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.