"It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity"
About this Quote
Beneath the bland civics-club diction, Mussolini is sketching a blueprint for total control. The line borrows the comforting vocabulary of public schooling and shared purpose, then quietly swaps the usual democratic premise - that the state is accountable to citizens - for its authoritarian inverse: citizens exist to be shaped by the state.
The verb choices do most of the ideological work. "Educates" suggests uplift, not coercion; it launders indoctrination through the language of improvement. "Civic virtue" is even slicker, because it sounds like republican self-government while implying a single, official definition of goodness. Then comes "consciousness of their mission", a phrase that treats politics as destiny rather than debate. If everyone has the same "mission", dissent stops being a legitimate disagreement and becomes a kind of betrayal or illness.
"Welds them into unity" is the tell. Unity here isn't solidarity built from negotiated pluralism; it's a metallurgical image of force and heat, individual parts melted into one rigid form. That's classic Fascist rhetoric: the nation imagined as a single body, the leader or state as the brain, and the citizen as a cell whose value is measured by obedience.
Context matters. Italian Fascism emerged amid post-World War I turmoil, strikes, fear of socialism, and the promise that parliamentary messiness could be replaced with speed, order, and pride. This sentence sells that promise in a single package: the state will teach you who you are, why you matter, and where you belong - at the price of your independence of mind.
The verb choices do most of the ideological work. "Educates" suggests uplift, not coercion; it launders indoctrination through the language of improvement. "Civic virtue" is even slicker, because it sounds like republican self-government while implying a single, official definition of goodness. Then comes "consciousness of their mission", a phrase that treats politics as destiny rather than debate. If everyone has the same "mission", dissent stops being a legitimate disagreement and becomes a kind of betrayal or illness.
"Welds them into unity" is the tell. Unity here isn't solidarity built from negotiated pluralism; it's a metallurgical image of force and heat, individual parts melted into one rigid form. That's classic Fascist rhetoric: the nation imagined as a single body, the leader or state as the brain, and the citizen as a cell whose value is measured by obedience.
Context matters. Italian Fascism emerged amid post-World War I turmoil, strikes, fear of socialism, and the promise that parliamentary messiness could be replaced with speed, order, and pride. This sentence sells that promise in a single package: the state will teach you who you are, why you matter, and where you belong - at the price of your independence of mind.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Benito
Add to List







