Antifascism and the Reshaping of Democratic Consensus in Post-1945 Italy

Abstract

The fiftieth anniversary of the liberation has seen a concerted effort in both France and Italy to pit liberal democrat against communist strands of antifascism in order to highlight the role of the former and discredit, if not exclude, the latter.1 Indeed, it could be argued that antifascism as a form of intraclass alliance is in many respects the last example in European history of the fusion of the bourgeoisie and the people. In that sense, antifascism signals the last embodiment of the Jacobinism Furet took such care to exorcize in his studies on the French Revolution. In Italy this new, revisionist trend may have found a more immediate and concrete political expression. For example, II Corriere della Sera, one of Italy's leading newspapers, provides it an important forum.2 Clearly, political interest in this debate is due to the legitimating status the neofascist party acquired overnight by becoming part of the governing majority. By shifting to the right, the moderate center seems to wish to cancel or forget the plebeian component of postfascist democracy. This political and cultural development merits attention since it reflects the close of a historical cycle that began at the end of World War II.