Hegemony and Consensus in Italy

HEGEMONY AND CONSENSUS: THE RELkTIONSHIP BETWEEN POLITICS AND CULTURE IN FASCIST ITALY Brian Grfflth N July 1943, Benito Mussolini was deposed as fascist dictator of Italy I and incarcerated by the Grand Council of fascism.’ Shortly after his liberation by the Germans in September1943, Mussolini fled to northern Italy where he co-founded and administered the Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale ftaliana or RSI), a puppet state of Nazi Germany. Upon the untimely disintegration of the RSI in April 1945, Mussolini, along with a small group ofhis closest associates, attempted to escape to Francisco Franco’s Spain via Switzerland. The group, however, was identified and captured by members of the Italian Resistance, executed near Lake Como, and strung up in Milan’s Piazza Loreto for a post mortem public display (fig. 1). The spectacle of Mussolini’s dramatic fall from power in Italy was eerily reminiscent of the spectacle of the fascist regime he had so carefully constructed and orchestrated throughout the previous twenty years, often referred to as the ventennio nero (black decades).2 Shortly after the conclusion of the Second World War, a generation ofanti-fascist scholars began to characterize the years of fascism in Italy as an aberration in history, or a brief pause in time. Benedetto Croce, for example, famously characterized the twenty years of fascist rule as a “parenthesis in history”.3 Norberto Bobbio, a prominent intellectual both Fascism — as defined by Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile in ‘Foundations and Doctrine of Fascism” (1932) — is a social and political ideology which imagines the State as the locus around which the individual is defined and, ultimately, socially constituted. “Against individualism,” Mussolini and Gentile write, “the Fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State, which is the conscience and universal will of man in his historical existence.” D. Medina Lasansky, The Renaissance Perfected (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), z68. Barbara Spackman, Fascist Virilities (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), ix-x. ii6 Brian Griffith during and after WWII, wrote: “Where there was culture it was not fascist and where there was fascism it was not culture. There never was a fascist culture.”4 To recognize or acknowledge an ideology, philosophy, or culture behind fascism, as Barbara Spackman has pointed out, would be to “dignify it with an intellectual stature that it does not merit.”5 Thus, the historiography ofthe post-war years is characterized by various anti- fascist themes, such as partisan resistance to fascist oppression and a general reticence to discuss the topic of culture during the “black decades.” The so-called “linguistic turn” that took place within the humanities and social sciences during the 196os influenced many scholars to rethink the relationship between language and power, leading to the develop ment of the fields of social and cultural history in subsequent decades. By the 198os and 19905, the historiography of Fascist Italy included a generation of scholars who were much more open to the notion of a “fascist culture” and, thus, more interested in examining it. Mussolini’s cultural policies, and the efforts led by his regime to shape and mobilize Italians through those policies, became a prime area of historical research. Victoria de Grazia’s Culture of Consent, for example, analyzes the leisure-time Dopolavoro (After Work) organization in Fascist Italy. De Grazia explains the process through which Mussolini attempted to create a culture of consensus through the creation of “depoliticized” recrea tional programs for the masses. Mabel Berezin has studied the relation ship between the fascist regime and public theater, arguing that the regime considered the world of live performance to be an “ideal cultural vehicle for diffusing fascist ideology.”6 Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Fascist Modern i ties examines the relationship between Italy’s “culture makers” — such as authors, playwrights, directors, etc. — and the fascist regime, establishing a clear connection between the two. Ben-Ghiat argues: “because the regime never adopted an official aesthetic stance, intellectuals could convince themselves they were not producing political art when they sponsored the idea that popular contact with aesthetics would create new modern Italians.”7 The scholarship of De Grazia, Berezin, and Ben Ghiat has served as a source of inspiration for many scholars working in ‘ Borden W. Painter, Mussolini’s Rome (New York: Paigrave Macmillan, 2005), xvii. Spackman, ix.-x. 6 Mabel Berezin, “The Organization of Political Ideology: Culture, State, and Theater in Fascist Italy,” American Sociological Review, 6, (1991), 639. Simonetta Falasca Zamponi, reviewed work(s): Fascist Modernities by Ruth Ben Ghiat, The American Historical Review, 107, (2002), 653. Ex POST FACTO 117 the field of modern European cultural history, including the following authors whose works I discuss in this essay. In Mussolini’s Rome, Borden W. Painter examines the physical changes made to the city of Rome during the fascist period as a means of examining the regime’s identity and character. The fascist regime, Painter argues, carefully staged a project of “renovation” in the Eternal City, which sought to eliminate various structures and symbols perceived to be incongruent with fascism’s goals, while highlighting the city’s imperial past in order to choreograph a specific political and cultural spectacle to both Italian and foreign audiences alike. Similarly, D. Medina Lasansky’s The Renaissance Perfected analyzes the ways in which the regime used Italy’s medieval and Renaissance “heritage” to both highlight the social and cultural goals of fascism and promote the development of a unified national identity in Italy. The regime sponsored “restoration” projects in the towns and cities ofthe north-central region of Tuscany in order to “liberate” various medieval and Renaissance qualities from the undesirable layers of subsequent periods, highlighting in the process a legacy of cultural and civilizational achievement shared by all Italians. In Fashion under Fascism, Eugenia Paulicelli locates the origins of the modern Italian fashion industry during the embryonic years of fascism in Italy. Paulicelli argues that the regime used the domestic fashion industry as a means for promoting an “Italian style” that Italians could identify with and consume, as well as a positive image of fascism abroad. Steven Ricci’s Cinema & Fascism examines the ways in which the fascist regime both did and did not manipulate the cinema industry in Italy. Ricci argues that many domestic titles served as a stage upon which the regime could indoctrinate Italian audiences with fascist ideology while the presence of numerous foreign titles, whose contents the regime had absolutely no control over, functioned as evidence of the regime’s good will and benevolence towards the populace. By exposing and highlighting the still visible fascist imprint on con temporary Italy, these authors illuminate the legacy of an ideology previously denied any cultural activity, legitimacy, and/or staying power. The regime’s careful control and manipulation of the realm of culture was directly associated with its success in controlling Italians and maintaining its power within the peninsula. Thus, by focusing on the strategies and processes by which Mussolini’s regime achieved hegem ony8 in Italy, the significance of the realm of culture and its inherent Hegemony, as defined by Oxford English Dictionary, is ‘[ijeadership, predominance, preponderance; esp. the leadership or predominant authority of one state ofa confederacy or union over the others: originally used in reference to the states of ancient Greece, whence transferred to the German states, and in other modern applications.” However, in VOLUMEXX 2o11 ii8 Brian Grffith political qualities will fully emerge, informing us in the process of the potent, and often dangerous, relationship between politics and culture. In Mussolini’s Rome, Borden W. Painter examines the dramatic changes made to the city of Rome during the twenty years of fascism in Italy. Mussolini — the Duce, or leader, of Fascist Italy — sought to rebuild the city “in his own image” by destroying those elements that conflicted with the general characteristics of his regime and ‘liberating’ those that highlighted its social and political agendas. The changes made to the Eternal City during the ventennio nero, Painter argues, embody “the values of the regime and its goal to change Italy through producing a new generation of Italians.”9 Painter quotes the following speech by Mussolini in order to illus trate the way in which the Duce imagined fascism’s relationship to Italy’s history: Rome is our point ofdeparture and reference. It is our symbol or, ifyou wish, our myth. We dream of a Roman Italy, that is to say wise, strong, disciplined, and imperial. Much of that which was the immortal spirit of Rome rises again in Fascism: the Fasces are Roman; our organization of combat is Roman, our pride and our courage is Roman: Civis ro man us sum. It is necessary, now, that the history of tomorrow, the his tory we fervently wish to create, not be a contrast or a parody of the history ofyesterday. ... Italy has been Roman for the first time in fifteen centuries, in war and in victory. Now it must be Roman in peacetime: and this renewed and revived romonitã bears these names: discipline and work.’° Thus, Mussolini’s regime favored the Rome of the emperors — as op posed to previous or subsequent periods — because it was perceived to embody particular characteristics consistent with fascist ideals and goals, such as power and action. Once the seat of the expansive Roman Empire, Rome’s imperial ruins became a focal point of the regime’s urban “renovation” efforts. One of the first projects undertaken by the regime was the elimina tion of any elements preventing the “revealing” of the city’s glorious imperial heritage.

Load more