Jefferson and/or Mussolini Paperback – 1970

☆☆☆☆☆

This is an entertaining read, as Ezra Pound plays the role of Crank very well. The author correctly touts that what is necessarily good politically and economically for one country does not automatically qualify it to be a cure-all worldwide. However, in his reactionary zeal against Socialism and Communism, Pound sided with Fascism after falling under the influence of C.H. Douglas' Social Credit economics.

Complicating the picture is Pound's relationship with Counterintelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton, who worked channels extensively in Italy during Pound's time there to develop spy networks, often using mafia contacts. Where did Pound fit? While the author was opposed to US involvement in WW2, what were his motivations for this position? Did he envision a European Reich with Hitler and Mussolini's brand of Fascism predominant? Whatever the case, in this work Pound's enthusiasm for the chameleon Mussolini and his political system shines through. Mussolini, ever the opportunist, was only interested in what was good for himself and for satisfying his personal vendettas. However, expert publisher he was, Mussolini was able to couch these ambitions with a projected image of populism. Either Pound understood this, or was simply an eloquent, but naive supporter.

Was Pound aware that Il Duce started out in socialist circles? Mussolini soon found himself ostracized from those groups, despite the patronage of such high profile socialists like Angelica Balabanoff. He turned to fascism, never to look back. Had the right opportunity presented itself at the right time however, Benito would have sold out fascism just like he did socialism. Here was a man more in tune with Nietzsche and Machiavelli than Thomas Jefferson. It was no accident that his corpse was strung up and abused by his own countrymen.

A good source of information on Mussolini is Sawdust Caesar the Untold History of Mussolini and Fascism. I do not remember Pound referencing Seldes in this work, but they were in Italy around the same time. The Mussolini Pound references here is one that is cloaked, masked and ready to dance at the Grand Masquerade. Pound, the man who railed against usury, paid to do anti-US radio broadcasts by an Italian Fascist government that was running high deficits and given to graft, is a rather interesting study of contrasts. His ties to the highest levels of US intelligence did not prevent his arrest, interrogation, imprisonment and brutalization at the hands of the American government after the death of Il Duce.

This work illstrates Pound's sympathies at the time. It is quite the portrait of a rather illusive, fractured genius.

How to find and support a sane and responsible government that genuinely cares for the welfare of its people and is not just out to make a buck off your hard work or re-invent the Judenfetzen system for itself and its special clan of bureaucrats, particularly when you know the American system was early on betrayed by President Wilson in the early part of the 20th century along with his filthy companion Colonel House who helped build the phony house of cards known as the Federal Reserve Bank, a private bank that owes its allegiance to Israel and Zionism?

This is the entire quest and purpose of this small, colloquially well-written, informal book of only 127 pages in length and with no chapter more than 4 short pages long, written in 1935, well before Mussolini got involved in WWII. Even though the small essays in this book are informally written and have no clear and logical expository plan, and even though they may qualify as "belles letteres," they are not an easy read and they are well-researched and carry a lot of punch.

From my perspective, you have to already know much before you can appreciate what Ezra Pound has to say. I'm not bragging. I have not read all of Thomas Jefferson's letters let alone his letters to Eppe, as Ezra Pound clearly has here. I have not lived in Italy as Ezra Pound had and have no idea what "the people" there might have been like. I have little historical knowledge of Mussolini in fact. Lastly, I have never read Frobenius, and what I know about Confucius can fill an entire paragraph, although the Ta Hio is available in public libraries.

What I do know, however, is that things have worked out very badly for America once it caved in to the international bankers -- finally, by 1913. Ezra Pound saw America go off the rails as an independent nation much, much earlier and he was looking not only for a judicious and honest economic system, he was also looking to find the moral men who cared about the nation once T.J. and Martin Van Buren had gone. A huge vacuum of responsible leadership was left. Mussolini looked pretty good at the time.

Ezra Pound is searching for answers and thinks he's come up with some good outcomes, hedging his bets with fascism under Mussolini:

"The brittle mind, living on prejudice or privilege as a a last refuge plays ostrich. Something is NOT what it's [sic] mamma or schoolmarm told it, and it simply can't readjust itself." (Page 100, XXVI, "Power")

Thomas Jefferson and the Duce have these things in common (between 1935 and 1937), according to Ezra Pound:

Both hate machinery and hate trying to make men into units of production
Both men were simpatico with agrarian society
Both men were NOT bamboozled by money
Both men used embargoes for the good of the nation and its people

Ezra Pound was not of the "beau monde" crowd. He was interested in the truth and the work, not the prestige and the money. You have to be of a special race of man to have these characteristics.

"Jefferson guided a governing class. A limited member of the public had the franchise. So far as the first sixty or more years of United States history are concerned, there was no need for Jefferson even to imagine a time when the more intelligent member of the public would be too stupid or too lazy to exercise their wit in the discharge of their 'duty.' I mean to say T.J. had a feeling of responsibility and he knew other men who had it, it didn't occur to him that their type of man would die out." (Chapter III< "Directio Voluntatis, p. 19)

Ezra Pound was like a few men existing today, wanting the self-serving and evil profiteers of the banking industry and the seller's of men's blood for money in government to be replaced by a government of moral, caring men that's for the people and worthy of respect. "Humanity . . . is not given to seeing the FACT, man sees his own preconception of fact." (Chapter VI, "Intelligentsias," p. 26)

"Nothing happens without efficient cause." (p. 26)

To the question he posed in 1935, "Do Jeffersonian ideas function in America as they currently do in Italy under the Duce in Italy," Ezra Pound correctly answered, "No."

Some "clever sneer-sprouters" today might still want to take pot-shots at Ezra Pound's work here, but they would offer nothing but "flummydiddle" as a retort because Ezra Pound's ideas were on the right track and still have something worthwhile for the seeker of a better world.