Mussolini Embraced Relativism

Absolute Relativism essentially teaches that “Truth differs from person to person & culture to culture.  Thus, there is no absolute Truth except nothing is absolutely true.”  Many who proclaim to fight for "equal rights" in our society today are wooed by this ideology.  What they do not realize is that they are embracing the same ideology that has been embraced by some of the most infamous tyrants in history.  Tyrants typically don't adhere to the belief that there are moral absolutes that they must never violate.  They believe Truth is whatever they make it to be. Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini attested to this belief.  Early in his political career, Mussolini wrote: "Everything I have said and done these last years is relativism, but intuition."  Modern relativism infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology, and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.  If Relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascism."  

Since Mussolini didn't recognize any high reality, moral or religious, to which he should conform, he invented his own moral code and enforced it on everybody that he could.  Ironically, Mussolini's ally, Adolf Hitler, also attested to this view when he stated "There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or the scientific sense."  Thus Hitler, like Mussolini, invented his own moral code and launched a vicious campaign to enforce it over all of Europe.  

Recent history has shown us that a lack of faith and the creation of individual codes of conduct does not bring about an end to violence.  On the contrary, it has actually helped bring about more of it.  People who "Imagined there is no Heaven, Hell, or Religion" have committed atrocities that make the "crimes committed in the name of faith" look like child's play.  The desire of Red China, the Khmer Rouge, and Stalin, all of whom challenged the teachings of faith and created their own moral codes, caused the deaths of untold millions in their efforts to implement their codes over the world.  

Perhaps the time has come for our equal rights activists to take a long look at the tragic history of relativism and make the inescapable conclusion that if we desire to promote peace and coexistence, that path of relativism is not the right one.

Sources:

Stefanick, Chris. "Absolute Relativism: The New Dictatorship and What to do About it."  San Diego: Catholic Answers Press, 2011.