With Mussolini ’s Italy, R.J.B. Bosworth—the foremost scholar on the subject writing in English—vividly brings to life the period in which Italians participated in one of the twentieth century’s most notorious political experiments. Il Duce’s Fascists were the original totalitarians, espousing a cult of violence and obedience that inspired many other dictatorships, Hitler’s first among them. But as Bosworth reveals, many Italians resisted its ideology, finding ways, ingenious and varied, to keep Fascism from taking hold as deeply as it did in Germany. A sweeping chronicle of struggle in terrible times, this is the definitive account of Italy’s darkest hour.
Originally published in Italian in 1980, Gli Stati Uniti e il fascismo: Alle origini dell'egemonia Americana in Italia is regarded today as a crucial text on the relationship between the United States and Italy during the interwar years. Aside from the addition of two new prefaces - one by the author and one by the book's translator, Molly Tambor - the original text has remained unchanged, so that Anglophone readers now have the opportunity to engage with this classic work. By analyzing the enduring relationship between the United States - especially its financial establishment - and fascist Italy up until Mussolini's conquest of Ethiopia in 1935, this book provides answers to some key questions about the interconnectedness of America's rise to hegemonic global financial power in the twentieth century and its support of Italian fascism during this time.
Emilio Gentile decodes Italy culturally, going beyond political and social dimensions that explain Italy's Fascist past in terms of class, or the cynicism of its leaders, or modernizing and expansionist ambitions.
In her examination of the culture of Italian fascism, Mabel Berezin focuses on how Mussolini's regime consciously constructed a nonliberal public sphere to support its political aims. Fascism stresses form over content, she believes, and the regime tried to build its political support through the careful construction and manipulation of public spectacles or rituals such as parades, commemoration ceremonies, and holiday festivities. The fascists believed they could rely on the motivating power of spectacle, and experiential symbols. In contrast with the liberal democratic notion of separable public and private selves, Italian fascism attempted to merge the public and private selves in political spectacles, creating communities of feeling in public piazzas. Such communities were only temporary, Berezin explains, and fascist identity was only formed to the extent that it could be articulated in a language of pre-existing cultural identities. In the Italian case, those identities meant the popular culture of Roman Catholicism and the cult of motherhood. Berezin hypothesizes that at particular historical moments certain social groups which perceive the division of public and private self as untenable on cultural grounds will gain political ascendance. Her hypothesis opens a new perspective on how fascism works.
Racial Theories in Fascist Italy examines the role played by race and racism in the development of Italian identity during the fascist period. The book examines the struggle between Mussolini, the fascist hierarchy, scientists and others in formulating a racial persona that would gain wide acceptance in Italy. This book will be of interest to historians, political scientists concerned with the development of fascism and scholars of race and racism.
The Fascist regime under Mussolini regarded its youth as its best hope for the future. Young people were courted more assiduously than any other group in the society and their political socialization became a central concern of the government. Believe, Obey, Fight discusses the various tools used by the Fascist regime from 1922 to 1943 to shape the political values and environment of the young. Tracy Koon focuses on the secondary agents of socialization, including the party, the educational establishment, youth groups, and the media of political communication. She shows that the response to this socialization ranged from apparent consent to dissent and finally to open opposition. The regime employed several methods to produce consensus among the young. Koon's analysis begins with a discussion of the rhetorical style of Mussolini's message and the key political myths manipulated by his propaganda machine: fascism as continuing revolution and social justice, the glories of ancient Rome, the hygienic function of war and violence, the religious spirit of the new creed, and the omniscience of the leader. She then describes the pre-Fascist educational system, the "most Fascist" Gentile reforms of 1923, and the later revision of those reforms by zealous party men engaged in the Fascist regimentation of teachers and students and the militarization and politicization of curricula and textbooks. Equally important agents of socialization were the Fascist groups organized for young people from their earliest years through the university level, including the annual national competitions and forums in which members could express their ideas on a range of issues. The regime provided physical, military, sports, and political training to strengthen the new Fascist society. Fascist socialization did for a time create a superficial consensus by appealing to both the love of conformity that marks the very young and the economic fears that caused students to conform in the hope of jobs. But Koon argues that the regime's attempt to exert totalitarian control over the young deprived them of personal identity. As time passed, the contradictions of the regime became clearer, the chasm between Fascist rhetoric and reality more obvious. In the end, the majority of young people came to believe that the regime had given them nothing to believe in, no one to obey, and nothing for which to fight. Originally published in 1985. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Today Mussolini is remembered as a hated dictator who, along with Hitler and Stalin, ushered in an era of totalitarian repression unsurpassed in human history. But how was he viewed by ordinary Italians during his lifetime? In Fascist Voices, Christopher Duggan draws on thousands of letters sent to Mussolini, as well as private diaries and other primary documents, to show how Italian citizens lived and experienced the fascist regime under Mussolini from 1922-1943. Throughout the 1930s, Mussolini received about 1,500 letters a day from Italian men and women of all social classes writing words of congratulation, commiseration, thanks, encouragement, or entreaty on a wide variety of occasions: his birthday and saint's day, after he had delivered an important speech, on a major fascist anniversary, when a husband or son had been killed in action. While Duggan looks at some famous diaries-by such figures as the anti-fascist constitutional lawyer Piero Calamandrei; the philosopher Benedetto Croce; and the fascist minister Giuseppe Bottai-the majority of the voices here come from unpublished journals, diaries, and transcripts. Utilizing a rich collection of untapped archival material, Duggan explores "the cult of Il Duce," the religious dimensions of totalitarianism, and the extraordinarily intimate character of the relationship between Mussolini and millions of Italians. Duggan shows that the figure of Mussolini was crucial to emotional and political engagement with the regime; although there was widespread discontent throughout Italy, little of the criticism was directed at Il Duce himself. Duggan argues that much of the regime's appeal lay in its capacity to appropriate the language, values, and iconography of Roman Catholicism, and that this emphasis on blind faith and emotion over reason is what made Mussolini's Italy simultaneously so powerful and so insidious. Offering a unique perspective on the period, Fascist Voices captures the responses of private citizens living under fascism and unravels the remarkable mixture of illusions, hopes, and fears that led so many to support the regime for so long.
This book explores the complex ways in which people lived and worked within the confines of Benito Mussolini’s regime in Italy, variously embracing, appropriating, accommodating and avoiding the regime’s incursions into everyday life. The contributions highlight the experiences of ordinary Italians – midwives and schoolchildren, colonists and soldiers – over the course of the Fascist era, in settings ranging from the street to the farm, and from the kitchen to the police station. At the same time, this volume also provides a framework for understanding the Italian experience in relation to other totalitarian dictatorships in twentieth-century Europe and beyond.
