Fascism Research Articles

Captive in a disaster: October 2023

ABSTRACT This paper examines the trauma Israelis experience personally and collectively due to the catastrophic events of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing war. Ordinary citizens were drawn into this tragedy through family ties, professional roles, and excessive exposure to distressing images. Freud’s concept of “the uncanny” illustrates the unspeakable dread evoked by these events. At the same time, the author acknowledges bereaved Gazans, displaced and humiliated en masse, framing this as a shared tragedy between two devastated peoples. Using literature and analytic perspectives, the paper explores how collective trauma fosters a rigid, narrow mindset, breeding toxicity and laying fertile ground for a fascist state of mind. The paper concludes by questioning how a spiritual stance can be cultivated in such turmoil. The vignette of a bereaved mother illustrates her struggle to adopt a transformative perspective beyond devastation. It highlights transience, reverie, creativity, and infinite potentiality as paths to transcend conflict and restore the wounded Self.

The Nexus Between Output Growth and Its Volatility: The Empirical Investigation for Selected Asian Countries

Objectives: The political system in Italy has experienced numerous fractures since 1943 due to various factors, including poor economic conditions and divisions within the fascist leadership, particularly following Italy's alliance with Germany in World War II. Methods: The study examines the internal and external pressures that threatened the fascist regime, focusing on political divisions, economic struggles, and the consequences of Italy’s involvement in the war. Analysis includes historical records and political agreements among fascist politicians. Results: The fascist regime faced growing instability as both internal dissent and external pressures mounted. Most fascist politicians ultimately agreed on the necessity of removing Mussolini to mitigate the negative consequences of the war. Conclusion: The fractures within the political system and the pressures from war led to the collapse of the fascist regime in Italy. The internal divisions, combined with economic struggles and external threats, played a decisive role in Mussolini's downfall.

Benedetta: Futurist Sacred Art ‘in, of, and from the Feminine’

Abstract This essay analyses the interwar painting of Benedetta Cappa Marinetti, student of Giacomo Balla and wife of Italian Futurist founder F. T. Marinetti. She was at the forefront of Futurism’s turn toward arte sacra, or sacred art, and the most prominent woman artist of the movement, publishing three experimental verbo-visual novels, participating in five Venice Biennales, attending the First Futurist Congress of 1924, authoring a manifesto, and executing a major public works project for the Fascist regime. Her work is considered in the context of intersectional modernist discourses about European avant-garde abstraction, global occultism, and early Italian feminism, arguing that her illustrations and paintings should be read as a product of an alternative avant-garde impulse ‘in, of, and from the feminine’, to borrow Griselda Pollock’s phrase.

‘Beyond Paisans’: Italian-American service members and the Allied liberation of Italy

Abstract During the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers of Italian origin were drafted into the US military and sent to fight overseas against the Axis powers. For many, this was an opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty to the country and remove suspicions raised by Italian communities’ ties with the Fascist regime. The prospect of fighting in their homeland aroused mixed feelings among those who were sent to Italy from June 1943. On the one hand, the presence of cultural and family ties stimulated the establishment of supportive relations with Italians and was seen by Washington as a useful tool for promoting ‘good occupation’ policies in Italy. However, the ethnic background of these soldiers did not always act as a socialisation factor with Italians, but sometimes gave rise to contradictory and even hostile attitudes that were linked to harsh judgements about Italians’ responsibilities for Fascism and their predisposition, or otherwise, to democracy. This article reconstructs the contribution made by these ethnic personnel to the liberation of the peninsula and the particular views they held of Italy and Italians between war and liberation.

¡No Pasaran! The Image of Spain and the Image of the Enemy in a Soviet Information Photo Album of 1937

The paths of Russia and Spain crossed several times in the 20th century. The Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 has always been and remains a topic that attracts the attention of experts and influences the development of a multifaceted cultural dialogue between the two countries. The events of those years contributed greatly to shaping the image of Spain in the Soviet Union. In recent decades, a number of works have been published, exploring not only the image of Spain in the USSR in the 1930s, but also the image of the enemy, which emerged as the first direct military confrontation with fascist regimes took place. An important topic analyzed in these works is the tools of visual securitization, which involves the formation of the enemy image by visual means. This paper is based on the materials included in the photo album ¡No pasaran! They will not pass! published by the Central Committee of the Komsomol in 1937. This source traditionally falls into the category of photo journalism. It is a type of source that is not examined much in literature, yet it is interesting as it combines visual images and verbal characteristics that reinforce stereotypical perceptions and key mythologems relevant to that period. The material illustrates how the image of Spain took shape in the USSR during the Civil War and how the image of the enemy emerged before World War II. The album was published as part of a pro-Spain campaign in the Soviet Union, when the Republican faction was still believed to win soon. The verbal content of the album is stronger than the images in terms of impact, although it is usually the visual content that is more impactful. Unlike poster art with its potential for visual securitization, a photo album, which combines extensive textual material with low-quality images, reinforces stereotypical ideas by combining these two sources of information, with the obvious dominance of the former.

Family Politics in Contemporary Fascist Propaganda: Multimodal Entanglements of National Socialist Ideals, Populist Rhetoric, and Image Bank Semiotics

This article delves into a recurring dilemma facing contemporary fascist movements: how to communicate ideological purity to its hardcore base and at the same time appeal to imagined new voters and recruits? By analyzing how the most prominent fascist movement in Sweden, the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), publicly communicates its ideas about family issues and the role of women, we shed light on the semiotic work done by the far right to merge common social conservative tropes with an extremist discourse. Using the tools of social semiotics and multimodal critical discourse studies, the article shows how the NRM uses a range of semiotic resources as it interweaves mainstream conservative discourses about the nature of women and men, recognizable to a broader public (not least to supporters of the Swedish right-wing populist party, the Sweden Democrats), with Nazi keywords appealing to ideological in-groups. The analysis also reveals how the NRM uses image bank semiotics, which connote values associated with commercial lifestyle media and genres, as they communicate their views on family issues. In its use of such imagery, the NRM simultaneously draws on the fascist myth of palingenesis. Using gender and family politics as an empirical focal point, the article illustrates that linguistic and semiotic methods provide powerful tools to scrutinize the efforts of contemporary fascist movements to present themselves as ideologically pure and at the same time speak to a broader audience of potential voters and recruits.

Fascists and Gentlemen? The Last Dictatorship's Vexed Relationship with Argentinian Fascism (‘Nacionalismo’)

While there is a consensus among historians that Argentina's Last Dictatorship was one of the most radically right-wing regimes in modern Latin American history, the question of whether this regime's ideology was informed by fascist ideology has remained, to a large extent, open. This article explores the relationship between the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (PRN) and Argentina's fascist movement, self-labeled the ‘nacionalistas’. It begins by examining how, in the 1970s, this movement's ‘revolutionary’ sectors resurged in demand for a constitution of a totalitarian and corporatist regime in Argentina. The study then illuminates which components of the nacionalista doctrine the PRN chose to incorporate into its public discourse, particularly in its early and more ideologically foundational years. Finally, the article explores the strained relationship between the PRN and nacionalistas amid the regime's neoliberal reforms. The article's findings suggest that, despite its murderousness, the PRN was of the least indebted to neo-fascist ideology of the military regimes that had ruled Argentina since 1943.

Bella Ciao and Women: A War for the Meaning of Motherhood in Italy

This study presents an institutional analysis of women’s participation in the Italian Resistenza during World War II, with an emphasis on the role played by motherhood. On the one hand, the official policy of Benito Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship relied on the notion of motherhood to oppress women, constructing their image as mothers of soldiers and breeders, providing more people for military recruitment, and expanding the power of the State. On the other hand, the Italian Resistance movement relied on motherhood to strengthen the bonds among women in the struggle for freedom and restructure the harsh reality imposed by the fascist regime. Hence, for both groups, the meaning of motherhood transcended beyond the biological functions of maternity—pregnancy, giving birth, and breastfeeding—and was understood as an institution that stands for specific means of caring reflected in social provisioning.

Fascist Government Speech

Fascist Government Speech

A Feminine-Coded Future Representations of the Feminist Sublime and Technological Embodiment in Select Indian Dystopian Fiction

The research surrounding Indian dystopias has revealed a preoccupation with their correspondence to real-world societal challenges. Escape (2015) by Manjula Padmanabhan and Machinehood (2021) by S. B. Divya is no different – the settings of both texts provide the key to deciphering systemic issues such as climate change, female foeticide, and wage exploitation. This article explores the evolution of the sublime as represented in the narratives to account for the emergence of a feminist version of the sublime. In Escape, the fascist State apparatus has conducted a systematic femicide of its population. While Meiji owes her survival to her uncles who dosed her with hormonal suppressants to arrest her development, she also internalises certain problematic ideas of what it means to be a woman. She reclaims her subjecthood when she realises the power that she wields over the transgressive desires of her uncles. Hence, the presence of the sexed and forbidden female body in Escape is significant in its subversion of the traditionally masculinist-coded sublime. This article also uncovers the biotechnological sublime as an event wherein biological materiality is negated to various ends. In the wake of cyborg technology, Welga’s refusal to be tethered to biological destiny in Machinehood forces the reader to grapple with alternative reconceptualisations of womanhood that do not hinge on the body and its functions. Further, this article also asserts that the neocolonial settings of both Escape and Machinehood affect subjecthood and its ability to evoke the feeling of the sublime in specific ways.

Faces from colonial times: the collection of facial casts at the Sapienza University of Rome (Museum of Anthropology "G. Sergi")).

Founded in 1894, the Museum "G. Sergi" houses a variety of osteological materials and other collections, including several plaster facial casts from different human populations. This paper investigates this collection, which has been acquired (at least in part) in the framework of Italian colonialism, focusing on expeditions respectively led by Lidio Cipriani and Corrado Gini during the fascist regime. By examining these casts and the colonial missions associated with them, we compare the goals of Cipriani and Gini, uncovering the otherwise forgotten history of these collections, and provide new insights from the perspective of the colonized. While Gini's records include the names of local actors, Cipriani's documentation identifies individuals in only one notable case, that of the "Arabi dello Yemen", a group of Yemenis about to join the Italian askari forces. Globally, many museums are re-evaluating similar samples and it is in this framework that we present these case-studies. In addition, as a collaborative effort by researchers from different fields, this paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion about how human facial casts should be displayed in museums.

Mussolini’s regime: the concept of consensus in contemporary historiography

One of the pivotal issues in the study of Italian fascism pertains to the question of public consensus under Mussolini’s regime. In the article, the author presents a comprehensive examination of the international historiographic discourse pertaining to this issue, tracing its evolution from the initial works published during the dictatorship to the impassioned debates that arose with the publication of Renzo De Felice’s multi-volume history of the Fascist regime in the 1960–1980s. At the core of De Felice’s research was the examination of the phenomenon of consensus within Italian society between 1920 and 1945. This paper acknowledges the value of De Felice’s contributions but challenges the methodological principles, research methods, and the conceptualisation of fascism as a long-term political strategy, particularly the notion of “Mussolinism” as a distinct form of “left-wing totalitarianism”. De Felice’s interpretation initially posited a consensus comprising new political forces and established elite structures. However, by the mid-1930s, this consensus had acquired a mass character, effectively eliminating the necessity for recourse to violence and endowing Mussolini’s regime with a distinctive quality: “incomplete totalitarianism”. De Felice’s analysis suggests that the collapse of the Fascist regime in Italy was primarily the result of a combination of miscalculations by the military and political leadership, coupled with inherent weaknesses in the system itself, rather than being driven by the erosion of mass consent. The historiographical debate surrounding the issue of consensus has been shaped by the works of Marxist historians and left-wing democrats who have opposed De Felice’s views. Additionally, the perspectives of liberals and regime apologists have contributed to this ongoing discussion. The 1990s saw the debate continue to evolve, encompassing both local and social historical analysis.

Rome – The Unauthorized Version

This article looks at the interaction of the people of Rome with their past and the creation of sites of memory with a particular focus on the period from the Risorgimento and onwards. It uses visual, textual and oral evidence to examine how the monuments of the ancient past were used as places to live and work. Being an integral part of the daily lives of the citizens meant that these monuments became important symbols of their identity and social cohesion. The use of ancient Rome for political purposes by the Risorgimento and Fascist governments was a separate heritage discourse, distinct from the daily interactions of ordinary peoplle. Using the memorial at the Fosse Ardeatine as a case-study explores how lieux de mémoire change status as succeeding generations reinterpret events and how monuments become co-opted into an Authorised Heritage Discourse.

Modernity, Latinità and the Nation in Italian Modernist Magazines (1914-1922)

This article explores the intersection between Latinity, modernity and nationalism in Italian magazines between 1914 and 1922. It argues that these notions, which had been at the center of cultural debates since the post-Risorgimento years and were re-elaborated during the First Word War and in the immediate postwar period, challenge and complicate the common assumption that reformulations of Latinity and classicism should be interpreted primarily as a return to tradition, which sanctioned a separation of the spheres of art and politics that had been conflated by the pre-war avant-garde movements. This study contends that the intersection between classicism, modernity and nationalism in Italian modernist magazines resulted in a rethinking of the notion of Latinity. This rethinking, both artistic and political, encompassed reformulated ideas of Mediterranean Europe and a repositioning of Italy within it. In this sense, the politicization of classicism embedded art in the historical identity of the nation and was instrumental in the formation of the ideological basis of the relationship between art and the fascist regime.

Эстонский союз участников Освободительной войны в 1929–1934 годах

The Union of Participants in the Estonian War of Independence (better known as the Vaps Movement) operated in the political field of the first Republic of Estonia in 1929–1934. The movement was reactionary and actively criticized the government as well as promoted various nationalist ideas. During the coup d’état of 1934, the movement was suppressed and accused of preparing a fascist uprising to seize power in the country. As a result, the Vaps were labelled as “Estonian Nazis”. However, since the 1990s this view has been questioned, primarily by Estonian historians. The article examines the conditions of the emergence and activities of the Union of Participants in the Estonian War of Independence in the context of its radicality and similarity to the fascist movements of that period. It studies the organization’s structure and management, the Vaps’ ideas about the social order, the “ideal” state and the role of religion, as well as their attitude towards other ethnic groups and countries and towards the Marxist and fascist movements. According to the author, the classification of the Vaps as “Estonian Nazis” that was traditionally accepted in Soviet historiography is flawed due to the serious differences between the movement’s main ideological theses and fascist ideology during the period under study, both in the case of Italy and Germany and in the case of Estonia’s regional neighbours. In particular, the author identified the following key differences of the movement from other contemporary fascist parties in Europe: no clearly expressed authoritarian ideas, no Führerprinzip in the organization, no antipathy towards other nations, and no aggressive foreign policy ambitions.

An Exclusively Urban Phenomenon? Radical Agrarianism in Political Practice of Interwar Fascism : A Case Study of Slovakia

Fascism is frequently considered to be a political movement associated with cities. The article attempts to contest this idea through a case study, which illustrates the agrarian-focused drive of fascism by profiling two fascist organisations in interwar Slovakia. It stresses agrarianism as a core factor of their political practice. The case study is based on an analysis of Rodobrana (1923–1929), a paramilitary organisation of Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, which became a significant pioneering fascist movement in Slovakia, and the National Fascist Community (1926–1938), the most notable political party representing nationwide Czechoslovak fascism. Even though both streams were written down in history as relatively unsuccessful cliques of cads, their palingenetic discourse, based on radicalised agrarian thought, helped create an atmosphere that resulted in the acceptance of the latter measures adopted by Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party’s regime (confiscation of properties belonging to the “political parvenus”, Aryanisation of Jewish assets, agrarian reforms, and the programme of Slovak national socialism).

Fascism in Peru

Abstract Contemporary fascism is an understudied phenomenon in Latin America. As a contribution to this understudied area, this article analyzes the evolution of fascist thought in Peru from its interwar history to the twenty-first century. Following Roger Griffin’s influential ‘new consensus’ approach to fascism studies based on a fascist minimum, this study explores Peruvian fascism and will argue that fascism developed new expressions in the years after 1945. It will develop the terms ‘neo-fascism’ and ‘post-fascism’, based on Griffin’s fascist minimum, to clarify the nature of the fascist movements to be analyzed. It will conclude that historically Peruvian fascism was exemplified by the Partido Unión Revolucionaria [Revolutionary Union Party], while in the postwar period, it took two parallel directions: the uniquely Peruvian neo-fascism of Acción Legionaria [Legionary Action] and the ethnocacerist or Andean post-fascism of Antauro Humala.

Fascism, Anti-Liberalism and Liberalism in Italy

Abstract Anti-liberalism is often highlighted as central to interpretations of fascism. This article discusses the existence of a liberal-fascist current in Italian Fascism. Very active during the first years of the Fascist government, this current was expressed in the pages of the journals La Nuova Politica Liberale, which brought together disciples of the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, and Critica Fascista, an organ of the revisionists led by Giuseppe Bottai. Anti-individualist, anti-naturalist and anti-democratic, this current asserted that the rights of the nation preceded individual rights, that freedom would not exist in a supposed state of nature and would be the creation of a political society. It rejected the opposition between freedom and authority, stating that only a strong and orderly state would allow freedom to occur. Although the existence of a liberal-fascist current does not impugn the predominantly anti-liberal character of Italian Fascism, bringing it to light contributes to a more complex assessment of Italian Fascism, underlining the existence of different intellectual currents, ideological clashes, and political antagonism within the movement.

Monumental Artworks as Difficult Heritage

Abstract In 1936, Benito Mussolini invaded and occupied Ethiopia. The following year, he declared that Sicily represented „the geographical centre of the Empire“. This new Fascist empire and Sicily’s role within it gave rise to numerous interventions into the island’s urban landscape, from renaming streets and installing commemorative plaques to commissioning monumental colonially-themed artworks. It is on this last category that the present article focuses, examining three such works: two frescoes by Alfonso Amorelli for a privately-owned shopping arcade in Palermo; a mosaic by Michele and Basilio Cascella for a train station in Messina; and a series of frescoes by Gino Morici and Pippo Rizzo for the reception rooms of the local government headquarters in Ragusa. The article explores both the genesis of these works and then, primarily, the factors that have influenced their reception from the end of the Fascist regime in 1943 to today, considering the visibility of the works to the general public; their perceived quality and the artist’s reputation among art historians and critics; and the political and historical moment. Ultimately, the article asks to what extent these artworks should be regarded as examples of „difficult heritage“ and what the management of them in postwar Italy can reveal about memories of Fascist colonialism today.

The making of a dissonant heritage: the Foro Italico in Rome

ABSTRACT Italy’s long and stratified history offers abundant heritage resources, with Rome serving as a showcase for the architectural embodiment of political and ideological changes over time. Among these periods, the Fascist regime under Benito Mussolini initiated extensive urban and architectural renewal projects, notably exemplified by the Foro Italico, a monumental sports complex that is still actively used. The present contribution retraces the elements constituting Fascist architectural heritage in Italy and explores how Italian people comprehend and interpret the dissonant heritage site of the Foro Italico. Departing from previous approaches, this research employs a conservation perspective, exploring, among others, architectural and socio-cultural values associated with the complex. By analysing the motives underlying its unceasing use, this study seeks to understand why citizens continue to create new experiences and memories at the site despite its contentious ideological symbolism, without undergoing modern damnatio memoriae or de-commemoration processes, thus contributing to ongoing debates on heritage management and the politics of memory.