Paola S. Salvatori Scuola Normale Superiore – Pisa [email protected]

Myths, rituals and political liturgies of the regime

Panel: JS13. Political Rituals, Symbols and Celebrations

An old historiographic formula dating back to 1961 defined 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 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 . 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 , in Via , 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 and the overcoming of the myth of the ‘mutilated victory’ – a way of doing politics was theorised with a decidedly 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 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 , 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 , 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, 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 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. P.S. Salvatori, La Roma di Mussolini dal socialismo al fascismo (1901-1922), in ‘Studi Storici’, XLVII, 3, 2006, pp. 749-780. For a historiographic reflection on the studies regarding the fascist myth of romanity, cfr. P.S. Salvatori, Fascismo e romanità, in ‘Studi Storici’, LV, 2014, 1, pp. 227-239. 9 Giardina, Ritorno al futuro: la romanità fascista cit., p. 229. 5

anniversary of Augustus, celebrated for a whole year and which was transformed into a refined system of propaganda whereby to celebrate the Empire of Augustus and that of Mussolini together: on 9 May 1936 it was the Duce himself that announced to the Italian people the reappearance of the empire ‘on the fatal hills of Rome’, with his famous speech given from the balcony of Piazza Venezia. From 23 September 1937 to 23 September 1938, therefore, the whole of Italy was mobilised to pay homage to Augustus and Mussolini, to a Rome of the past and an Italy of the present, to ancient imperial victories and renewed contemporary glories. During the years of the regime recourse was made to the myth of Romanity not only with regard to the celebratory rhetoric: the presence of ancient Rome was fundamental in the terminology of the military and political context, in place names and urban choices, in body gestures and physiognomic attitudes. An example of this is given by the ‘Fascist salute’, made with the right hand raised with the outstretched palm, whose origin in fact goes back to D’Annunzio – it was used by D’Annunzio’s legionnaires in Fiume – but around which was built a political and symbolic mythology which claimed to be of Roman origin10. On the other hand, well before the March on Rome took place, it had been Mussolini himself that proclaimed the supremacy of the cult and the symbols linked to ancient Rome: speaking in Bologna on 3 April 1921 on the occasion of the inaugural ceremony of the first fascist convention of Emilia and Romagna, he announced that he had established a suitable anniversary for the commemoration of ‘Fascist day’: this would be honoured every 21 April, coinciding with the anniversary of the Birth of Rome. According to an ancient tradition, described by the Latin scholar Varro [II-I BC], the city had been founded on 21 April 753 BC: it was not by chance that Mussolini chose that very date to exalt the Fascist movement. In creating the first ‘holy feast day’ of the mythological fascist universe11, Mussolini explicitly superimposed the history of contemporary Italy with that of ancient Rome12. One year later, on 21 April 1922, celebrating together the Birth of Rome and the ‘day of Fascism’,

10 Ivi, pp. 214-215. For a thorough analysis of the history of the so-called ‘’, cfr. M.M. Winkler, The Roman Salute. Cinema, History, Ideology, The Ohio State U.P., Columbus 2009. 11 E. Gentile, Il fascismo come religione politica, in ‘Storia contemporanea’, XXI, 1990, 6, p. 1102. 12 Opera, XVI, p. 244 (speech given in Bologna on 3 April 1921). 6

Mussolini announced the fundamental role that the myth of Romanity would have in Fascist ideology, definitively establishing the city of Rome as the political, moral and historical capital of Italy:

To celebrate the Birth of Rome means to celebrate our kind of civilisation, means to exalt our history and our race, means to lean firmly on the past in order to project better onto the future. As a matter of fact, Rome and Italy are two inseparable terms [...] Rome is our starting point and reference; it is our symbol, or, if you will, our myth. We dream about the Roman Italy, that is, the wise and strong, disciplined and imperial Italy. Much of what was the immortal spirit of Rome is reborn in fascism: the lictor is Roman, our organization of combat is Roman, our pride and our courage are Roman: ‘Civis romanus sum’13.

The Rome towards which Mussolini was leaning was the imperial and victorious one of Augustus14, a Rome of colonial expansion, the fascio littorio and discipline; the symbol of Fascism, which had not yet gained power, was to be found in the references to Romanity and the acquisition of the fascio littorio as a privileged symbol. As the months passed and all at once, starting with the seizing of power, the signs of the presence of the myth of ancient Rome in fact became widespread and evident: the fascio littorio appeared more and more often in public iconography, to the point of almost becoming omnipresent. The original meaning of that ancient symbol was however deeply distorted: Fascism accustomed public opinion to an idea of fascio littorio that was immediately linked to one of coercion and violence: and yet, the fascio has a thousand-year old symbolic history that goes back to a democratic and revolutionary tradition too. The Etruscan origin of the fascio littorio is demonstrated by a fascio found in the so-called tomba del littore in Vetulonia and dates back to the second half of the VII century BC; the

13 Opera, XVIII, pp. 160-161 (Passato e avvenire, in ‘Il Popolo d’Italia’, 21 April 1922). 14 On the centralità of the myth of Augustus in fascist ideology, cfr. Giardina, Ritorno al futuro: la romanità fascista cit., pp. 246-247; A. Giardina, L’impero di Augusto, in I volti del potere, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2010, pp. 23-70; A. Giardina, Augusto tra due bimillenari, in Augusto, progetto di E. La Rocca, edited by E. La Rocca, C. Parisi Presicce, A. Lo Monaco, C. Giroire, D. Roger, Electa, Milano 2013, pp. 57-72. 7

fascio was then adopted by monarchical Rome, to then become an essential symbol of the system of the republican magistrature. The Roman fasci were made of a bundle of elm or birch twigs or rods about one and half metres long and tied together with strips of red leather, with an overlying or laterally inserted axe; they symbolised the magistrate’s power in his coercive dimension, since the rods were the symbol of corporal punishment by flogging, while the axe that of beheading. During the years of the , the Roman fascio was given meanings that were unknown in antiquity, and they burst onto the scene of political iconography almost systematically: the recourse to that ancient symbol was in fact functional in an anti-monarchist and republican message. From 1789 onwards, the fascio was thus represented according to a range of quite varied iconographic stylistic features. For example the axe could be substituted by a halberd, the symbol of warrior virtue; the whole fascio was often associated with the helm iconographically – symbol of the government and the virtue of those in power; it could also be accompanied by the image of the Phrygian cap, which in ancient times was given to freed slaves by their masters and which had taken on the symbolic value of ‘freedom’ from the times of the assassination of Caesar15. Sometimes the fascio was placed next to scales, the symbol of justice; moreover from its summit could come out not one but a multitude of peaks, to symbolise the cohesion and the strength of the revolutionary people. In any case, even in the variety of its allegorical allusions, the fascio littorio had two principle meanings during the years of revolution: in its version with the axe or halberd it was the symbol of justice carried out even by means of violence, by the people and no longer by the ; if represented without the axe it instead referred to the unity of the Republic and the fraternity of the French people. Therefore in those years the fascio was above all the symbol of compactness and a powerful and indissoluble union16. This end was maintained

15 A. Savio, Il berretto frigio sulla moneta; un viaggio da oriente ad occidente, in ‘Rivista Italiana di Numismatica e Scienze Affini’, CIII, 2001, pp. 51-69; A. Savio, Il berretto della libertà nella documentazione numismatica romana e la sua trasformazione durante la Rivoluzione Francese, in ‘Rivista Italiana di Numismatica e Scienze Affini’, CV, 2004, pp. 25-63; F. Benigno, Il berretto della libertà, in Simboli della politica, edited by F. Benigno, L. Scuccimarra, Viella, Roma 2010, pp. 223- 245. 16 On the fascio littorio during the French Revolution and, more generally on the success of the myth of Rome in the XIX century, cfr. A. Giardina, Dalla Rivoluzione francese alla prima guerra mondiale: 8

during the whole of the XIX century: during the period of the Jacobin republics and the Risorgimento in Italy, the iconography of the fascio littorio was used both as a reference to the ideals of the French Revolution and as a symbol of the aspiration to national unity and freedom, in the explicit refusal of monarchic and papal power. An example of this given by the practices of the Roman Republic of 1798-99 and later of 1848-49, when the republican fascio was used in various contexts: on banners, cheques issued by the Republic and on coins. In Rome the fascio was often accompanied by the imperial eagle and just as often by the Phrygian cap: in this case too the iconography was therefore open to symbolic contaminations which blurred its meanings. During the 19th century in Italy the expression ‘fascio’ also came to be part of the political terminology: with this word a ‘league’, a compact ‘union’ of people was intended, with an obvious revolutionary meaning. In short, Fascism drew inspiration from that sophisticated symbolic system, isolating and highlighting only the violent and repressive elements, which became the only immediate points of reference. When Mussolini came to power, there was in fact an iconographic and semantic modification of the Roman fascio: a rapid series of passages made that ancient symbol lose the democratic and republican connotations that it had acquired starting from the French Revolution, transforming it into the official emblem of a coercive and dictatorial system17. However, many distinguished scholars have set out to demonstrate the true origin of the fascist fascio from the Roman one, completely omitting the passage through the French Revolution. In the events surrounding the fascio littorio, as in others concerning the relationship between ancient Rome and Fascism, a fundamental role was in fact played by the scholars of ancient history and, to an even greater extent, by the archaeologists: Giardina pointed out how, during the Fascist period, the connection between antiquity and politics was not limited to the choice of icons or dates to celebrate that were linked to that distant world, but was rather the outcome of a cultural system that found a necessary scientific legitimation

miti repubblicani e miti nazionali, in A. Giardina, A. Vauchez, Il mito di Roma. Da Carlo Magno a Mussolini, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2000, pp. 117-211. 17 On the distortion of the meaning that the symbol of the fascio littorio underwent owing to the fascist appropriation, cfr. Giardina, Ritorno al futuro: la romanità fascista cit., pp. 224-227. 9

in the disciplines of classical antiquity and above all in archaeology18. The symbolic and cultural world linked to Roman antiquity seemed to be a mirror worthy of the new regime and an ideal point of arrival in the projects for the reconstruction of Italy and the construction of the new fascist man. It was not just by chance therefore that it was a renowned archaeologist who was called upon to study and create the symbol of the fascio littorio. In mid December 1922 (just a few weeks therefore after the taking of power) it was decided to mint a new 2 lira coin on which was engraved the fascio littorio, already at the time perceived as the symbol of ancient Rome and, together, of the new Italy19. It was Mussolini himself that presented the idea, establishing that the new coins would have the effigy of the king on one side and the fascio littorio on the other 20. After just a few weeks the delicate task of reconstruction of the symbol, which would then have become the distinctive element of the new political line, was entrusted to the then 64 year old Giacomo Boni – director of the excavations in the Roman Forum from 1898 to 1911 and from 1907 also of those on the Palatine Hill. This commitment was one of the many fascist cultural events of which Boni was protagonist: he was a great figure whose intelligence, enabling him to grasp the importance of the most advanced archaeology and restoration techniques, was combined with an almost sacred conception of his mission as reviver of Romanity. He only lived to see the dawn of the new regime as he died on 10 July 1925, but he managed all the same to identify in it and its leader the propitious historical moment for the long awaited return of ancient Rome: for that moment he imagined a series liturgies and rituals that would have left a profound wake in the propaganda of the following years21. For example, the celebrations that were held in Rome on 31 October 1923 on the occasion of the 1st anniversary of the seizing of power by Fascism, were deeply influenced by Boni’s inspiration. During the events that took place that day, a fascist

18 A. Giardina, s.v. Archeologia, in Dizionario del fascismo, edited by V. De Grazia, S. Luzzatto, I, Einaudi, Torino 2002, pp. 86-90. 19 ACS, PCM, 1922, fasc. 9.8. 20 ACS, PCM, Resoconti, 1923-24, b. 35. The same document, even if in a slightly different version, can be consulted also in ACS, PCM, Verbali, 1 January 1923. A summary was also published in the national newspapers of the following days: cfr., for example, ‘Il Giornale di Roma’, 2 January 1923, p. 1. 21 P.S. Salvatori, Liturgie immaginate: Giacomo Boni e la romanità fascista, in ‘Studi Storici’, LIII, 2012, 2, pp. 421-438; P.S. Salvatori, Nascita di un’icona politica: il piccone del duce, in ‘Quaderni di Storia’, XXXVIII, 76, July-December 2012, pp. 277-287. 10

procession was organised that ended with the laying of a laurel wreath in the Roman Forum in the place where the body of Julius Caesar was burned. On that occasion the official speeches were read by ministers, civil and military authorities, representatives of the Combatants Association, of the of Italy and of the National War Veterans Association 22 . Undoubtedly this specific liturgy – in which the sacred dimension was made clear both in the procession of a religious nature and in the revival of Romanity – had been designed by Boni. The first clear sign that he gave to the fascist cult of Romanity concerned the very definition of the symbol of the fascio littorio: he was entrusted with the task of reconstructing the effigy by the Treasury minister Alberto De Stefani. Boni wanted to recreate a model of fascio that was as far as possible the same as the ancient one, in order to move away once and for all from the French Revolution model: he therefore created a life-size prototype, made with birch twigs almost two metres long, to which was laterally attached an axe in the same way as those depicted in the ancient marble bas-reliefs. The philological precision inspiring his work was such that he dedicated energy and care even to finding examples of birch trees that were exactly like those used in antiquity for the making of fasci. The new coin designed by the artist Publio Morbiducci was minted at the end of July 1923: on the heads side it portrayed the semi-bust of the king looking to the right and, around him, the wording VITTORIO - EMANUELE - III - RE - D’ITALIA; on the tails side the fascio littorio with axe facing right, the inscription BUONO DA LIRE 2, the sign of the Mint, the date and the names of the author and engraver23. With the issuing of the new coin the new symbol of the fascio was born, the completely fascist one, totally independent of all the entire democratic tradition which, from 1789 onwards, had filled that icon with anti-monarchical and republican meanings. The new image of the fascio, as reconstructed by the archaeologist Boni, was steeped in concepts that not only referred to ‘a symbol of strength and dominion’, but also ‘a deep religious meaning’, as one could read in an article that appeared in the ‘Popolo d’Italia’ of 4 April 1923. The fact of adopting the fascio littorio on the fascist coins also shows that the new religion of the fascist fatherland was born in the weeks immediately following the March

22 ACS, PCM (1923), 2.4-1.2680, Celebrazione anniversario Marcia su Roma. 23 P.S. Salvatori, L’adozione del fascio littorio nella monetazione dell’Italia fascista, in ‘Rivista Italiana di Numismatica e Scienze Affini’, CIX, 2008, pp. 333-352. 11

on Rome. It was Boni’s own cultural operation that triggered that rapid process of dissemination of the fascio symbol which in no time at all was to transform the whole of Italy into a muddle of rituals, myths, symbols and iconographies that were immediately attributable to the new littorio cult and, therefore, to the cult of Romanity. As of 1 December 1925, a legislative iter began which in the space of four years would have definitively transformed the fascio littorio from party symbol into state symbol: on that date Mussolini signed a circular whereby it was set out that the fascio was to be collocated on all the ministry buildings. On 12 December 1926 it was declared state emblem, and a few days later the exclusive monopoly over authorisations for the manufacturing and diffusion of badges bearing the symbol of the fascio was left to the government and the Fascist Party. On 27 March 1927 it was decreed that the on the left of the Savoia shield, the arms of the state, were placed the littorio emblem. The ‘fascistisation’ of the fascio littorio, with its definitive transfiguration in the principle national emblem of fascist Italy, in the end took place on 11 April 1929: on that date, a royal decree law laid down that the arms of the state, the appearance of which had been established since 1890, was thus modified: the monarchic Savoia shield would no longer have been held up by two lions but by two enormous fasci littori24. This was the clear warning of the transformation that had taken place in Italy, with a monarchy that was now totally resting on the fascist government, and with a decidedly imbalanced diarchy in favour of Mussolini, head of the government and leader.

A short while following the seizing of power, besides the coin also another commonly used object became the vehicle by means of which the new Fascist Italy spread the symbol of the fascio littorio: the stamp. On 24 October 1923, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the March on Rome, a series of stamps was issued, realised from sketches by Duilio Cambellotti and Giacomo Balla: the presence of that symbol, together with modern press techniques, marked a turning point in philately, with a propagandistic impact and an aesthetic

24 On these and other provisions regarding the littorio symbol, cfr. Gentile, Il culto del littorio cit., pp. 88-90. 12

effect ‘of disconcerting divide’25. In none of the three iconographic designs did the symbols of the house of Savoia appear, while the fascio littorio stood out in all of them. In the stamp designed by Cambellotti, whose theme was that of youth, there are three fasci littori in the foreground on a background branches in flower symbolising the return of a new Italian spring. Of the two stamps designed by Balla, one represented the reconquered peace after victory in war: the design shows an eagle holding a fascio littorio in its claws, surrounded by a wreath composed of oak leaves (reference to immortality and perennial honour) and laurel (symbol of peace). In the last stamp, again by Balla, a particular grouping pictured fascist progress: two gigantic fasci littori frame an expanse of smoking factories with aircraft flying over them. In these exquisite stamps were thus represented industry and aviation as the archetypes of progress that Italy had reconquered thanks to Fascism, whose now inevitable presence was depicted by the fascio icon. Even among the opponents of the new regime it was immediately evident that the appearance of the fascio littorio on the main commonly used objects would have coincided with a true appropriation of Italian political and daily life by Fascism. A fine example of this was given by what happened in the daily socialist newspaper ‘Avanti!’, which was historically against both Fascism and Mussolini, in which the following note was published on 3 April 1923:

The new type of Italian cigarette ‘Eja’ will be on sale on 21 April. It is under production. On the paper will be printed also the fascio littorio. On newspaper subtitles, cigarette holders, Easter cakes, the bands around pigs trotters from Modena, on the new 2 lira coins, on walls, on aperitifs, on chocolates and new cigarettes. The reader is requested to believe that Italy is governed by fascists and that it is all fascist…26.

In these lines published in the ‘Avanti!’ newspaper a reality that was now dramatically evident to everyone was set down in black and white: what was making the fascio littori a

25 On the issuing of stamps of 24 October 1923, cfr. F. Zeri, I francobolli italiani. Grafica e ideologia dalle origini al 1948, Il Melangolo, Genova 1993, pp. 32, 35-38. 26 ‘Avanti!’, 3 April 1923, p. 4 (Il Fascio littorio anche sulle sigarette). 13

truly national symbol was that absolute pervasiveness whereby it could not help but be seen by millions of Italian and foreign citizens right from the first few months of government. This element is glaringly obvious from the simple observations of objects used during the fascist period: in advertising, the covers of exercise books and school books, on food and drinks packets, the fascio stood out everywhere. Very soon cities were to be inundated by the presence of that effigy: on the manholes of the sewer networks, the fountains, the facades of private buildings, public offices, universities and stations. In short, the fasci littori were spread practically everywhere for two decades. However the habit of the Italians to coexist with this image had no difficulty in being transformed into pure iconoclasm at the most suitable moment. And this happened starting from the night of 25 July 1943: as soon as the news had spread of the fall of the regime, hundreds of people flocked to the streets in the Italian cities and, armed with chisels and picks, began a real damnatio memoriae operation aimed at the cancellation of the fascist symbols. This aspect too can be analysed according to codes referring to political rituals of ancient origin: the symbols of power, the chief immediate expression of more or less democratic or dictatorial political systems, are always destined to be forcefully eliminated in coincidence with the eclipse of that very same power that had once legitimated them. And yet many fasci were saved: even today it is not unusual to come across these symbols on cast iron fountains or on public buildings. On the other hand, this liturgy of popular iconoclastic fury was very often directed exclusively at axes: Italian cities are full of fasci littori of the fascist period that are still intact, from which was eliminated only the element that was immediately linked to the dimension of coercion and violence, represented by the axe. One only has to remember how, during the French Revolution and not yet in the era of the Risorgimento, the fascio without axe symbolised the unity of the people, thus going beyond the original meaning of the Roman fascio; with Fascism the emphasis was instead placed on the violent and coercive element of that ancient symbol. From the night of 25 July 1943 onwards the Italian people could finally go into the streets and protest freely after over twenty years of regime. This was undoubtedly an unconscious phenomenon, but in reality this partial iconoclasm applied to the axe recovered an aspect of the tradition of the modern day fascio that Fascism had attempted to smear: that is, the democratic and republican aspect. 14

ABBREVIATIONS

ACS = Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Roma. PCM = Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri.

Opera = Opera Omnia di , edited by E. and D. Susmel, La Fenice, Firenze, 36 vol., 1951-1963.