From the moment Mussolini declared himself in favor of the war (World War 1), Italian Socialists smeared him for his heresy. 'Chi paga?' became the central question of the anti-Mussolini whisper campaign. 'Who's paying him?' He was accused of taking money from arms makers, and it was hinted darkly that he was on France's payroll. There's no evidence for any of this. From the beginning, fascism was dubbed as right-wing not because it necessarily was right-wing but because the communist left thought this was the best way to punish apostasy (and, even if it was right-wing in some long forgotten doctrinal sense, fascism was still right-wing socialism).Although Goldberg states that there is no evidence that Mussolini was paid to advocate interventionism on France's (and later America's) side, that is completely wrong. There is plenty of evidence, one of which is a direct statement by Mussolini where he describes his actions as his sins (which he proudly stated he would never beg for anyone's forgiveness to atone for those sins).
George Seldes documents several other instances where close advisors and even French propagandists (and several members of the French goverment) acknowledge they paid Mussolini at least 100,000 francs which would be used to start Mussolini's own newspaper (il Popolo d'Italia).
One of the problems I find with Liberal Fascism is that there is no clear context as to many of the events in Mussolini or even Italy's history. For example, after the general strike of 1919 and 1920 Mussolini was very disappointed in the Socialists inability to take action in a time when Italy was paralyzed by the stikers. During the same period, Mussolini was actively supporting the strikes and approved of many of the Socialist's actions. Years later, he would state:
...[the general strikes of 1919 and 1920] were the low acts of the Socialists, against which the Fascist patriots had to fight.When it became clear to Mussolini that the Socialists (which Mussolini approved of and was a former member until he was kicked out) were not going to attempt to seize power in Italy, he abandoned all hope and declared Socialism a failure (the Socialists were largely being torn apart by internal dissent). Shortly afterwords, Mussolini sold the services of his Black Shirts to special interests who wanted to crush the striking workers. Mussolini was given financial support through the Confederazione Generale dell' Industria and others provided him with weapons. This is the moment Mussolini begins using his Fascisti to target strikers, Socialists, Communists and even carried through a vendetta against all of his enemies on the Left. None of this is mentioned in Liberal Fascism. Jonah Goldberg carefully tiptoes around these inconvenient facts and as a result, he can easily downplay the large role industrialists and corporations played in not only Mussolini's fascism but also in Hitler's fascism.
In 425 pages, Henry Ford is mentioned only 3 times and in only one of those instances is it mentioned that he was an anti-Semite whom Hitler strongly admired. Instead of mentioning that Ford was a significant financeer of Hitler up until Hitler was arrested for instigating the Beer Hall Putsch, Goldberg only mentions that Hitler admired Ford's ability to mass produce the automobile. The chemical industry in Germany known as I.G. Farben is never mentioned although they made billions by financing Hitler. Fritz Thyssen, Junkers, J.P. Morgan, Standard Oil, DuPont, and many other international cartels made millions to billions in profits by financing Hitler and yet none of this is mentioned in Liberal Fascism and Goldberg works to downplay these facts.
