DOCSLIB.ORG

Myths, Rituals and Political Liturgies of the Fascist Regime

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Myths, Rituals and Political Liturgies of the Fascist Regime Paola S. Salvatori Scuola Normale Superiore – Pisa [email protected] Myths, rituals and political liturgies of the Fascist regime Panel: JS13. Political Rituals, Symbols and Celebrations An old historiographic formula dating back to 1961 defined Fascism as ‘The reign of words, Or rather, of words plus loudspeaker’: more than one generation of historians identified with that formula and, for at least three decades following the fall of the regime, highlighted an empty but fatal superstructure in the fascist celebratory rhetoric that concealed a basic ‘voluntary ignorance’1. In reality, Fascism had attributed an absolute centrality to political symbols from its very birth, in a short time realising a concentration of rituals and icons which would soon have given rise to a new style, immediately recognisable in the public and private life of millions of Italians. It was therefore a question of a historical and cultural phenomenon that was far more complex and structured than what was expressed by the concept of ‘regime of words’. In the last two decades, a number of important essays have 1 F. Venturi, Il regime fascista, in Trent’anni di storia italiana (1915-1945). Lezioni con testimonianze presentate da Franco Antonicelli, Einaudi, Torino 1975, pp. 186 and 187. From the mid 70s of the XX century, historians and linguists began to consider fascist rhetoric as one of the privileged points of view to analyse fascism also as a cultural phenomenon: among various pieces of work that appeared in these years, cfr. for example the proceedings of the Conference Parlare fascista. Lingua del fascismo, politica linguistica del fascismo, held in Genoa on 22-24 March 1984, published in ‘Movimento operaio e socialista’, 1, 1984; M. Isnenghi, Per una mappa linguistica di un “regime di parole”. A proposito del Convegno “Parlare fascista”, in ‘Movimento operaio e socialista’, 2, 1984, pp. 263- 275; E. Golino E. (1994), Parola di duce. Il linguaggio totalitario del fascismo, Rizzoli, Milano 2010 [1994]. 2 definitively confirmed the religious nature (in the explicit meaning of ‘secular religion’) of fascist ideology: some excellent studies have valorised the fundamental function represented by the myths and rituals, interpreting Fascism as a laical religion anchored onto a particularly structured symbolic apparatus. In fact, the mythological panorama of this twenty-year period foresaw a wide variety of symbols: the religious metaphor seemed to be the privileged modality to create rituals and political celebrations with a very powerful propagandistic objective2. As shall be seen, the elaboration of these rituals and symbols was the result of not always linear cultural paths, whereby the regime revived sometimes very ancient practices, and at others more recent ones, but always readapting and modernising them. In this sense a famous more recent precedent is represented by Gabriele D’Annunzio, who from the interventionist days of May 1915 had risen to the role of ‘vate nazionale’ (national poet-prophet) thanks to his prophetic emphatic rhetoric. D’Annunzio immediately became popular as an ideal point of reference of the Italian interventionists, creating a series of political liturgies that would then be adopted by the Fascist regime: he in fact valorised the cult of Romanity and that of the martyrs of the Italian Risorgimento, gave a new solemnity to the blood of those who had died for the Fatherland, defined renewed ‘sacred spaces’ of the city, and stressed the religious elements in his recourse to political rhetoric3. Furthermore, D’Annunzio introduced types of public speaking which would later on be faithfully taken up by Mussolini: it suffices to think of the Duce’s speeches given from the balcony in Piazza Venezia which were to win such popularity during the Fascist regime and which were inspired by the speeches that D’Annunzio had made from the balcony of Hotel Regina in Rome, in Via Veneto, during the ‘bright days’ of May 19154. A greater codification and arrangement of these aspects was later achieved during the fifteen-month occupation of the city of Fiume, once again led by D’Annunzio between September 1919 and December 1920: 2 Among various studies on the subject, cfr. above all, E. Gentile, Il culto del littorio. La sacralizzazione della politica nell’Italia fascista, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1993. 3 R. De Felice, D’Annunzio politico 1918-1938, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1978; G.L. Mosse, Il poeta e l’esercizio del potere politico: Gabriele D’Annunzio, in Id., L’uomo e le masse nelle ideologie nazionaliste, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1999, pp. 97-115; B. Bracco, Capi ed eroi tra grande guerra e dopoguerra: verticalizzare la storia e la politica, in Napoleone e il bonapartismo nella cultura politica italiana. 1802-2005, edited by A. Riosa, Guerini, Milano 2007, pp. 187-196. 4 Cfr. G. D’Annunzio, Per la più grande Italia. Orazioni e messaggi, Treves, Milano 1915. 3 these were months in which, together with specific political requests – the annexation of the city to Italy and the overcoming of the myth of the ‘mutilated victory’ – a way of doing politics was theorised with a decidedly revolutionary reach. In fact Fiume incarnated a fundamental phase in the construction of Fascism’s political liturgy, as it constituted an actual experiment in the revolutionary management of a micro-society: during the months in which Fiume was occupied, D’Annunzio blended pagan elements with other markedly religious ones in his speeches, once and for all establishing a new political style made up of verbal communication methods and political liturgies that aroused the emotional side of the participants5. The Fascist regime therefore developed liturgical modalities and symbolic apparatuses that had already been experimented in time, blending them together, highlighting their specific aspects, streamlining a system which – in just a short time – was to take on quite specific features. In the first months following the birth of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (founded in Milan on 23 March 1919), when Fascism was still one of the many movements that had risen from the ashes of the First World War, the Fascists loved to be seen as the missionaries of a new message: they would have had to fight and shed their own blood to spread the Fascist truth. The blood was immediately considered as a holy symbol: around the ‘Fascist martyrs’, who fell in the fight against the Socialists in the period going up to the March on Rome, arose a mythology that likened the fallen in battle in the Fascist revolution to those slain during the Risorgimento and the Great War. The intention was to unite the history of the Fascist movement to the history of the formation of the national State, to legitimise a specific group of persons in the role of single heir of the Fathers of the Fatherland6. Evidently the image of the blood shed for Italy referred to a sacralised dimension of holocaust and martyrdom: to this was linked also a mythologized idea of purifying violence, which would have maintained a fundamental symbolic importance for the whole Fascist period. From the same religious viewpoint in fact were also included the truncheon and fire: both an image of purification and rebirth, they pertained to the practice of the squad members and to the 5 Cfr. C. Salaris, Alla festa della rivoluzione. Artisti e libertari con D’Annunzio a Fiume, il Mulino, Bologna 2002. 6 Gentile, Il culto del littorio cit., pp. 30 seq. 4 destructive and cathartic violence exerted by the fascists. The policy of violence by squads of fascists always carried a dimension that was deeply steeped in religious elements. In this case however this was not just a form of sacralisation of politics or the exercise of a laical religion: the rituals of the squad communion foresaw the active presence of priests, who blessed the fascist pennants in the context of funeral ceremonies in the honour of the ‘martyrs’ of the Fascist revolution7. In short, the modalities of rhetoric and propaganda whereby the Fascist movement developed and became entrenched were different, to the point of transforming itself into a Party (in November 1921) and then of taking power (with the March on Rome on 28 October 1922). Nonetheless, even in such a multi-faceted framework, the revival of the myth of Romanity was undoubtedly pre-eminent. It is on this specific aspect that the attention will be focussed: ancient Rome was considered the first element of an imaginary and illustrious genealogy that would have teleologically led to the coming of Fascism8. Even the calendar seemed to give Fascism propitious opportunities for the mythologizing of the most ancient past, since there were three bimillenaries in the span of eight years: in 1930 there was the bimillenary of the birth of Virgil, while in 1935 the birth of Horace was celebrated. But it was above all 1937, with the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of Augustus, which represented a vital moment for the fascist propaganda system. As stated by Andrea Giardina, ‘by celebrating the great figures of Roman culture and politics after two thousand years, the regime valorised the symmetries or analogies between the present and past and conferred a character of eternity to its own endeavour’9. In fact, the first two bimillenaries lent themselves perfectly to the exaltation of the collaboration between intellectuals and regime, supplying a valuable model of mobilisation of the intellectual class. All the more so the two-thousandth 7 For all these aspects, cfr. ivi, pp. 41 seq. 8 On the fascist cult of romanity, the fundamental point of reference is A. Giardina, Ritorno al futuro: la romanità fascista, in A. Giardina, A. Vauchez, Il mito di Roma. Da Carlo Magno a Mussolini, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2000, pp. 212-296. As far as concerns, in particular, the evolution of the myth of Rome in Mussolini’s thought of the years going up to the March on Rome, cfr.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A British Reflection: the Relationship Between Dante's Comedy and The
    A British Reflection: the Relationship between Dante’s Comedy and the Italian Fascist Movement and Regime during the 1920s and 1930s with references to the Risorgimento. Keon Esky A thesis submitted in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. University of Sydney 2016 KEON ESKY Fig. 1 Raffaello Sanzio, ‘La Disputa’ (detail) 1510-11, Fresco - Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican. KEON ESKY ii I dedicate this thesis to my late father who would have wanted me to embark on such a journey, and to my partner who with patience and love has never stopped believing that I could do it. KEON ESKY iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis owes a debt of gratitude to many people in many different countries, and indeed continents. They have all contributed in various measures to the completion of this endeavour. However, this study is deeply indebted first and foremost to my supervisor Dr. Francesco Borghesi. Without his assistance throughout these many years, this thesis would not have been possible. For his support, patience, motivation, and vast knowledge I shall be forever thankful. He truly was my Virgil. Besides my supervisor, I would like to thank the whole Department of Italian Studies at the University of Sydney, who have patiently worked with me and assisted me when I needed it. My sincere thanks go to Dr. Rubino and the rest of the committees that in the years have formed the panel for the Annual Reviews for their insightful comments and encouragement, but equally for their firm questioning, which helped me widening the scope of my research and accept other perspectives.
    [Show full text]
  • The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. V
    The History Of Painting In Italy, Vol. V By Luigi Antonio Lanzi HISTORY OF PAINTING IN UPPER ITALY. BOOK III. BOLOGNESE SCHOOL. During the progress of the present work, it has been observed that the fame of the art, in common with that of letters and of arms, has been transferred from place to place; and that wherever it fixed its seat, its influence tended to the perfection of some branch of painting, which by preceding artists had been less studied, or less understood. Towards the close of the sixteenth century, indeed, there seemed not to be left in nature, any kind of beauty, in its outward forms or aspect, that had not been admired and represented by some great master; insomuch that the artist, however ambitious, was compelled, as an imitator of nature, to become, likewise, an imitator of the best masters; while the discovery of new styles depended upon a more or less skilful combination of the old. Thus the sole career that remained open for the display of human genius was that of imitation; as it appeared impossible to design figures more masterly than those of Bonarruoti or Da Vinci, to express them with more grace than Raffaello, with more animated colours than those of Titian, with more lively motions than those of Tintoretto, or to give them a richer drapery and ornaments than Paul Veronese; to present them to the eye at every degree of distance, and in perspective, with more art, more fulness, and more enchanting power than fell to the genius of Coreggio. Accordingly the path of imitation was at that time pursued by every school, though with very little method.
    [Show full text]
  • The Power of Images in the Age of Mussolini
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 The Power of Images in the Age of Mussolini Valentina Follo University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History Commons, and the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Follo, Valentina, "The Power of Images in the Age of Mussolini" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 858. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/858 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/858 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Power of Images in the Age of Mussolini Abstract The year 1937 marked the bimillenary of the birth of Augustus. With characteristic pomp and vigor, Benito Mussolini undertook numerous initiatives keyed to the occasion, including the opening of the Mostra Augustea della Romanità , the restoration of the Ara Pacis , and the reconstruction of Piazza Augusto Imperatore. New excavation campaigns were inaugurated at Augustan sites throughout the peninsula, while the state issued a series of commemorative stamps and medallions focused on ancient Rome. In the same year, Mussolini inaugurated an impressive square named Forum Imperii, situated within the Foro Mussolini - known today as the Foro Italico, in celebration of the first anniversary of his Ethiopian conquest. The Forum Imperii's decorative program included large-scale black and white figural mosaics flanked by rows of marble blocks; each of these featured inscriptions boasting about key events in the regime's history. This work examines the iconography of the Forum Imperii's mosaic decorative program and situates these visual statements into a broader discourse that encompasses the panorama of images that circulated in abundance throughout Italy and its colonies.
    [Show full text]
  • A Bundle of Rods: Transmigration of Symbols and Spatial Rhetoric in the Architecture of Modernity1
    A Bundle of Rods: Transmigration of Symbols and Spatial Rhetoric in the Architecture of Modernity1 Daniele Vadalà Introduction During the twenty years of Fascist rule, the diffusion and pervasiveness throughout Italy of the popularized image of the ancient roman symbol of fasces lictori reflects well the sense of a political movement that mainly appealed on the symbolic lure of a spatially based rhetoric. The sequence and connections of these symbolic acts, rather than appearing the outcome of bizarre or extravagant improvisations, were indeed part of a well-orchestrated appeal to a mix of feelings then animating the popular masses of Italy. This strategy could well have been grounded in the current account of the “vittoria mutilata” after the First World War and the distress caused by a profound crisis of the liberal state, whose prestige and authority had been perceptibly weakened in the interwar period by the rising action of labor organizations and communist parties during a period of higher unemployment and economic crisis. This combination of social resentment and uncertainty for the future was an easy target for the emergent regime to emotionally involve Italians through an arsenal of symbols and rites, a well-displayed set of spatially-based dramatizations that in the course of twenty decisive years paved the way to a rising and robust popular consensus. In his seminal work, Le religioni della politica, Emilio Gentile distinguishes two phases in the edification of this “secular cult.”2 The first aimed at consolidating the Fascist authority through the reconsecration of symbols and rites of Italian national unity, among these the celebration of the Statuto Albertino bestowed upon Italy by the Savoia monarchy and the glorification of the First World War.
    [Show full text]
  • The Destruction of Ancient Rome : a Sketch of the History of the Monuments
    : THE DESTRUGTION OF ANCIENT ROME LANCJANl V1665., BY PURCHASE. DISCARD TOWN LIBRARY LANCASTER, MASS. /.B.CLARKE f&antj books of &rd)3cologtj ano Antiquities THE DESTRUCTION OF ANCIENT ROME o I I .5 S all 1 1 ?- P -n :..? i H i ?<- ,-V ':, ' = -/'<>' -. 4l -- --*- <i^ 1 > . i, -f' NM|i ,;^>;, >^n ^M/^ \A V> V> */i &, d K /. THE DESTRUCTION OF ANCIENT HOME A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE MONUMENTS BY RODOLFO LANCIANI D.C.L. OXFORD, LL.D. HARVARD PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT TOPOGRAPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ROME Wefo ff otfc THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1899 All rightu reserved COPYRIGHT, 1899 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NortoooB J. S. Cushing & Co. Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE LIB.V.RY PREFATORY NOTE PROFESSOR RODOLFO LANCIANI needs no introduction to English readers. This book sums up briefly the results of researches, extending over many years, in regard to the fate of the buildings and masterpieces of art in ancient Rome. In his work upon this subject and upon his large map Professor Lanciani has searched hundreds of volumes of municipal and ecclesiastical records, besides examining several thousand separate documents ; and he has ran- sacked the principal libraries of Europe for prints and drawings showing the remains of ancient Rome at differ- ent periods. Much of the new material thus collected will appear in fuller form in an extensive work, compris- ing several volumes, which will be published in Italian under the title Storia degli Scavi di Roma. The present volume is a forerunner of the larger work.
    [Show full text]
  • Giuseppe Terragni, Mario Radice and the Casa Del Fascio
    history Building, furniture design and the decorative arts collaborate to embody Fascist political values and mass identity in an icon of modern architecture. Furnishing the Fascist interior: Giuseppe Terragni, Mario Radice and the Casa del Fascio David Rifkind ‘The struggles, conquests, and responsibility for victory the scales of furniture and urbanism – and by contributed a mystical beauty to the humble collaborating artists, for whom constructs and headquarters, where enthusiasm for the Duce and the installations utilising photomontage acted as heroic blood sacrificed by the enlisted were often the modernist interpretations of the traditional media greatest source of comfort and the most poetic of fresco, bas-relief and mosaic. Furnishings – “furnishing”.’1 including furniture, installations and plastic arts – played an integral role in fostering three recurrent The political values of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist themes throughout Terragni’s project: establishing regime resonated throughout the architecture and the symbolic presence of the Duce; representing the furnishings of Giuseppe Terragni’s Casa del Fascio political values of the Party through the use of (1932-36) in Como [1].2 Every physical detail and materials and formal relationships; and spatial relationship in this building is invested with constructing a uniquely Fascist identity, stressing political symbolism. The building represents an national (rather than regional) allegiances and example of interwar modernism in which emphasising the formation and exploitation of a architecture and furnishings were considered as an mass identity for the public. This essay considers how integral whole, both by the architect – whose these three themes are physically manifested in the architecture operated in a middle register between building’s most important interior spaces.
    [Show full text]
  • Mussolini's Strengths & Weaknesses
    Mussolini’s Strengths & Weaknesses Sample Essay What were Mussolini's strengths and weaknesses as a political leader 1922-1939? Mussolini had both strengths and weaknesses as a leader of Italy. He was very successful in his consolidation of power, his use of propaganda and in mending relations with the Catholic church. However areas in which he was weak were his ill-thought out economic policies, his foreign policy and his Nazi relations. Mussolini founded the fascio party in 1919. By 1922 he was prime minister of Italy. This itself shows one of his biggest strengths. Mussolini came to power in 1922 after his March on Rome. In 1922 his fascio squadristi had helped landowners to squash strikes of their workers so he had plenty of support. As well as this there was enormous political instability at the time so people welcomed a strong leader. After the March on Rome King Emmanuel III but Mussolini in power. He quickly moved to consolidate this power, bringing in the Acerbo Law in 1923 which gave total power to the party which possessed 66% of the vote. The law was welcomed by the public as an end to the political instability and Mussolini ensred that he had two thirds of the vote using his squadrisit to intimidate voters. In this way Mussolini had total control and was soon ruling by decree. However he nearly lost it all due to the murder of Giacomo Matteotti in broad daylight by his squadristi. It was only thanks to the Aventine Mussolini’s Strengths & Weaknesses | Sample Essay 1 Succession that he managed to retain power.
    [Show full text]
  • Origins of Fascism
    ><' -3::> " ORIGINS OF FASCISM by Sr. M. EVangeline Kodric, C.. S .. A. A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette Unive,r s1ty in Partial FulfillmeIlt of the Re­ qUirements for the Degree of Master of Arts M1lwaukee, Wisconsin January, -1953 ',j;.",:, ':~';'~ INTRODUCTI ON When Mussolini founded the Fascist Party in 1919, he " was a political parvenu who had to create his ovm ideological pedigree. For this purpose he drew upon numerous sources of the past and cleverly adapted them to the conditions actually existing in Italy during the postwar era. The aim of this paper 1s to trace the major roots of the ideology and to in­ terpret some of the forces that brought about the Fascistic solution to the economic and political problems as t hey ap­ peared on the Italian scene. These problems, however, were not peculiar to Italy alone. Rather they were problems that cut across national lines, and yet they had to be solved within national bounda­ ries. Consequently, the idea that Fascism is merely an ex­ tension of the past is not an adequate explanation for the coming of Fascism; nor is the idea that Fascism is a mo­ mentary episode in history a sufficient interpr etat ion of the phenomenon .. ,As Fascism came into its own , it evolved a political philosophy, a technique of government, which in tUrn became an active force in its own right. And after securing con­ trol of the power of the Italian nation, Fascism, driven by its inner logic, became a prime mover in insti gating a crwin of events that precipitated the second World War.
    [Show full text]
  • On Fascist Ideology
    On Fascist Ideology Federico Finchelstein Comprendere e saper valutare con esattezza il nemico, significa possedere gia` una con- dizione necessaria per la vittoria. Antonio Gramsci1 Fascism is a political ideology that encompassed totalitarianism, state terrorism, imperialism, racism and, in the German case, the most radical genocide of the last century: the Holocaust. Fascism, in its many forms did not hesitate to kill its own citizens as well as its colonial subjects in its search for ideological and political closure. Millions of civilians perished on a global scale during the apogee of fascist ideologies in Europe and beyond. In historical terms, fascism can be defined as a movement and a regime. Emilio Gentile – who, with Zeev Sternhell and George Mosse,2 is the most insightful historian of fascism – presents fascism as a modern revolutionary phenomenon that was nationalist and revolution- ary, anti-liberal and anti-Marxist. Gentile also presents fascism as being typically organized in a militaristic party that had a totalitarian conception of state politics, an activist and anti- theoretical ideology as well as a focus on virility and anti-hedonistic mythical foundations. For Gentile a defining feature of fascism was its character as a secular religion which affirms the primacy of the nation understood as an organic and ethnically homogenous community. Moreover, this nation was to be hierarchically organized in a corporativist state endowed with a war-mongering vocation that searches for a politics of national expansion, potency and conquest. Fascism, in short, was not a mere reactionary ideology. Rather, fascism aimed at creating a new order and a new civilization.3 The word fascism derives from the Italian word fascio and refers to a political group (such as the political group lead by Giuseppe Garibaldi during the time of Italian unification.) Fascism also refers visually and historically to a Roman imperial symbol of authority.
    [Show full text]
  • Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy
    Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy David Rifkind Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2007 copyright 2007 David Rifkind all rights reserved Abstract Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy David Rifkind Through a detailed study of the journal Quadrante and its circle of architects, critics, artists and patrons, this Ph.D. dissertation investigates the relationship between modern architecture and fascist political practices in Italy during Benito Mussolini's regime (1922-43). Rationalism, the Italian variant of the modern movement in architecture, was at once pluralistic and authoritarian, cosmopolitan and nationalistic, politically progressive and yet fully committed to the political program of Fascism. An exhaustive study of Quadrante in its social context begins to explain the relationships between the political content of an architecture that promoted itself as the appropriate expression of fascist policies, the cultural aspirations of an architecture that drew on contemporary developments in literature and the arts, and the international function of a journal that promoted Italian modernism to the rest of Europe while simultaneously exposing Italy to key developments across the Alps. Contents List of figures iii Acknowledgements xv Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Architecture, Art of the State 16 1926-1927: the Gruppo
    [Show full text]
  • Redalyc.Democratic Corporatism – the Italian Debate During the “First
    Estudos Ibero-Americanos ISSN: 0101-4064 [email protected] Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul Brasil Zaganella, Marco Zaganella Democratic Corporatism – The Italian debate during the “First Republic” (1948-1992) Estudos Ibero-Americanos, vol. 42, núm. 2, mayo-agosto, 2016, pp. 430-453 Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul Porto Alegre, Brasil Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=134646844005 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative CORPORATIVISMO HISTÓRICO NO BRASIL E NA EUROPA http://dx.doi.org/10.15448/1980-864X.2016.2.22505 Democratic Corporatism – The Italian debate during the “First Republic” (1948-1992)* Corporativismo Democrático – O debate italiano durante a “Primeira República” (1948-1992) Corporativismo demócrata – El debate italiano durante la “Primera República” (1948-1992) Marco Zaganella** Abstract: The paper intends to explore the Italian debate on corporatism after the fall of fascism, in the years of the so-called “First Republic” (1948-1992). Over this long time period, which spanned more than four decades, the debate on corporatism continued to interest the nostalgic political right represented by the Italian Social Movement (MSI), but rekindled also the minds of Catholics. In both cases, the aim was to harmonize the corporatist theory with democratic principles. During Sixties the debate on the launch of a planning policy in Italy was seized by some members of the MSI as an opportunity to revive the corporatism and find a concrete solution to “govern” the Italian economy.
    [Show full text]
  • Bacchus Among the Blackshirts: Wine Making, Consumerism and Identity in Fascist Italy, 1919–1937
    Contemporary European History (2020), 29, 394–415 doi:10.1017/S0960777319000377 ARTICLE Bacchus among the Blackshirts: Wine Making, Consumerism and Identity in Fascist Italy, 1919–1937 Brian J Griffith University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, 90095-1473, USA [email protected] This article explores the way in which wine came to be viewed as a quintessentially ‘Italian’ beverage among Italy’s middle- and upper-class households during fascism’s twenty years in power. Due to signifi- cant increases in wine consumption among the labouring classes during the years immediately following the First World War, wine, as a general category of beverage, had become closely associated within the minds of many bourgeois and wealthy consumers with the country’s popular taverns and saloons, alco- holism and physical and moral ‘degeneration.’ In response, fascist Italy’s typical wine growers, merchants and industrialists worked feverishly to rehabilitate the beverage’s downtrodden reputation via a series of wide-ranging public relations and collective marketing campaigns during the 1920s and 1930s. By pro- moting the beverage’s hygienic and alimentary qualities, as well as systematically intertwining the moder- ate consumption of the peninsula’s standardised wines with the dictatorship’s nationalisation and popular mobilisation programmes, this article will show, the Industrial Wine Lobby successfully re-established ‘wine’s honour’ and, simultaneously, recontextualised the country’s typical wines as Italy’s wholesome, family-friendly, ‘national beverage’. In November 1933 an extraordinary paperback appeared on the shelves of Italy’s bookstores and news- paper kiosks. Titled The Art of Drinking (L’arte di bere), Umberto Notari’s ‘fictional essay on econom- ics’ addressed the origins of, as well as proposed various solutions to, what many contemporaries considered to be the country’s burgeoning ‘wine crisis’.
    [Show full text]