Italian Fascism

The term Italian Fascism denotes the totalitarian Fascismo political movement that ruled Italy from 1922 until 1943 under leader Benito Mussolini. The English fascism derives from the Italian fascio ("league"). Italian Fascism is considered a proper noun, and thus is capitalised; generic fascism is lower-case. Italian Fascism is considered the model for the other fascisms, yet there is no agreement about which aspects of structure, tactics, culture, and ideology represent the "fascist minimum" core. Like political movements appeared world-wide, including German Nazism, under Adolf Hitler, other movements in Europe, Japan, and Latin America between World War I and World War II. Although Fascism denotes only Italian fascism, the word often is used to describe like ideologies and political movements.

Early years

Fascism was born during a period of social and political unrest following the First World War. The war had seen Italy, born from the Italian unification less than a century earlier begin to appreciate a sense of nationalism, rather than the historic regionalism.^[1] Despite the Kingdom of Italy being a fully fledged Allied Power during the war against the Central Powers, Italy was given what nationalists considered an unfair deal at the Treaty of Versailles; which they saw as the other allies "blocking" Italy from progressing to a major power.^[1] A significant example of this was when the other allies told Italy to hand over the city of Fiume at the Paris Peace Conference, this saw war veteran Gabriele d'Annunzio declaring the independent state Italian Regency of Carnaro.^[2] He positioned himself as Duce of the nation and declared a constitution, the Charter of Carnaro which was highly influential to early Fascism, though he himself never became a fascist.^[2]

Rise to power

The war had left Italy with inflation, large debts, unemployment aggravated by demobilisation of thousands of soldiers and social unrest with strikes,^[1] attempts at insurrection by anarchists, socialists and communists,^[3] as well as a breeding ground for organised crime. The democratically elected Liberal government had no means to control the unrest, so when Benito Mussolini took matters into his own hands to combat the social unrest by organising the paramilitary blackshirts, made up of former socialists and war veterans, Prime Ministers such as Giovanni Giolitti allowed them to continue.^[4] The government preferred this class collaboration orientated movement, to the prospect of a greatly feared bloody class war coming to Italy by the hand of the communists, following the recent Russian Revolution.^[4] Within The Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle the initial stances of Fascism were outlined, requesting amongst other things voting rights for women, insertion of a minimum wage, insertion of an eight-hour workday for all workers and reorganisation of public transport such as railways.^[5]

By the early 1920s, popular support for the fascist's fight against "Bolshevism" had increased to around 250,000. The Fascisti were transformed into the National Fascist Party in 1921, with Mussolini being elected to the Chamber of Deputies the same year, enterting legitimate politics.^[1] The Liberals retained power but Prime Ministers came and went at a fast pace, Luigi Facta's government was particularly unstable and dithering.^[1] The fascists had enough of what they considered a weak parliamentary democracy process and organised the March on Rome in an effort to take power, with promises of restoring Italian pride, reviving the economy, increasing productivity, ending harmful government controls and furthering law and order.^[1] Whilst the march was taking place king Victor Emmanuel III made Mussolini Prime Minister and thus the march turned into a victory parade, the Fascists believed their success was both revolutionary and traditionalist.^[6]^[7]

Mussolini and the Fascists followed through domestically with elaborate public works programmes such as the taming of the Pontine Marshes, developing hydroelectricity, improving the railways which in the process improved job opportunities.^[8] Economically Italy improved with the GNP growing at 2% a year; automobile production was increasing especially those owned by Fiat,^[9] its aeronautical industry was making advances.^[1] Mussolini also championed agrarianism as part of what he called battles for Land, Lira and Grain; he physically took part in these activities alongside the workers creating a strong public image.^[10]^[11] Due to this government-directed economic policy, Italy was able to avoid the Great Depression which hit more industrial nations.^[11] Through various outlets including everything from stamps to monumental architectural and sculptural works, the Fascists made Italians of every social class aware of the countries rich cultural heritage, including Roman, medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods through to the modern age.^[12] Fascism declared war on the Mafia and organised crime, to defeat it the fascists did so on the terms which the Mafia itself had used for so long – violence and honour.^[13] Mussolini received plaudits from a wide range of figures, such as Winston Churchill,^[14] Sigmund Freud,^[15] Mahatma Gandhi,^[16] George Bernard Shaw^[17] and Thomas Edison.^[16] It was under Mussolini that the long standing Roman Question was concluded with the Lateran Treaty between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See, this allowed the Holy See to have a tiny microstate within the city of Rome; the move was brought about due to most Italians being religiously Catholic.^[18]

Doctrine of fascism

The Doctrine of Fascism is the official presenatation of the Fascist ideology; authored by Giovanni Gentile, approved by Mussolini and presented to the public in 1933.^[20] Gentile was a Sicilian who was influenced by the likes of Hegel, Plato, Croce and Vico; he introduced the idea of Actual Idealism.^[20] The Doctrine presented that the Fascist viewed the world quite apart from the mere constricts of currently political trends, but rather the wider picture of humankind.^[20] It rejected ideas of "perpetual peace" as fantasy and accepted man as a species constantly at war and those who met it achieved the stamp of nobility. It accepted that in general men who had made the most significant impact in history were conquerors such as Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne and Napoleon Bonaparte; the Roman Empire was of particular inspiration.^[20] It looked at Italy and saw that life for the state and by product the everyday person was of a better standard, under a single party fascist system than it had been in 1920 under a democratic liberal party.^[18] Mussolini thus spoke of democracy as "beautiful in theory, in practice it is a fallacy"^[21] and spoke in speeches of celebrating burying the "putrid corpse of liberty" to rapturous Italian applause.^[18]

It was the Acerbo Law of 1922, which had allowed Italy to become a single party system. The National Fascist Party had won the election with 65% of the votes, giving them 2/3 of the parliamentary seats.^[22] The socialists were bitter with this defeat and couldn't accept it, especially socialist Giacomo Matteotti who accused the Fascists of fraud.^[22] He was killed by Amerigo Dumini, for this Mussolini had Dumini tried and imprisoned but some socialists accused him of foul play, they protested by quitting parliament leaving the Fascists as the sole representatives.^[1] The means which Mussolini generally dealt with political dissenters was placing them under arrest and sending them to small Italian islands.^[23] Mussolini declared himself Duce from the Roman title dux meaning leader in 1925; though regarded a dictator by most popular historians, the Grand Council of Fascism was still in place and the king had the power to fire Mussolini, as would eventually happen.^[24]

Nationalism and Empire building

Some have compared Adolf Hitler's nationalistic domestic and foreign policies in Germany as being inspired by Benito Mussolini. Others have noticed major differences in the two leaders' view on race. Hitler believed in a racist concept that the so-called Aryan race (basically a caucasian race) was a biologically pure and superior race to other races. Mussolini rejected the idea of superiority of races as being fictitious such as in 1933 when he said the following:

Influence outside Italy

In Switzerland Colonel Arthur Fonjallaz, who had previously been associated with the more pro-Nazi National Front, became an ardent admirer of Mussolini after visiting Italy in 1932. He came to advocate the annexation of Switzerland by his idol, whilst also receiving some financial aid from the Italian leader.^[37] The country also hosted the International Centre for Fascist Studies (CINEF) and the 1934 congress of the Action Committee for the Universality of Rome (CAUR), two Italian-led initiatives.^[38]

In Spain early fascist writer Ernesto Giménez Caballero called for Italy to annex Spain in his 1932 book Genio de España, with Mussolini at the head of an international Latin Roman Catholic empire. He would later become more closely associated with Falangism, leading to his ideas of Italian annexation being put aside.^[39]

Fascist mottos and sayings

Contents

Early years

Rise to power

Doctrine of fascism

Nationalism and Empire building

Influence outside Italy

Fascist mottos and sayings

See also

Notes

Further reading

References

General

Fascist ideology

International fascism

External links