Italian fascism

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Italian fascism (

fascist ideology, which Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini developed in Italy. The ideology of Italian Fascism is associated with a series of political parties led by Mussolini: the National Fascist Party (PNF), which governed the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, and the Republican Fascist Party (PFR), which governed the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. Italian fascism also is associated with the post–war Italian Social Movement (MSI) and later Italian neo-fascist
political organisations.

Italian fascism originated from ideological combinations of

Imperial Fascist Italy to provide spazio vitale (vital space) for the Second Italo-Senussi War of Italian settler colonisation en route to establishing hegemonic control of the terrestrial basin of the Mediterranean Sea.[2]

Italian fascism promoted a corporatist economic system, whereby employer and employee syndicates are linked together in associations to collectively represent the nation's economic producers and work alongside the state to set national economic policy.[3] This economic system intended to resolve class conflict through collaboration between the classes.[4]

Italian fascism opposed

Italian people, alongside a commitment to a modernised Italy.[9]

Originally, many Italian fascists were opposed to

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany grew politically closer in the latter half of the 1930s, Italian laws and policies became explicitly antisemitic due to pressure from Nazi Germany (even though antisemitic laws were not commonly enforced in Italy), including the passage of the Italian racial laws.[12] When the fascists were in power, they also persecuted some linguistic minorities in Italy.[13][14] In addition, the Greeks in Dodecanese and Northern Epirus, which were then under Italian occupation and influence, were persecuted.[15]

Principal beliefs

Nationalism

Blackshirt
youth in 1935

Italian fascism is based upon Italian nationalism and in particular seeks to complete what it considers as the incomplete project of

Risorgimento by incorporating Italia Irredenta (unredeemed Italy) into the state of Italy.[1][16] The National Fascist Party (PNF) founded in 1921 declared that the party was to serve as "a revolutionary militia placed at the service of the nation. It follows a policy based on three principles: order, discipline, hierarchy".[16]

It identifies modern Italy as the heir to the

Doctrine of Fascism (1932), ghostwritten by Giovanni Gentile
on behalf of Mussolini:

The Fascist state is a will to power and empire. The Roman tradition is here a powerful force. According to the Doctrine of Fascism, an empire is not only a territorial or military or mercantile concept, but a spiritual and moral one. One can think of an empire, that is, a nation, which directly or indirectly guides other nations, without the need to conquer a single square kilometre of territory.

— Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile, The Doctrine of Fascism (1932)

Irredentism and expansionism

Further information:
Italia irredenta, Mare Nostrum, Italian Empire, and Italianization
Italian ethnic regions claimed in the 1930s: * Green: Nice, Ticino and Dalmatia * Red: Malta * Violet: Corsica * Savoy and Corfu were later claimed

Fascism emphasized the need for the restoration of the

Risorgimento tradition that followed the unification of Italy, that the fascists claimed had been left incomplete and abandoned in the Giolittian-era Italy.[18]
Fascism sought the incorporation of claimed "unredeemed" territories into Italy.

To the east of Italy, the fascists claimed that

belonged to the Venetian Republic from the mid-14th until the late 18th century.[30]

To the west of Italy, the fascists claimed that the territories of

French Emperor Napoleon III who indicated that France would oppose Italian unification unless France was given Nice and Savoy that were held by Piedmont-Sardinia, as France did not want a powerful state having control of all the passages of the Alps.[33] As a result, Piedmont-Sardinia was pressured to concede Nice and Savoy to France in exchange for France accepting the unification of Italy.[34] The fascist regime produced literature on Corsica that presented evidence of the italianità (Italianness) of the island.[35] The fascist regime produced literature on Nice that justified that Nice was an Italian land based on historic, ethnic and linguistic grounds.[35] The fascists quoted Medieval Italian scholar Petrarch who said: "The border of Italy is the Var; consequently Nice is a part of Italy".[35] The fascists quoted Italian national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi who said: "Corsica and Nice must not belong to France; there will come the day when an Italy mindful of its true worth will reclaim its provinces now so shamefully languishing under foreign domination".[35] Mussolini initially pursued promoting annexation of Corsica through political and diplomatic means, believing that Corsica could be annexed to Italy through first encouraging the existing autonomist tendencies in Corsica and then the independence of Corsica from France, that would be followed by the annexation of Corsica into Italy.[36]

To the north of Italy, the fascist regime in the 1930s had designs on the largely Italian-populated region of

Mesolcina valley and Hinterrhein were held by the Milanese Trivulzio family, who ruled from the Mesocco Castle in the late 15th century.[41] Also during the summer of 1940, Galeazzo Ciano met with Hitler and Ribbentrop and proposed to them the dissection of Switzerland along the central chain of the Western Alps, which would have left Italy also with the canton of Valais in addition to the claims raised earlier.[42]

The session of the Grand Council of 9 May 1936, where the Italian Empire was proclaimed

To the south, the regime claimed the archipelago of

Constantine of Algeria from France.[49]

To the south, the fascist regime held an interest in expanding Italy's African colonial possessions. In the 1920s, Italy regarded Portugal as a weak country that was unbecoming of a colonial power due to its weak hold on its colonies and mismanagement of them and as such Italy desired to annexe Portugal's colonies.[50] Italy's relations with Portugal were influenced by the rise to power of the authoritarian conservative nationalist regime of Salazar, which borrowed fascist methods, though Salazar upheld Portugal's traditional alliance with Britain.[50]

Racism

Main article: Italian fascism and racism
Italian Fascist regime, enacting the racial discrimination and persecution of Italian Jews.[51][52]

Until

Zionist movement.[55] Mussolini had initially rejected Nazi racism, especially the idea of a master race, as "arrant nonsense, stupid and idiotic".[56]

In 1929, Mussolini acknowledged the contributions of Italian Jews to Italian society, despite their minority status, and believed that Jewish culture was Mediterranean, aligning with his early

Fascist Italy did not enact comprehensive racist policies like those policies which were enacted by its World War II Axis partner Nazi Germany. Italy's National Fascist Party leader, Benito Mussolini, expressed different views on the subject of race throughout his career. In an interview conducted in 1932 at the Palazzo di Venezia in Rome, he said "Race? It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today".[59] By 1938, however, he began to actively support racist policies in the Italian Fascist regime, as evidenced by his endorsement of the "Manifesto of Race", the seventh point of which stated that "it is time that Italians proclaim themselves to be openly racist",[60] although Mussolini said that the Manifesto was endorsed "entirely for political reasons", in deference to Nazi German wishes.[61] The "Manifesto of Race", which was published on 14 July 1938, paved the way for the enactment of the Racial Laws.[51] Leading members of the National Fascist Party (PNF), such as Dino Grandi and Italo Balbo, reportedly opposed the Racial Laws.[62] Balbo, in particular, regarded antisemitism as having nothing to do with fascism and staunchly opposed the antisemitic laws.[63] After 1938, discrimination and persecution intensified and became an increasingly important hallmark of Italian Fascist ideology and policies.[64] Nevertheless, Mussolini and the Italian military did not consistently apply the laws adopted in the Manifesto of Race.[65] In 1943, Mussolini expressed regret for the endorsement, saying that it could've been avoided.[66] After the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the Italian Fascist government implemented strict racial segregation between white people and black people in Ethiopia.[67]

Totalitarianism

See also: Caesarism

In 1925, the PNF declared that Italy's fascist state would be totalitarian.[16] The term "totalitarian" had initially been used as a pejorative accusation by Italy's liberal opposition that denounced the fascist movement for seeking to create a total dictatorship.[16] However, the fascists responded by accepting that they were totalitarian, but presented totalitarianism from a positive viewpoint.[16] Mussolini described totalitarianism as seeking to forge an authoritarian national state that would be capable of completing Risorgimento of the Italia Irredenta, forge a powerful modern Italy and create a new kind of citizen – politically active fascist Italians.[16]

The Doctrine of Fascism (1932) described the nature of Italian fascism's totalitarianism, stating the following:

Fascism is for the only liberty which can be a serious thing, the liberty of the state and of the individual in the state. Therefore for the fascist, everything is in the state, and no human or spiritual thing exists, or has any sort of value, outside the state. In this sense fascism is totalitarian, and the fascist state which is the synthesis and unity of every value, interprets, develops and strengthens the entire life of the people.

— Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile, The Doctrine of Fascism (1932)

American journalist

H. R. Knickerbocker wrote in 1941: "Mussolini's Fascist state is the least terroristic of the three totalitarian states. The terror is so mild in comparison with the Soviet or Nazi varieties, that it almost fails to qualify as terroristic at all." As example he described an Italian journalist friend who refused to become a fascist. He was fired from his newspaper and put under 24-hour surveillance, but otherwise not harassed; his employment contract was settled for a lump sum and he was allowed to work for the foreign press. Knickerbocker contrasted his treatment with the inevitable torture and execution under Stalin or Hitler, and stated "you have a fair idea of the comparative mildness of the Italian kind of totalitarianism".[68]

However, since World War II historians have noted that in Italy's colonies Italian fascism displayed extreme levels of violence. The deaths of one-tenth of the population of the Italian colony of Libya occurred during the fascist era, including from the use of gassings,

concentration camps, starvation and disease; and in Ethiopia during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and afterwards by 1938 a quarter of a million Ethiopians had died.[69]

Corporatist economics

Italian fascism promoted a corporatist economic system. The economy involved employer and employee syndicates being linked together in corporative associations to collectively represent the nation's economic producers and work alongside the state to set national economic policy.[3] Mussolini declared such economics as a "Third Alternative" to capitalism and Marxism that Italian fascism regarded as "obsolete doctrines".[70] For instance, he said in 1935 that orthodox capitalism no longer existed in the country. Preliminary plans as of 1939 intended to divide the country into 22 corporations which would send representatives to Parliament from each industry.[71]

State permission was required for almost any business activity, such as expanding a factory, merging a business, or to fire or lay off an employee. All wages were set by the government, and a minimum wage was imposed in Italy. Restrictions on labor increased. While corporations still could earn profits,[71] Italian fascism supported criminalization of strikes by employees and lockouts by employers as illegal acts it deemed as prejudicial to the national community as a whole.[72]

Age and gender roles

The Italian fascists' political anthem was called Giovinezza (Youth).[73] Fascism identifies the physical age period of youth as a critical time for the moral development of people that will affect society.[74]

Italian fascism pursued what it called "moral hygiene" of youth, particularly regarding sexuality.[75] Fascist Italy promoted what it considered normal sexual behaviour in youth while denouncing what it considered deviant sexual behaviour.[75] It condemned pornography, most forms of birth control and contraceptive devices (with the exception of the condom), homosexuality and prostitution as deviant sexual behaviour.[75] Fascist Italy regarded the promotion of male sexual excitation before puberty as the cause of criminality amongst male youth.[75] Fascist Italy reflected the belief of most Italians that homosexuality was wrong. Instead of the traditional Catholic teaching that it was a sin, a new approach was taken, based on the contemporary psychoanalysis, that it was a social disease.[75] Fascist Italy pursued an aggressive campaign to reduce prostitution of young women.[75]

Mussolini perceived women's primary role to be childbearers while men were warriors, once saying that "war is to man what maternity is to the woman".

program to encourage large families, where parents were given subsidies for a second child, and proportionally increased subsidies for a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth child.[78] Italian fascism called for women to be honoured as "reproducers of the nation" and the Italian fascist government held ritual ceremonies to honour women's role within the Italian nation.[79] In 1934, Mussolini declared that employment of women was a "major aspect of the thorny problem of unemployment" and that for women working was "incompatible with childbearing". Mussolini went on to say that the solution to unemployment for men was the "exodus of women from the work force".[80] Although the initial Fascist Manifesto contained a reference to universal suffrage, this broad opposition to feminism meant that when it granted women the right to vote in 1925 it was limited purely to voting in local elections, and only applied to a small section of the female population. Furthermore, this reform was quickly made redundant as local elections were abolished in 1926 as a part of the Exceptional Fascist Laws [it].[81][82]

Tradition

She-wolf

Italian fascism believed that the success of Italian nationalism required a clear sense of a shared past amongst the Italian people along with a commitment to a modernized Italy.[9] In a famous speech in 1926, Mussolini called for fascist art that was "traditionalist and at the same time modern, that looks to the past and at the same time to the future".[9]

Traditional symbols of Roman civilization were utilized by the fascists, particularly the fasces that symbolized unity, authority and the exercise of power.[83] Other traditional symbols of ancient Rome used by the fascists included the she-wolf.[83] The fasces and the she-wolf symbolized the shared Roman heritage of all the regions that constituted the Italian nation.[83] In 1926, the fasces was adopted by the fascist government of Italy as a symbol of the state.[84] In that year, the fascist government attempted to have the Italian national flag redesigned to incorporate the fasces on it.[84] This attempt to incorporate the fasces on the flag was stopped by strong opposition to the proposal by Italian monarchists.[84] Afterwards, the fascist government in public ceremonies rose the national tricolour flag along with a fascist black flag.[85] Years later, and after Mussolini was forced from power by the King in 1943 only to be rescued by German forces, the Italian Social Republic founded by Mussolini and the fascists did incorporate the fasces on the state's war flag, which was a variant of the Italian tricolour national flag.

The issue of the rule of monarchy or republic in Italy was an issue that changed several times through the development of Italian fascism, as initially Italian fascism was

First Marshal of the Empire in 1938, a two-person position of control over the military held by both the King and the head of government that had the effect of eliminating the King's previously exclusive legal authority over the military by giving Mussolini equal legal authority to the King over the military.[89] In the 1930s, Mussolini became aggravated by the monarchy's continued existence due to envy of the fact that his counterpart in Germany Adolf Hitler was both head of state and head of government of a republic; and Mussolini in private denounced the monarchy and indicated that he had plans to dismantle the monarchy and create a republic with himself as head of state of Italy upon an Italian success in the then-anticipated major war about to erupt in Europe.[86]

After being removed from office and placed under arrest by the King in 1943, with the Kingdom of Italy's new non-fascist government switching sides from the Axis to the Allies, Italian fascism returned to republicanism and condemnation of the monarchy.[90] On 18 September 1943, Mussolini made his first public address to the Italian people since his rescue from arrest by allied German forces, in which he commended the loyalty of Hitler as an ally while condemning King Victor Emmanuel III of the Kingdom of Italy for betraying Italian fascism.[90] On the topic of the monarchy removing him from power and dismantling the fascist regime, Mussolini stated: "It is not the regime that has betrayed the monarchy, it is the monarchy that has betrayed the regime" and that "When a monarchy fails in its duties, it loses every reason for being. ... The state we want to establish will be national and social in the highest sense of the word; that is, it will be fascist, thus returning to our origins".[90] The fascists at this point did not denounce the House of Savoy in the entirety of its history and credited Victor Emmanuel II for his rejection of "scornfully dishonourable pacts" and denounced Victor Emmanuel III for betraying Victor Emmanuel II by entering a dishonourable pact with the Allies.[91]

The relationship between Italian fascism and the Catholic Church was mixed, as originally the fascists were highly anti-clerical and hostile to Catholicism, though from the mid to late 1920s anti-clericalism lost ground in the movement as Mussolini in power sought to seek accord with the Church as the Church held major influence in Italian society with most Italians being Catholic.

Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, whereby the Pope issued strict regulation of the life of Jews in Christian lands. Jews were prohibited from holding any public office that would give them power over Christians and Jews were required to wear distinctive clothing to distinguish them from Christians.[93]

Doctrine

Main article: Fascism
Giovanni Gentile, philosophic father of Italian fascism. He was a ghostwriter of The Doctrine of Fascism and the writer of Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals

Napoleon. The philosopher–intellectual Gentile was especially inspired by the Roman Empire (27 BC – AD 476, 1453), from whence derives fascism:[94]

The Fascist accepts and loves life; he rejects and despises suicide as cowardly. Life as he understands it means duty, elevation, conquest; life must be lofty and full, it must be lived for oneself but above all for others, both near bye and far off, present and future.

— Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism, 1933[95]

In 1925, Mussolini assumed the title

Victor Emmanuel III of Italy could—at the risk of his crown—dismiss Mussolini as Italian Prime Minister as in the event he did.[96]

Gentile defined fascism as an anti-intellectual doctrine,

political religion.[97] La dottrina del fascismo states that fascism is a "religious conception of life" and forms a "spiritual community" in contrast to bourgeois materialism.[97] The slogan Credere Obbedire Combattere ("Believe, Obey, Fight") reflects the importance of political faith in fascism.[97]

Emblem of the National Fascist Party

According to historian Zeev Sternhell, "most syndicalist leaders were among the founders of the fascist movement", who in later years gained key posts in Mussolini's regime.[98] Mussolini expressed great admiration for the ideas of Georges Sorel,[99] who he claimed was instrumental in birthing the core principles of Italian fascism.[100] J. L. Talmon argued that fascism billed itself "not only as an alternative, but also as the heir to socialism".[101]

La dottrina del fascismo proposed an Italy of greater living standards under a one-party fascist system than under the multi-party liberal democratic government of 1920.[102] As the leader of the National Fascist Party (PNF, Partito Nazionale Fascista), Mussolini said that democracy is "beautiful in theory; in practice, it is a fallacy" and spoke of celebrating the burial of the "putrid corpse of liberty".[102][103] In 1923, to give Deputy Mussolini control of the pluralist parliamentary government of the Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946), an economist, the Baron Giacomo Acerbo, proposed—and the Italian Parliament approved—the Acerbo Law, changing the electoral system from proportional representation to majority representation. The party who received the most votes (provided they possessed at least 25 percent of cast votes) won two-thirds of the parliament; the remaining third was proportionately shared among the other parties, thus the fascist manipulation of liberal democratic law that rendered Italy a one-party state.

In 1924, the PNF won the election with 65 percent of the votes,

United Socialist Party refused to accept such a defeat—especially Deputy Giacomo Matteotti, who on 30 May 1924 in Parliament formally accused the PNF of electoral fraud and reiterated his denunciations of PNF Blackshirt political violence and was publishing The Fascisti Exposed: A Year of Fascist Domination, a book substantiating his accusations.[104][105] Consequently, on 10 June 1924, the Ceka[106] (ostensibly a party secret police, modelled on the Soviet Cheka) assassinated Matteotti and of the five men arrested, Amerigo Dumini, also known as Sicario del Duce (The Leader's Assassin), was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, but served only eleven months and was freed under amnesty from King Victor Emmanuel III. Moreover, when the King supported Prime Minister Mussolini the socialists quit Parliament in protest, leaving the fascists to govern unopposed.[107] In that time, assassination was not yet the modus operandi norm and the Italian fascist Duce usually disposed of opponents in the Imperial Roman way: political arrest punished with island banishment.[108]

Conditions precipitating fascism

Nationalist discontent

Trentino-Alto Adige, the Julian March and Dalmatia (tan), and the Snežnik Plateau area (green). Dalmatia, after the WWI, however, was not assigned to Italy but to Yugoslavia

After World War I (1914–1918), despite the Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946) being a full-partner Allied Power against the Central Powers, Italian nationalism claimed Italy was cheated in the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919), thus the Allies had impeded Italy's progress to becoming a "Great Power".[107] Thenceforth, the PNF successfully exploited that "slight" to Italian nationalism in presenting fascism as best-suited for governing the country by successfully claiming that democracy, socialism and liberalism were failed systems. The PNF assumed Italian government in 1922, consequent to the fascist Leader Mussolini's oratory and Blackshirt paramilitary political violence.

At the

Italia irredenta
).

In September 1919, the nationalist response of outraged war hero

Treaty of Rapallo (1920), the metropolitan Italian military deposed the Regency of Duce D'Annunzio on Christmas 1920. In the development of the fascist model of government, D'Annunzio was a nationalist and not a fascist, whose legacy of political–praxis ("Politics as Theatre") was stylistic (ceremony, uniform, harangue and chanting) and not substantive, which Italian Fascism artfully developed as a government model.[110][111]

At the same time, Mussolini and many of his revolutionary syndicalist adherents gravitated towards a form of revolutionary nationalism in an effort to "identify the 'communality' of man not with class, but with the nation".[112] According to A. James Gregor, Mussolini came to believe that "Fascism was the only form of 'socialism' appropriate to the proletarian nations of the twentieth century" while he was in the process of shifting his views from socialism to nationalism.[113] Enrico Corradini, one of the early influences on Mussolini's thought and later a member of his administration, championed the concept of proletarian nationalism, writing about Italy in 1910: "We are the proletarian people in respect to the rest of the world. Nationalism is our socialism".[114] Mussolini would come to use similar wording, for instance referring to fascist Italy during World War II as the "proletarian nations that rise up against the plutocrats".[115]

Labor unrest

A sociological study of violence in Italy (1919–1922) by text mining (arrow width proportional to number of violent acts between social groups; click on large animated GIF image to see evolution)

Given Italian fascism's pragmatic political amalgamations of left-wing and right-wing socio-economic policies, discontented workers and peasants proved an abundant source of popular political power, especially because of peasant opposition to socialist agricultural collectivism. Thus armed, the former socialist Benito Mussolini oratorically inspired and mobilized country and working-class people: "We declare war on socialism, not because it is socialist, but because it has opposed nationalism". Moreover, for campaign financing in the 1920–1921 period the National fascist Party also courted the industrialists and (historically feudal) landowners by appealing to their fears of left-wing socialist and Bolshevik labor politics and urban and rural strikes. The fascists promised a good business climate of cost-effective labor, wage and political stability; and the fascist Party was en route to power.

Historian Charles F. Delzell reports: "At first, the fascist Revolutionary Party was concentrated in Milan and a few other cities. They gained ground quite slowly, between 1919 and 1920; not until after the scare, brought about by the workers "occupation of the factories" in the late summer of 1920 did fascism become really widespread. The industrialists began to throw their financial support behind Mussolini after he renamed his party and retracted his former support for Lenin and the Russian Revolution. Moreover, toward the end of 1920, fascism began to spread into the countryside, bidding for the support of large landowners, particularly in the area between Bologna and Ferrara, a traditional stronghold of the Left, and scene of frequent violence. Socialist and Catholic organizers of farm hands in that region, Venezia Giulia, Tuscany, and even distant Apulia, were soon attacked by

squadrismo and nightly expeditions to burn Socialist and Catholic labor headquarters had begun. During this time period, Mussolini's fascist squads also engaged in violent attacks against the Church where "several priests were assassinated and churches burned by the fascists".[116]


Fascism empowered

Italy's use of daredevil elite

squadristi, developed after the war, were based upon the Arditi.[117]

organised crime[107] and anarchist, socialist and communist insurrections.[118] When the elected Italian Liberal Party Government could not control Italy, the fascist leader Mussolini took matters in hand, combating those issues with the Blackshirts, paramilitary squads of First World War veterans and ex socialists when Prime Ministers such as Giovanni Giolitti allowed the fascists taking the law in hand.[119] The violence between socialists and the mostly self-organized squadristi militias, especially in the countryside, had increased so dramatically that Mussolini was pressured to call a truce to bring about "reconciliation with the Socialists".[120] Signed in early August 1921, Mussolini and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) agreed to the Pact of Pacification, which was immediately condemned by most ras leaders in the squadrismo
. The peace pact was officially denounced during the Third Fascist Congress on 7–10 November 1921.

The Liberal government preferred fascist

Russian Revolution of 1917,[119] although Mussolini had originally praised Lenin's October Revolution[121] and publicly referred to himself in 1919 as "Lenin of Italy".[122]

The Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle (June 1919) of the PFR presented the politico-philosophic tenets of fascism. The manifesto was authored by national syndicalist Alceste De Ambris and Futurist movement leader Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.[123] The manifesto was divided into four sections, describing the movement's objectives in political, social, military and financial fields.[124]

Mussolini and the fascist paramilitary Blackshirts' March on Rome in October 1922

By the early 1920s, popular support for the fascist movement's fight against Bolshevism numbered some 250,000 people. In 1921, the fascists metamorphosed into the PNF and achieved political legitimacy when Mussolini was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1922.

prime ministries proved ephemeral, especially that of the fifth Prime Minister Luigi Facta, whose government proved vacillating.[107]

To

King Victor Emmanuel III
withdrew his support of Prime Minister Facta and appointed PNF Leader Benito Mussolini as the sixth Prime Minister of Italy.

The March on Rome became a victory parade: the fascists believed their success was revolutionary and

traditionalist.[125][126]

Economy

Main article:
Economy of Italy under fascism
1939 Dutch Fiat advertisement

Until 1925, when the liberal economist

privatised and so on. During Italy's coalition government era, pro-business policies apparently did not contradict the State's financing of banks and industry. Political scientist Franklin Hugh Adler referred to this coalition period between Mussolini's appointment as prime minister on 31 October 1922 and his 1925 dictatorship as "Liberal-Fascism, a hybrid, unstable, and transitory regime type under which the formal juridical-institutional framework of the liberal regime was conserved", which still allowed pluralism, competitive elections, freedom of the press and the right of trade unions to strike.[129] Liberal Party leaders and industrialists thought that they could neutralize Mussolini by making him the head of a coalition government, where as Luigi Albertini remarked that "he will be much more subject to influence".[130]

One of Prime Minister Mussolini's first acts was the 400-million-lira financing of

Radio Audizioni Italiane
(RAI) and was renamed RAI — Radiotelevisione Italiana with the advent of television in 1954.

Littoria
in 1932

Given the overwhelmingly rural nature of Italian economy in the period, agriculture was vital to fascist economic policies and propaganda. To strengthen the domestic Italian production of grain, the fascist Government established in 1925

protectionist policies that ultimately failed (see the Battle for Grain
).

From 1926 following the Pact of the Vidoni Palace and the Syndical Laws, business and labour were organized into 12 separate associations, outlawing or integrating all others. These organizations negotiated labour contracts on behalf of all its members with the state acting as the arbitrator. The state tended to favour big industry over small industry, commerce, banking, agriculture, labour and transport even though each sector officially had equal representation.[132] Pricing, production and distribution practices were controlled by employer associations rather than individual firms and labour syndicates negotiated collective labour contracts binding all firms in the particular sector. Enforcement of contracts was difficult and the large bureaucracy delayed resolutions of labour disputes.[133]

After 1929, the fascist regime countered the

aeronautical industry was developing.[107] Especially after the 1936 League of Nations sanctions against Italian invasion of Ethiopia, Mussolini strongly advocated agrarianism and autarchy as part of his economic "battles" for Land, the Lira and Grain. As Prime Minister, Mussolini physically participated with the workers in doing the work; the "politics as theatre" legacy of Gabriele D' Annunzio yielded great propaganda images of Il Duce as "Man of the People".[136][137]

A year after the creation of the IRI, Mussolini boasted to his Chamber of Deputies: "Three-fourths of the Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state".[138][139] As Italy continued to nationalize its economy, the IRI "became the owner not only of the three most important Italian banks, which were clearly too big to fail, but also of the lion's share of the Italian industries".[140] During this period, Mussolini identified his economic policies with "state capitalism" and "state socialism", which later was described as "economic dirigisme", an economic system where the state has the power to direct economic production and allocation of resources.[141] By 1939, fascist Italy attained the highest rate of state–ownership of an economy in the world other than the Soviet Union,[142] where the Italian state "controlled over four-fifths of Italy's shipping and shipbuilding, three-quarters of its pig iron production and almost half that of steel".[143]

Vatican City-State territory in 1929 (see Lateran Treaty
)

Relations with the Catholic Church

In the 19th century, the forces of

pounds sterling that were shifted from Italian bank shares into a Swiss company Profima SA. British wartime records from the National Archives in Kew also confirmed Profima SA as the Vatican's company which was accused during WW II of engaging in "activities contrary to Allied interests". Cambridge historian John F. Pollard wrote in his book that this financial settlement ensured the "papacy [...] would never be poor again".[146]

Not long after the Lateran Treaty was signed, Mussolini was almost "excommunicated" over his "intractable" determination to prevent the Vatican from having control over education.[147] In reply, the Pope protested Mussolini's "pagan worship of the state" and the imposition of an "exclusive oath of obedience" that obligated everyone to uphold fascism.[147] Once declaring in his youth that "religion is a species of mental disease",[148] Mussolini "wanted the appearance of being greatly favoured by the Pope" while simultaneously "subordinate to no one".[147] Mussolini's widow attested in her 1974 book that her husband was "basically irreligious until the later years of his life".[149]

Influence outside Italy

The fascist government's model was very influential beyond Italy. In the twenty-one-year

interbellum period, many political scientists and philosophers sought ideological inspiration from Italy. Mussolini's establishment of law and order to Italy and its society was praised by Winston Churchill,[150] Sigmund Freud,[151] George Bernard Shaw[152] and Thomas Edison[153] as the fascist government combated organised crime and the Sicilian Mafia.[154]

Italian fascism was copied by

National Romanian Fascia, National Italo-Romanian Cultural and Economic Movement) and the Dutch fascists were based upon the Verbond van Actualisten journal of H. A. Sinclair de Rochemont and Alfred Haighton. The Sammarinese Fascist Party established an early fascist government in San Marino and their politico-philosophic basis essentially was Italian fascism. In the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Milan Stojadinović established his Yugoslav Radical Union. They wore green shirts and Šajkača caps and used the Roman salute. Stojadinović also adopted the title of Vodja. In Switzerland, pro-Nazi Colonel Arthur Fonjallaz of the National Front became an ardent Mussolini admirer after visiting Italy in 1932 and advocated the Italian annexation of Switzerland whilst receiving fascist foreign aid.[155] The country was host for two Italian politico-cultural activities: the International Centre for Fascist Studies (CINEF — Centre International d' Études Fascistes) and the 1934 congress of the Action Committee for the Universality of Rome (CAUR — Comitato d' Azione della Università de Roma).[156] In Spain, the writer Ernesto Giménez Caballero in Genio de España (The Genius of Spain, 1932) called for the Italian annexation of Spain, led by Mussolini presiding an international Latin Roman Catholic empire. He then progressed to close associated with Falangism, leading to discarding the Spanish annexation to Italy.[157]

Italian fascist intellectuals

Italian fascist slogans

"We dream of a Roman Italy" was one of the many fascist slogans
  • Me ne frego ("I don't give a damn!"), the Italian fascist motto.[158]
  • Libro e moschetto, fascista perfetto ("Book and musket, perfect fascist").
  • Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato ("Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State").[159]
  • Credere, obbedire, combattere ("Believe, Obey, Fight").[160]
  • Chi si ferma è perduto ("He who hesitates is lost").
  • Se avanzo, seguitemi; se indietreggio, uccidetemi; se muoio, vendicatemi ("If I advance, follow me. If I retreat, kill me. If I die, avenge me"). Borrowed from French Royalist General Henri de la Rochejaquelein.
  • Viva il Duce ("Long live the Leader").
  • La guerra è per l'uomo come la maternità è per la donna ("War is to man as motherhood is to woman").[161]
  • Boia chi molla ("Who gives up is a rogue"); the first meaning of "boia" is "executioner, hangman", but in this context it means "scoundrel, rogue, villain, blackguard, knave, lowlife" and it can also be used as an exclamation of strong irritation or disappointment or as a pejoratively superlative adjective (e.g. tempo boia, "awful weather").[162]
  • Molti nemici, molto onore ("Many enemies, much Honor").[163]
  • È l'aratro che traccia il solco, ma è la spada che lo difende ("The plough cuts the furrow, but the sword defends it").
  • Dux mea lux ("The Leader is my light"), Latin phrase.
  • Duce, a noi ("Duce, to us").[164]
  • Mussolini ha sempre ragione ("Mussolini is always right").[165]
  • Vincere, e vinceremo ("To win, and we shall win!").

See also

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Sources

Further reading

General

Fascist ideology

International fascism

  • Coogan, Kevin. 1999. Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Autonomedia.
  • Gregor, A. James. 2006. "The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science". New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Griffin, Roger. 1991. The Nature of Fascism. New York: St. Martin's Press.
  • Paxton, Robert O. 2004. The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
  • Weber, Eugen. [1964] 1985. Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, contains chapters on fascist movements in different countries.
  • Wallace, Henry. "The Dangers of American Fascism". The New York Times, Sunday, 9 April 1944.
  • Trotsky, Leon. 1944. "Fascism, What it is and how to fight it" Pioneer Publishers (pamphlet).

External links

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