deference to the military.  Within fascism, it seems, cultivating leftist anti-interventionists may be politically expedient at the outset, but this is ultimately revealed as a sham and smokescreen.