ITALIAN FASCISM: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO DICTATORSHIP? *

(draft)

Paul Corner

University of Siena

Renzo De Felice`s contention that fascism was, by the early

1930s, very much a regime based on the mass consensus of

the Italians was widely contested at its publication, but

seems subsequently to have acquired a surprising degree of

acceptancei. Surprising in the sense that, while a majority

of German historians reacted violently to the thesis of

Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners and many still spend a

great deal of their time trying to establish and document

areas of dissent in what is admitted to have been an

overwhelming consensus for Hitler – that is, to put it

bluntly, to rescue something honourable about Germans and

about Germany from the horrors of Nazism – , in Italy the

idea that there was a consensus for fascism seems to be

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welcomed almost with a sigh of relief. It is as though, if

we were all agreed about fascism, then it must not have

been so bad after all; history must have treated the

fascist dictatorship too harshly. Without too much effort

we are back to the well-worn clichés of il fascismo bonario

(‘kind-hearted fascism’) and la dittatura all’acqua di rosa

(‘rosewater dictatorship’) and collective guilt (if ever

felt) turns into collective absolution. Far from being a

past which does not pass, we have a past which presents no

problems, reflecting a complacency in respect of the

fascist experience generated by a kind of complicity. By

the same token, it has been noticeable for some time that

there is more than a slight stigma attached to antifascism,

particularly middle class and intellectual antifascism -

heroic no doubt on occasions, but essentially a deviation

from the norm, above all unbearable in its claim to sole

possession of the historical moral high ground, in reality

nothing more than 'the vulgate of the winners'. Some may

argue that this is an understandable reaction to an

excessive post-war emphasis on the antifascist resistance

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as the moral basis of the republic, and consequently to an

excessive demonisation of fascism, yet the ease and the

rapidity with which the theory of mass consensus has moved

from the level of historical debate to that of the new

common sense invites suspicion. Why is it that so many

Italians seem happy to accept - indeed, determined to

insist - that their parents and their grandparents were -

to adapt a phrase - Mussolini's willing accomplices?

In part, of course, the answer lies in a popular and

superficial view of Italian fascism as essentially

innocuous. This view rests to some extent on what might

synthetically be termed the 'Mussolini buffoon' concept,

but depends principally and more seriously on the often-

expressed idea that Mussolini's only great mistake was his

involvement with Nazi Germany, with consequent entanglement

in the Second World War. A corollary of this is that

Italian fascism really had few of the attributes of its

northern ally and should not be considered on the same

terms. Fascism was not Nazism; this is the persistent chant

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of those who wish to dismiss as derogatory the generic

category of “nazifascismo”. Willing accomplices, it is

said, are very different from willing executioners. After

all, we are told, Italian fascism was not responsible for

the Holocaust; even if Italy had its racial laws, they were

not serious and many Italian Jews escaped deportation

because other Italians helped themii. Thus insistence on

the ways in which fascism differed from Nazism

(undoubtedly legitimate in many, but certainly not all

ways) serves to put Italian fascism in a more favourable

light. Indeed, the more it is possible to differentiate it

from the atrocities of Nazism, the more fascism can be made

to appear essentially harmless. Mass consensus for fascism

is not so difficult to understand therefore; above all, it

is not so reprehensible. In a way, it is the very existence

of Nazism which eases Italian consciences and gets fascism

off the hook.

This position, evidently self-justificatory and self-

exculpatory, has always existed in respect of fascism. But

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it has had a new impetus given to it recently as a result

of the current political situation within Italy, which has

seen historical argument turned into acrimonious political

debate, much on the lines of the German Historikerstreit. The

very evident desire of the new right (in part neo-fascist,

if now formally post-fascist) to attack the legitimacy of

the 'first' republic has provoked not only forays against

alleged communist permeation of Christian Democratic

government (‘consocietivismo’) but also attacks on the

antifascist roots of the republic. And one of the best ways

of attacking the antifascist tradition has been through the

use of the concept of mass consensus for fascism. Within a

more general process of psychological “removal” in respect

of recent history, of an attempt to keep the skeletons

permanently in the cupboard, the fascist phase is presented

as a normal moment of national development, a moment in

which Italians concurred with their rulers and which does

not justify the vilification accorded it by history. The

“normalisation” of fascism - a historical revision in a

direction favourable to fascism, that is - inevitably

6

appears to undermine the authority of the antifascist

position.

The same result has been achieved by recent attempts to

arrive at some kind of national “pacification” after the

bitter ideological struggles of the post-war era. This has

frequently involved a welcome attempt to understand the

motivations of all contending parties - fascists and

antifascists, partisan resistance fighters and those who

supported the fascist puppet state (the Repubblica sociale

italiana or Repubblica di Salò). But the effect has been to

suggest that, since everyone had their motives, since even

some fascists acted in ‘good faith’, all points of view are

therefore acceptable and should be considered on the same

level. At this point there occurs what has been termed a

kind of 'dulling of conscience and of historical memory'iii;

understanding becomes forgiveness which becomes acceptance

and justification, after which all historical condemnation

of fascism is declared to be “ideologically based” and is

to be rejected. This has produced a view of the past which

7

is strangely devoid of values; necessary distinctions

become blurred and then cease to exist. It seems that, as

time passes and it becomes easier to forget the torments of

war and the responsibility of fascism for that war, it has

also become easier to propose the idea that it was the

*

I should like to thank the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies

in America, Columbia University, for hospitality while writing a part

of this in spring 2000. Claudio Pavone and Enzo Collotti were kind

enough to offer me comments on an early draft. The title is a not-

unintentional echo of Tim Mason’s “Whatever happened to ‘fascism?”.

See T. Mason, Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class, ed. posthumously

by J.Kaplan (Cambridge, 1995), 323.

i R. De Felice, Mussolini il duce. Gli anni del consenso,1929-36

(Turin, 1974). A recent example of the degree of acceptance of the

consensus thesis was provided by Adriano Sofri, formerly the leader

of the extra-parliamentary Lotta continua and certainly no stranger to

political discussion. Sofri writes ‘Even the argument about popular

consensus for fascism is over, after having been [for long] a subject

of scandal. There was a consensus. Amen’; La Repubblica, 17 December

2000.

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antifascists, and not the fascists, who were fundamentally

out of step with their times.

Assessments of fascism based on current political battles

(and De Felice, who died in 1996, is clearly at the mercy

of his own supporters in this respect) should not be

allowed to deflect from the complexity of the problem,

however. Was there a mass consensus for fascism? And if so,ii This is a typical illustration of selective memory. It ignores,

for example, the fact that many Italian Jews died in the German camps

because fascist officials gave the registers of Jewish names to the

Nazis, fully knowing what the consequences would be. See, Razza e

fascismo. La persecuzione contro gli ebrei in Toscana (1938-1943) ,

ed. E.Collotti (Rome, 1999), 1: 28; also, by the same author, “Il

razzismo negato”, in Fascismo e antifascismo. Rimozioni, revisioni,

negazioni, ed. E. Collotti (Rome-Bari, 2000), 355-75. In much the

same way Italian atrocities committed in Africa during the 1930s have

been almost totally removed from popular consciousness.

iii C.Pavone, “The Two levels of the Public Use of History or,

rather, of the Past”, Mediterranean Historical Review, 2001

(forthcoming).

9

what was the nature and the extent of that consensus?

Revisionism, with its tendency towards an at least partial

rehabilitation of fascism, emphasises the elements of

compromise, collaboration and consent at the cost of other,

less palatable, aspects of the regime. Sometimes it even

seems legitimate to ask the question, whatever happened to

dictatorship? And even when the repressive aspects of

dictatorship are acknowledged, they are minimised and

pushed firmly into the background. It seems that loss of

political liberties for more than twenty years was really a

relatively unimportant feature of life, which, when all is

said and done, went on much the same, despite this loss.

The intention of this article is twofold.. The first is to

suggest that, in the current rush to assert mass consensus

for Italian fascism, the aspect of repression has been

grossly neglected. The second is to insist that, in any

attempt to evaluate popular attitudes towards fascism, it

is necessary to take into account many other aspects of

fascism besides direct repression - aspects which are not

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directly repressive but which nonetheless constitute

instruments of a fairly rigid social control. We are not so

much concerned, therefore, with the direct question of

whether there was consensus or not, but more with the

conditions in which attitudes towards the regime were

formed and choices made. Indeed, in the light of the

factors examined here, it is suggested that it may be

necessary to revise fairly drastically the meaning which is

usually given to the term 'consensus'. This does not imply

any intention of underestimating the political novelty

represented by fascism and its great mobilising capacities

or of attempting a return to the picture, painted by many

émigré antifascists in the late 1920s and early '30s, of an

Italian people constantly straining at the leash in order

to be rid of the regime. The relationship between

oppressors and oppressed is obviously far more complex than

such a picture would suggest.

In his biography of Mussolini, De Felice`s approach to the

question of consensus is, in fact, moderate and cautious:

1

'...we believe that – when everything is considered – it is

correct to say that the five years from 29 to 34 were for

the fascist regime and … for Mussolini as well, the period

of greatest consensus and greatest solidity'iv. While

asserting that the high point in the popularity of fascism

came briefly with the proclamation of Empire in 1936, De

Felice sees the years preceding this moment as being those

of stability and relative calm, with a population all-in-

all ready to accept fascism and to go along with the

regime. This judgment, which - it must be stressed - is far

more tentative and qualified than is often supposed, is

based on a fairly comprehensive examination of popular

opinion as shown through reports from various - mainly

official or party - sources and from a survey of the

economic situation, again conducted largely through

official publications. The picture presented could be

criticised as being slightly haphazard in its approach and iv De Felice, Mussolini il duce. Gli anni del consenso, 55. It has

to be sad that, in subsequent years, De Felice's statements on the

subject become more extreme under pressure of attack from his

critics.

1

somewhat selective, particularly in its choice of sources,

but there is undoubtedly ample evidence to justify the

author's conclusions - within his own terms of referencev.

This is an important qualification because it is precisely

here, perhaps, that De Felice's approach needs to be

questioned. His view is curiously one-dimensional. Put very

simply, he looks for open protest against fascism, finds

very little, finds instead many ready to give vocal and

material support to the regime, and thus concludes that

there was a consensus for the regime.

In some ways, he undoubtedly has a point. The history of

Italy prior to World War One is marked by frequent,

spontaneous, often bloody, popular protest against

authority. This kind of protest does die out after the

biennio rosso, at least if we are to believe the reports of

the prefects; the army ‘massacres’ of protesting peasants v Possibly the biggest lacuna is the absence of any serious

treatment of popular opinion in rural areas, given that during the

fascist period more than 50% of the population was still employed in

agriculture.

1

do become a thing of the past. This may have more to do

with changes in society - changes which had made the

necessity for organization of protest obvious (and here

both the experience of the war and of Italian socialism

would have had an effect) - than with lack of discontent.

More probably, as we shall see, it reflects the

consequences of fascist victory, which ensured that there

was no political space for protest and that hostility to

the regime could never get a foothold and emerge as open

rebellionvi. Certainly it has to be recognised that, in the

Italy of post-1925, there were many pressing reasons for

not voicing protest. The defeat of the working class and

the peasants at the hands of the fascist squads had been

heavy and humiliating; there had been little that was

glorious in the collapse of socialism. People were left to

reflect on political obtuseness and lack of vision, and on

deep divisions which had become even deeper with defeat. vi The concept of the lack of ‘political space’ for opposition is

developed in Mason, ‘The containment of the working class in Nazi

Germany’, in the collection of his essays Nazism, Fascism and the

Working Class, cited above.

1

The Popular Front mentality, which might have done

something to heal divisions, established itself only with

great difficulty in Italy and was never really able to heal

the splits on the left provoked by analyses based on ideas

of social-fascism. There was, in fact, very little to

inspire an active continuation of the struggle. And, where

protest is punishable and apprehension is virtually

assured, people are inclined to keep quiet. Mussolini

himself made no bones about this. Echoing Machiavelli, he

warned `I declare that I want to govern, if possible, with

the consent of the greatest number of citizens possible;

but, while waiting for the formation of this consensus, for

its growth and its strengthening, I am taking to myself the

maximum of available force. Because it may turn out that,

by chance, force will create consensus - and in any case,

should consensus be lacking, there is always force.`vii

Mussolini's statement inevitably prompts the question, can

lack of protest in these circumstances be taken as a sign vii B.Mussolini, 7 March 1923; quoted in Opera omnia di Benito

Mussolini, ed. E.D.Susmel, 35 vols.(Florence, 1951-63), 19:163.

1

of consensus for the regime? In fact, the methodological

problems of measuring consensus under dictatorship are very

great. What does lack of protest mean? In a sense, the more

efficient a totalitarian dictatorship, the more it will

appear to have the consent of the population. Following the

line proposed by James Scott, the unearthing of 'hidden

transcripts' of dissent would, of course, be a great

helpviii. As with Nazi Germany, efforts have been made in

this direction, but the results remain inconclusive, and it

may be legitimate to doubt the extent to which totalitarian

regimes do throw up such transcripts. Even so, Scott's

suggestion warns us against too ready an acceptance of the

public transcript of events and attitudes as the only

truth. This is of particular relevance when dealing with a

regime such as fascism, which combines the exercise of

authority with the search for adulation and acceptance.

Public expressions of support were precisely what fascism

wanted, and it is hardly surprising that there were those

ready to provide them: the benefits of doing so were viii The reference is to J.C.Scott, Domination and the Arts of

Resistance. Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990)

1

obvious. And, as far as fascist claims to enjoy popular

consensus are concerned, a regime that requires unanimity

of support will generally claim that it has that unanimity;

it is part of the game, to assert as reality what may in

fact be wishful thinking.

The public transcript – in this case the fascist transcript

- has to be treated with great caution, therefore. And it

is as well to be aware of what is public. For example, the

provincial reports from prefects to the Ministry of the

Interior (documents on which De Felice, like many other

historians, bases many of his judgments) are internal and

confidential documents, but are also very much public

transcripts in the sense that they are written for a small

but very influential audience (Mussolini was his own

Interior Minister as many prefects learned to their cost).

Prefects in fascist Italy, like prefects anywhere, tended

to try to show diligence by listing the number of

operations against subversives, criminals, or whatever,

while at the same time playing down difficulties in order

1

to show that their provinces were under complete control.

Thus popular demonstrations, where they are admitted, are

always presented as being exclusively economic in origin

and never as containing political content. The same can be

said of many other documents produced by fascist officials

- party chiefs, union leaders and so on. The knowledge that

total consensus was the required end could easily induce

people in authority to minimise problems, give a favourable

gloss to their own activities, and even perhaps on

occasions to report a consensus which was not really

present.

Absence of well-recorded, serious popular protest against

fascism is, therefore, a dubious indicator of consensus,

just as repeated assertions that everyone is behind the

duce are not necessarily to be taken at face value. But it

is fairly obvious that, as long as we remain at this level

of consideration, we are moving in the realm of the

undemonstrable. There is the risk of encountering what

Scott calls ‘the political equivalent of the Heisenberg

1

principle' - that is, the difficulty of demonstrating that

what is not present (i.e. protest) would have been present,

had it not been for those factors which prevented it from

making itself evidentix. In the light of this, it is

perhaps more instructive to ask a slightly more complex

question - not only: Why no, or so little, obvious protest?

but also: What happens to those who do step out of line

under fascism?, and, closely linked: What do people think

will happen to them if they don't obey the rules? The

answers to these subsequent questions which may help us to

give an answer to the first.

The role of direct repression

Under totalitarian regimes people's fears are obviously

related to the question of repression, sometimes to that of

terror. Few would seriously put in doubt that, in Nazi

Germany, the prospect of what might happen to you if you

did overstep the limit was sufficient to discourage most ix Scott, 72

1

forms of open opposition. The list of possible fates was

fairly long - from beatings to unemployment, from prison to

the camps to straightforward execution. And you might

simply just disappear, as many did. Terror was a huge force

in discouraging unauthorized activities - and even wayward

thoughts - and it is not hard to credit stories of people

becoming literally paralysed with fear when they found

themselves unexpectedly confronted by the Gestapo. The most

potent weapon of all was, perhaps, the uncertainty of one's

fate. Terror was linked to fear of very real reprisals but

also to the world of rumoured nemeses, in which the

victim's own imagination was brought powerfully and

terrifyingly into playx.

According to most accounts, this kind of terror was less

obvious in fascist Italy. After the first fascist onslaught

between 1921 and 1922, where the violence of squadrismo did x See in particular R. Gellately, The Gestapo and German

Society. Enforcing Racial

Policy 1933-1945 (Oxford,1990).

2

very clearly constitute a kind of terror, the explicit use

of violence became less common, even if it was always

present as a threat. One of the 'legacies' of agrarian

fascism to the fascist movement in general was, in fact,

the resolution of contentions through the use of force or

the threat of the use of force. Throughout the ventennio,

the politics of fascism were always the politics of the

bully; the black-shirts never left anyone in doubt that

violence against opponents was an acceptable method of

action, a constituent part of fascist `style`, something

frequently and proudly described as 'exquisitely fascist'.

The attempts of central government after the March on Rome

to stamp out what had become the technically `illegal`

violence of its own hotheads were never totally successful,

as a succession of ‘unauthorised’ political murders made

clear.xi As we shall see, Mussolini preferred, where

possible, to use the police to control dissent, but the xi ‘Private’ lists of proscription containing the names of

opponents seem to have existed in some areas, “clearly an effective

instrument of terror”; A. Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power. Fascism in

Italy 1919-1929 (London, 1973), 296.

2

threat of a return to the violence of the squads, like the

menace of the return of socialism, was utilised when

requiredxii.

That said, the impression which is now current at popular

level is that Italian fascism was a fairly tolerant regime,

in which it was possible to be relatively independent,

providing a certain lip service were paid to the fascist

authorities. Reference is often made to (in reality,

limited) cultural and intellectual freedoms, but also to

the jokes about fascism and about Mussolini which were in

common circulation - jokes which are said to demonstrate

not only a healthy cynicism about the regime but also a

certain laxity in permitted behaviour. Equally, historians

have drawn attention to the persistent mugugno - the

generalised moan about things - which was a commonplace of

everyday life apparently, registered by the authorities but

usually allowed to pass without any serious repressive

action. Indeed, it is said that a certain irreverence xii See A. Lyttelton, “Fascism in Italy: the Second Wave”, Journal

of Contemporary History 1 (1966).

2

towards fascism was seen by the authorities as something of

a safety valve in releasing tensions and controlling

discontent.

The emphasis placed on what might be termed 'fascist

tolerance' should not be allowed to mislead about the

extent of real repression, however. It is instructive that,

in a recent study of Nazi terror, the same point is made

about Nazi tolerance of jokes and minor complaints directed

at the regime. Eric Johnson writes: 'Most ordinary Germans

knew that they could get away with telling political jokes,

complaining about Hitler and other Nazi leaders, listening

to illegal BBC broadcasts, and dancing to swing music. They

simply had to be careful...'xiii. Johnson provides very

detailed accounts of the ways in which Germans broke the

rules and documents the fact that, even when the

authorities moved to suppress minor illegal activities,

people usually escaped with a few nights in prison and a

warning. Often the authorities simply could not be botheredxiii E. A. Johnson, The Nazi Terror. The Gestapo, Jews, and

Ordinary Germans (New York, 1999), 485

2

to pursue matters. Yet thousands did die in the camps, even

before the war. The point to be made is that a relative

laxity in the face of small acts of resistance to

authority - acts which in no way endanger the structure of

a regime - does not preclude a savage repression in other

areas. In fact, in Germany, most Germans might not fear

that the Gestapo would murder them for telling jokes about

Hitler, but, as Johnson shows very well, Jews, gypsies,

homosexuals, communists had every reason to fear a

horrifying end for very much less. Terror, which might

sometimes appear arbitrary and indiscriminate, was in fact

highly selective, as the targeted groups learned to their

cost.

A tolerance of innocuous anti-regime activities committed

by the majority is not by itself, therefore, a sufficient

reason for assuming that repression is not an important

factor in maintaining control; Germans knew they had to be

careful and not overstep the limits. If this conclusion is

applied to the Italian case, it suggests that the often

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cited laxity of the regime (the regime bonario) could well

accompany a considerable level of direct repression within

Italy. It reminds us that the absence of an Italian

Auschwitz (but there were around 50 internment camps for

Jews and other political prisoners in Italy by the end of

1940xiv) should not lead us automatically to assume that

there was not harsh repression under fascism.

Yet this is precisely what has happened. Emphasis on

consensus seems to have distracted attention from the role

of repression. While no one denies the existence of some

repression, for many it has become a secondary issue,

unimportant and to be liquidated with the technique of the

purtuttavia...('yes, but...'). But a very considerable

repressive mechanism was constructed by fascism. Mussolini

himself boasted in his famous Ascension Day speech of 1926

that fascism had greatly increased police numbers and this

was reflected in an undoubted rise in the level of police

control. Criminal statistics would also seem to bear this

out (while also testifying to economic hardship)xv. In a xiv Collotti (ed.), Razza e fascismo, 1:28

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society of uniforms, the police were always present, in one

guise or another. Many arrests sprang from relatively minor

public order offences - drunkenness in particular - where

often individual dissatisfaction with everyday conditions

of life boiled over into political protest. Examples of

people being arrested for shouting “Down with the duce” or

“Long live socialism” when leaving the osteria late at night

are not difficult to findxvi. This seems to have been

protest which does indeed constitute in some way a `hidden

transcript` - the expression of rage and frustration when

the bonds of rational control have been loosened. In most

cases, it appears, arrest for such offences, particularly

for what was known as “denigration of fascism”, would

result in a night in the cells and a note in the police

files. Second offenders might be dealt with more

harshlyxvii.

A much heavier hand was used against more serious

opposition activity, however. Rather surprisingly, in the

xvi De Felice, Mussolini il duce. Gli anni del consenso, 82.

2

context of a chapter dedicated to demonstrating the

existence of a consensus for fascism, De Felice quotes

(albeit in the footnotes) a figure of some 20,000 police

operations against opponents of the regime in an average week

in late 1930 - resulting in arrests, the seizure of arms xvii The principal characteristic of punishment seems to have been

that it was totally erratic, although things were likely to go badly

if Mussolini were brought into question personally. Thus one man was

simply given a warning for declaring that “The Italians are already a

mass of pigs and thieves, a discredit to the nation. And now they

want to go to civilize the colonies when we need civilizing

ourselves”, while another was given five years in prison (through the

direct intervention of Mussolini) for stating that “If Matteotti had

been in the place of Mussolini…things might have gone better”.

Similar the case of the poor gardener and pig-keeper who, “in order

to express his irreducible sentiments of aversion to Italy and to the

Personalities of State” had named his four pigs Victor Emmanuel,

Crown Prince, Mussolini and Prefect, “names which he shouted out loud

in German when he needed to clean the pigsty”. He got five years,

again through the direct personal intervention of Mussolini. See P.L.

Orsi, “Una fonte seriale: i rapporti prefettizi sull’antifascismo non

2

and opposition pamphlets, and the closure of meeting

placesxviii. This suggests a consensus for fascism that was

at best somewhat strained. Twenty thousand interventions

per week is certainly not a small number; it mounts up to

well over a million in the course of a year. Moreover it

demonstrates a very high degree of sensitivity towards any

form of opposition - something which had, in fact, been one

of the defining characteristics of fascism from the outset.

To this number it is necessary to add operations by the

other repressive forces, represented in every locality by

the fascist militia (the MVSN) and the carabinieri.

militante”, Rivista di storia contemporanea 2 (1990):280-303. My

thanks to Claudio Pavone for indicating this article to me.

xv Criminal statistics indicate a sharp increase (from 7,594 to

16,099) in the number of those convicted for economic crimes

(swindles, worthless cheques, etc.) between 1926 and 1930 (when

statistics are interrupted) and a consistent increase in public

order offences (from 16,855 to 19,912) for the same period. In 1927

the prison population shot up to 50,473 from a more usual 39-40,000.

See Istituto centrale di statistica (ISTAT), Sommario di statistiche

storiche italiane 1861-1955 (Rome, 1958), 97, 101.

2

The recent publication of a massively documented history of

the OVRA, the fascist secret police, confirms this vision

of extreme sensitivity to oppositionxix. Formed officially

in 1927 (and based, like so much of fascist repressive

legislation, on the exceptional legislation of the First

World War), the OVRA (which took this name only in 1930xx)

developed a vast and capillary network of agents both in

Italy and abroad and proved very successful in infiltrating

antifascist groups and disseminating mutual suspicion among

Mussolini's opponents. Emigré organisations in France,

Belgium and Great Britain were penetrated by spies and

agents provocateurs without great difficulty and often reduced

to silence. Within Italy, the police frequently attempted

to instigate antifascist operations, particularly bomb

attacks, in order to convince the population at large that

the antifascists were, in reality, dangerous antisocial

criminalsxxi. The organisation used all the usual means of

recruiting agents. Some were blackmailed into collaboration

with threats of exposure of financial or sexual

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transgressions, some were found among disillusioned

socialists or communists anxious to atone for past errors,

some were recruited from poverty-stricken dissident

fascists who saw cooperation with the secret police as a

chance of economic survival and political

rehabilitationxxii. The OVRA, whose director, along with the

chief of police, reported every morning personally to

Mussolini, demonstrated a typically totalitarian obsession

with detail in its investigations and built up over the

years a huge data bank of files on political suspects in

Italy and abroad. It was particularly efficient in

crippling the Partito Comunista d’Italia and the liberal

antifascist organisation Giustizia e Libertà during the early

30's. Between 1930 and 1934 (De Felice’s 'years of

consensus'), more than 6,000 militants of these

organisations were arrested as the result of a great

increase in police activity in the face of economic

recessionxxiii. Methods used to interrogate and break down

suspects seem to have been worthy of any police state.

Torture was common, as were beatings; psychological

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pressure was frequently brought to bear, involving friends

and familyxxiv. The objective was, of course, the

confession. One antifascist, with direct experience of the

methods of the OVRA, recounted:

The agents provocateurs who succeed in infiltrating our

organization are the people who propose the formation of

armed groups, bomb attacks, etc and who, by denouncing the

colleagues with whom they have been in contact, provide the

police with their material for indictments. And these are

the crimes to which the colleague must confess as he is

being beaten up.

After the police have succeeded – through beatings,

starving, never-ending interrogations, torture, etc – in

getting the declarations they want, if the accused does not

confirm before the judge the confession extorted from him,

he is sent back to the police so that he can be made to

‘confirm’ the confession with the usual methods. This kind

of treatment has been used for months in certain cases… xxv

On several occasions, these procedures produced suicides

and 'strange deaths' in police custody.

3

3

In reality the OVRA had a dual function. Its first was the

repression and the discrediting of antifascist opposition;

but its second was to deter, to inculcate fear in all those

who felt they might possibly be the targets of repressive

action. This was to be the kind of fear characteristic of

terror - fear of a largely unknown and untouchable

organisation which did not seem to respond to any of the

fixed categories of justice and public order. As the

periodical of the antifascist exiles in Paris, the Becco

giallo, put it; 'We don’t know where it has come from, but

the nightmare of the OVRA has entered into the flesh, the

blood, the bones of many. There are those who see its shape

in every shadow; who shudder at every movement of a

curtain; who go into a cold sweat at the creek of a piece

of furniture or the squeak of a door'xxvi. The writer

considered that this fear was based on an exaggerated

vision of the capacities of the secret police, but was

forced to add 'it is the myth which counts, and

unfortunately the myth of the OVRA holds sway over the fear

3

of the antifascist masses'. In this respect, it is worth

suggesting that those who argue that fascist repressive

measures were only aimed at antifascist opponents of the

regime and did not touch the great majority of the

population go rather wide of the point. This may have been

what happened, but it must be recognised that the existence

and the fear of repressive mechanisms were precisely the

factors which would impede and discourage the open

expression of opposition to fascism. After all,

antifascism was not, as it sometimes seems to be

represented, a kind of pre-constituted category into which

people either fitted or did not fit, but a sentiment

capable of being expressed or suppressed and remaining

silent. It is obvious that organs like OVRA were designed

to make people remain silent.

People feared not only the police, but also the judicial

system which they might find at the end of their

interrogations. Under liberal governments, of course, the

magistracy had traditionally been closely linked to the

3

executive. Always tending towards conservatism, the

magistracy had had little difficulty in adapting to the

needs of the fascistsxxvii. Even before the March on Rome,

during the years of squadrist violence, the courts had

distinguished themselves for acquitting the fascist

aggressors and convicting the socialists who tried to

defend themselves from fascist violencexxviii. The Special

Tribunal for the defence of the fascist state, instituted

in 1926, featured judges who were army officers or consuls

of the fascist Militia and defending lawyers who were

always, after 1928, 'of demonstrated national sentiment'

(for ‘national’ read ‘fascist’) and also, on occasions,

police informersxxix. If the number of death sentences

passed was relatively small, many of the 13,000 people who

passed through the courts between 1927 and 1940 received

heavy prison sentences. Some, like Antonio Gramsci, did not

survive the experience.

It is difficult, therefore, to accept the judgment of

Pierre Milza, in his recently-published biography of

3

Mussolini, even though it is a judgment which is typical of

many:

Totalitarian in its project of creating a ‘new man’ and in

the fascistisation of civil society, fascism never

corresponds in one essential way to the definition which

Hannah Arendt and company give to totalitarianism, in the

sense that it never attempts to dismantle what there was of

a State of Law and to give birth at any time to a real

police statexxx.

The evidence seems to point very much in the opposite

direction. Beneath an apparent laxity and an overt paternal

benevolence, fascism had constructed both the mechanisms of

the police state and the judicial system to go with it. The

internal logic of fascism, by which fascism provided its

own legitimisation, guaranteed that the case against

opponents of fascism was proven before it was even

contested. As Adrian Lyttelton has put it, referring to

Justice Minister Rocco's justification of the 1926 Public

Safety Law:

xxx P.Milza, Mussolini (Paris, 1999), 569.

3

With this flat repudiation of all doctrines of natural law

or individual rights went the abolition of all distinctions

between the State as a permanent entity and the Government

of the moment. The safety of Fascism and the safety of the

State were treated as identical.

xix M. Franzinelli, I tentacoli dell'OVRA. Agenti, collaboratori e

vittime della polizia politica fascista (Turin, 1999). The study is

the first to utilise the archival records of the secret police in a

systematic way.

xx The significance of the acronym has never been established.

Indeed it may never have meant anything precisely. It seems that the

choice was made by Mussolini with the express intention of instilling

fear through mystery and uncertainty. Initially the secret police

operated from Milan as the ‘Limited Company for Southern Wines’; see

Franzinelli, I tentacoli,67

xxi One of the most famous, and also one of the most unpleasant,

cases of infiltration revolved around the figure of the police spy

Carlo Del Re, who managed to gain the confidence of the Milanese

professor of chemistry and member of Giustizia e Libertà, Umberto Ceva.

Ceva, imprisoned for allegedly plotting a bomb attack on the

3

In accordance with these premises, all vestiges of the

responsibility of the executive for its actions were

annulled. The citizen was left without redress; the police

were no longer required to produce reasons to justify the

imposition of restrictions on liberty. The police

authority, for example, enjoyed absolute discretion in

Prefecture of Milan, was eventually induced to kill himself rather

than reveal the name of his accomplice (in fact his betrayer), Del

Re, to the police. On Del Re, see Franzinelli, I tentacoli, 94 -112

and, by the same author, “Fascismo e repressione del dissenso. Nuovi

documenti su Carlo Del Re agente provocatore fascista”, Italia

contemporanea, 211 (1998).

xxii The case of Tommaso Beltrani (or Beltrami) is exemplary and

illustrates well this kind of recruitment . For his career, during

which at times Beltrani seems to have been almost a triple agent, see

P. Corner, Fascism in Ferrara 1915-1925 (London, 1975), 233-60 and

Franzinelli, I tentacoli, passim.

xxiii De Felice, Mussolini il duce. Gli anni del consenso, 86 : P.

Spriano, Storia del Partito comunista italiano, 5 vols. (Turin, 1967-

75), 2:298.

xviii De Felice, Mussolini il duce. Gli anni del consenso, 83.

3

granting authorization to form associations or to exercise

certain professions...

As Lyttelton concludes, 'November 1926 saw the birth of a

'police state''xxxi.

xxiv Aquarone judges that 'Both for the methods used and for the

quality of the greater part of its members, the OVRA showed itself to

be one of the most repugnant instruments of the totalitarian State’.

He quotes the intransigent fascist leader Farinacci (who knew

something about unpleasant people) who described the OVRA as being

'unfortunately made up of some of the worst elements in society'.

Farinacci's comments were provoked by the fact that he had himself

been the subject of an OVRA investigation. A. Aquarone,

L’organizzazione dello stato totalitario (Turin, 1965; reprinted

1996), 108. By the mid 1930s, as Franzinelli testifies, it seems to

have been normal practice for fascist leaders to use the OVRA in

order to gather information on their political rivals within the

fascist party.

xxv Franzinelli, I tentacoli, 242

xxvi Ibid., 240

3

Certainly, Mussolini was not Hitler or Stalin - and here it

is possible to agree with Milza - but (again we meet the

consequences of favourable comparison) it is not necessary

to be the worst kind of police state in order to qualify

for that definition. Intolerance of opposition and

repression of opposition of all forms were fundamental

characteristics of fascist rule; public order was the prime

concern of Mussolini throughout the ventennio. Only this can

xxvii See Aquarone, L’organizzazione, 95 ff. ; C. Schwarzenburg,

Diritto e giustizia nell’Italia fascista (Milan, 1977).

xxviii G. Neppi Modona, Sciopero, potere politico e magistratura 1870-

1922 (Bari, 1969), 215 ff.

xxix On the workings of the Special Tribunal see S. Trentin, Dieci

anni di fascismo totalitario in Italia. Dall’istituzione del

Tribunale Speciale alla proclamazione dell’Impero (1926-1936) (Rome,

1975) (original edition, Paris 1937); also Aquarone,

L’organizzazione, 102-6 and Schwarzenburg, Diritto e giustizia, ch.6.

For the quality of the judges and defence counsel, F. Tacchi, “Un

professionista della classe dirigente: l’avvocato negli anni ‘20”, in

Libere professioni e fascismo, ed. G. Turi (Milan, 1994).

4

explain the fact that every morning began in the same way -

with a meeting with the chief of police.

The role of the Partito Nazionale Fascista and the fascist trade

unions

If the impact of direct repressive mechanisms on Italian

society needs to be re-emphasised, that of less obvious and

direct methods of social control should not be neglected.

The readiness of the OVRA to utilise private family

questions - infidelities, financial difficulties, personal

weaknesses, and so on - in order to induce people to

collaborate has already been noted. But it was not only the

OVRA which used these methods. The research carried out in

the archives of the PNF in both Turin and Pistoia

illustrates to a remarkable degree the extent to which the

party also used its influence over the private sphere in

order to maintain strict social controlxxxii. The Party was

undoubtedly one of the principal vehicles of social

advancement, but ordinary people often needed to join the

4

party simply in order to gain employment, and this was not

always easy. One report of a police informer in 1933

speaks of '...a strong concern and an active discontent

[among workers] because of the combination of the

difficulty of obtaining the fascist card and the necessity

of having it in order to get a job to live with less

difficulty'xxxiii. But even possession of the card did not

resolve all problems; indeed, by attracting the attention

of the party, the individual might make him or herself more

open to control. Local party organisations kept records on

a very large number of individuals - often enrolled

fascists - and these records document in detail the

political history of those who had invited scrutiny, the

problems they may have created, and, in particular, their

family circumstancesxxxiv. The same records outline the

action taken against those considered in some way

troublemakers. Frequently, where it was judged necessary

to intervene against an individual, the party would issue

a general warning which involved both the individual and

the family of that person. An opponent would be warned not

4

only that he would lose his job, but also informed that his

children would not find work if certain attitudes or

activities judged hostile to the party did not cease. Here,

as with the OVRA, exploitation of the family would seem to

have been an important element in fascist control of

dissent. It is hardly necessary to stress that fascism was

utilizing one of the central structures of Italian society,

one of the institutions to which people owed most loyalty,

and where, in a sense, people were most vulnerable. While

people might readily risk their own skin in operating

against the regime, it was far more difficult to do so when

the consequences were likely to be felt by the family. And

fascist threats were clearly not idle threats; the party,

given its pivotal role in local society, could very easily

transform its words into actions. Many families were forced

to transfer to other districts as a result of PNF

pressures of this kind; many others very probably

recognized that it was better to toe the line and keep

quiet. Such pressures obviously permitted no appeal;

falling foul of the party could have consequences which

4

were difficult to reverse. In such circumstances, people

became vulnerable to the blackmail of the regime;

reinstatement in 'normal life' could be always be regained

by offering information about colleagues and fellow

workers.

The role of the fascist union in regimenting the working

class was very similar to that of the Party. In many

circumstances, as reported above, it was necessary to

belong to the union in order to gain employmentxxxv. This

was particularly so in the cities of the north, where the

employment exchanges were run by the sindacati and the

fascist union card was therefore an essential requirement

for work in the large factory. Obviously this card was in

the gift of the fascist authorities - something which gave

the fascists enormous possibilities of leverage and control

in relation to the working classxxxvi. It is true that,

during the years of the crisis, enrolment in the fascist

unions increased markedly in most sectors. De Felice

explains this through a lengthy quotation from Piero

4

Capoferri, the fascist chief of the Milan unions, who (in

his memoirs published in 1957) attributed this increase to

a better functioning of the unions in respect of the

workers. He argued that changes made in these years - for

instance in the way in which workers were represented in

legal controversies and in the speed with which these

controversies were resolved - meant that they felt

themselves better protected. This may have had some impact.

Undoubtedly the fascist unions understood the importance of

making gestures towards the workers; particularly during

the crisis, they remained consistently ambiguous in their

attitudes, trying to please both bosses and workers.

Nonetheless it is difficult not to think that, in a moment

of heavy unemployment, the key question for most workers

was likely to be access to and stability in employment. The

precise interpretation to be given to De Felice's

conclusions in this respect remains unclear, therefore.

The progressive increase in the enrolled in the unions

confirms this judgment-testimony of Capoferri, even if,

4

undoubtedly, a part of the newly enrolled was determined by

the greater chances that those organised in the union had

to find work again, if sacked, than the restxxxvii

We are inevitably left asking 'yes, but what part? 90% or

10%?'; there is a big and very significant difference.

Given that it seems unwise to put too much trust in the

testimony, written with the benefit of hindsight, of the

fascist leader involved, the suspicion must inevitably

remain that, in years of severe unemployment, the blackmail

effect of a hostile labour market would be stronger than

any perception that the fascist unions had become more

favourable to the workersxxxviii. This would confirm the

impression, formed in relation to other aspects of the

regime in the early '30s, that economic crisis did a great

deal to help fascism by making recourse to party and union

institutions virtually unavoidablexxxix. Workers might not

like fascism, but the fascist union was the only means

available to them for making their case in contested

questions concerning pay, for arguing a point about a

4

sacking, or for seeking some new employment. They simply

had no alternatives. In such circumstances, therefore, it

is perhaps forcing the evidence to see a pragmatic

enrolment in the unions, dictated by necessity, as

enthusiasm for fascismxl. Crisis compelled conformity. In

this respect, it may be no accident that the 'years of

consensus' coincide so precisely with the years of severe

economic hardship.

The role of welfare organisations and fascist assistenzialismo

As Tim Mason pointed out in respect of Nazism, repression,

`neutralization`, and integration are not mutually

exclusivexli. Indeed, repression and neutralization of

opposition can lead to eventual acceptance and integration.

After years of dissimulation, the face may come to fit the

mask. Central to this process of adjustment is often the

question of access to benefits. Mason suggests that many

people must have accepted some aspects of the Nazi regime

while rejecting others, exactly as people do in non-

4

dictatorial political systems. In a very effective

comparison, he has argued that Nazism combined the

workhouse with the supermarket, and that, by looking at

what the supermarket offered, Germans may have been induced

to accept some kind of partial compromise with the Nazis.

Benefits might thus “blur the edges” of opposition. The

concept is undoubtedly useful. Even if Italian fascism

could never remotely offer what the German “supermarket”

might offer German workers, small benefits in a country of

generalised poverty might induce some form of acceptance of

fascism.xlii That said, it is still legitimate to question

the terms on which this “acceptance” took place. Consensus

suggests, perhaps misleadingly, a voluntary adhesion to a

program, something done from choice, determined - precisely

- by what is on offer. And fascism clearly did everything

it could to make it look as though the people had chosen

the benefits of fascism spontaneously. But, again, it is

necessary to ask, what happened to those who chose not to

accept, or who, for a variety of reasons, were considered

4

not acceptable by fascism and excluded? In short, what was

the price of access to, or exclusion from, the supermarket?

The field of fascist welfare and social assistance is

perhaps one of the best areas in which to seek an answer to

these questions.xliii Fascism boasted that it had developed a

system of social services which was among the most advanced

in Europe - a claim which has been reproduced rather

uncritically in much of the subsequent literature on the

subject.xliv Certainly the various schemes for social

insurance against illness (tuberculosis in particular),

unemployment, industrial accidents and old age, brought an

enormous number of people into the orbit of the state; more

particularly in this case, into the orbit of the variously

named fascist organizations, or enti, which had

responsibility for directing these operations. The system

erected had profound mobilising implications, requiring the

participation of a large part of the population. With

certain notable exceptions, almost all dependent labour was

involved, paying obligatory contributions and, at least in

4

theory, enjoying the right to benefit. This - the right to

benefit - was generally defined as deriving from work, from

participation in production, and not from citizenship;

social security was `in the interests of the worker but

always bearing in mind the superior needs of the Nation...;

the citizen worker [is the] depository of the highest

social obligation after that of bearing arms: the social

obligation of work`.xlv The criteria of inclusion were based

on concepts of national efficiency, and ultimately national

strength, rather than on those of a social justice based on

reaction to poverty or need. And indeed, where the question

of poverty was confronted - and it was generally addressed

with strong overtones of moral stigma - the response was

always given in terms of `national solidarity` which

required that the less fortunate be looked after in order

that they should become more worthy of the nation.xlvi

If one is to judge from their internal publications, the

various enti seem to have been almost endlessly active. This

was particularly true during the years of the crisis when

5

assistance to the unemployed, especially in the cities of

the north , was at its highest, putting the fascist

organizations at the centre of the social picture. While

the level of this type of assistance declined after the

crisis, public intervention in many other areas of day-to-

xliii It should be emphasised that here I am concerned principally

with the aspects of social control related to fascist assistenzialismo

rather than to the question of the good or bad functioning of the

system. For a detailed account of the way the system worked, see

D.Preti, La modernizzazione corporativa. Economia, salute pubblica,

istituzioni e professioni sanitarie (Milan, 1987), and, (published

since the completion of this article), F. Bertini, “Il fascismo dalle

assicurazioni per i lavoratori allo stato sociale”, in Lo stato

fascista, ed. M.Palla (Florence, 2001), 177-313.

xliv See, for example, Milza, Mussolini, 887. Many of the older

`technicians` (i.e. those employed for their technical competence

rather than their fascist credentials) who developed these schemes,

particularly those who had worked with Francesco Saverio Nitti before

and immediately after the First World War, were not afraid to point

out that most of the real initiatives in the direction of social

5

day life was expanded continuously during much of the

1930s. Local officials, apparently permanently obsessed by

statistics, never tired of listing the fact that they had

assisted so many thousand people in the course of the year

with the expenditure of so many thousand lire. Provincial

reports documented meticulously the numbers of the

security had been taken before the arrival of fascism and were only

further developed by fascism.

xlv Istituto Nazional Fascista per la Previdenza Sociale (INFPS),

Al di là del lavoro e al di là del salario (Rome, 1942), 10.

xlvi For an explicit rejection of the concepts of liberty, equality

and social solidarity, see INFPS, Al di là del lavoro, 7, where it is

argued that the concepts 'turned out to be a benefit reserved for

the privilege of the few and denied in practice to the acquisitive

capacities of the mass of the workers’ - a judgment which many may

find more applicable to fascism itself.

xxxi A. Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power, 297-8.

xxxii Comments based on papers given at a conference on the fascist

party held at the Istituto piemontese per la storia della Resistenza

in Italia, Turin, December 1999; in particular the papers, still

unpublished of G. Perona, G.Turi and M.Palla.

5

unemployed who had received subsidies in money or kind, of

mothers-to-be who had received pre-natal check-ups, of the

tubercular who had been sent off to sanatoria, of the

children who had enjoyed 'free'xlvii holidays at the fascist

holiday camps (colonie) at the sea or in the mountains, and xxxiii Franzinelli, I tentacoli, 232

xxxiv This was part of a wider 'transformation of Italy into a

bureaucratic regime through the multiplication , in every area of

life, of operations of registration, numbering, keeping of personal

records and controls'; in G.Melis, Storia dell'amministrazione

italiana 1861-1993 (Bologna, 1996), 375.

xxxv The comments here are related specifically to the working

class, but it is worth noting that professional people (lawyers,

doctors, chemists, architects, engineers, etc.) also had to

demonstrate good fascist credentials in order to qualify for

membership of the fascist professional order - a condition of

practising the profession. See Libere professioni e fascismo, ed.

G.Turi, cit.

xxxvi See G.Sapelli, Fascismo, grande industria e sindacato. Il caso

di Torino 1929/35 (Milan, 1975), 153; '...joining the union could

be understood as a favourable factor in getting employment. The

5

of widows and widowers permitted to live a dignified old

age through the generosity of their state pensions. What

were termed the 'realisations of fascism' were publicized

to a massive extent, often in glossily illustrated books

which stressed efficiency, modernity and - above all - the

unions in reality controlled the employment exchanges and were thus

in a position to blackmail workers in search of a job'. Many workers

were in a very weak position in any case; those who were not legally

resident in the commune where they worked were often prevented from

registering as unemployed. If they tried to do so they were likely to

be compelled to return to their commune of origin under the terms of

the legislation which attempted to prevent internal movement of

labour within Italy.

xxxvii De Felice, Mussolini il duce. Gli anni del consenso, 92.

xxxviii Official figures, which exclude agricultural workers, show

rates of 20 - 25% in many months. But these figures were contested

even by loyal fascists. See M. Gabellini, Studi e polemiche (Como,

1935), who reproduces (185) his own article from L’Idea sociale 258

(1933). ‘... it [the deliberate reduction of the numbers] is a result

of that strange mentality which declaims, visibly satisfied, ‘Here

the crisis doesn’t exist’. What nonsense. Is it enough to deny the

5

debt which Italy owed to fascism and to the duce.xlviii

Welfare was a wonderful vehicle of propaganda for fascism,

undoubtedly giving many the impression that, for the first

time, the Italian state actually cared for them. And, since

a vast proportion of the population was obliged to

participate in the obligatory assistance schemes, the

existence of unemployment for it to disappear?

xxxix Sapelli, Fascismo, 166-88

xl The judgment of the Belgian economist Louis Rosenstock-Franck

on the unions was short and to the point: 'The essential

characteristic of fascist syndicalism is the total lack of real

participation of the workers in the life of the union'. See Il

corporativismo e l'economia dell'Italia fascista, ed. N.Tranfaglia

(Turin, 1990), which reproduces ch.6 of the original Les étapes de

l'économie fasciste italienne. Du corporatisme all'économie de guerre

(Paris, 1939). The quotation here is from page 156 of the Italian

edition.

xli Mason, “Containment”, cit.

xlii On this comparative issue, see P.Corner, “Consensus and

consumption. Fascism and Nazism compared”, The Italianist 3 (1983),

127-38

5

related propaganda impact was likely to be very strong,

with a penetration involving social groups which had

previously remained relatively untouched by the state.

Participation was, of course, one of the keywords of the

regime. Through personal participation people were directly

involved in the programs and thus became the actors on the

stage; as the targets of propaganda they also constituted

the audience. This was, indeed, the area in which the

apparent benefits of fascism might “blur the edges” of

opposition, as people, who might for other reasons be

convinced opponents of fascism, were tempted to take what

fascism offered in terms of assistance and accept some kind

of partial reconciliation with the regime. In the

straightened circumstances of the 1930s, the temptation to

compromise principles was likely to be particularly strong.

Opposition could be effectively `neutralized` by contact

with state services and by the promises they made. Here

attitudes might be determined less by political sentiment

than by the opportunism of immediate necessity. On a simple

5

cost/benefit calculation, the cost of paying lip-service to

the regime was at most moral, the benefits very tangible.

A closer examination of the mechanisms of welfare suggests,

however, that the attractions of fascist beneficence, or

the `neutralizing` power of the services, were only part of

the picture. Certainly, people might find many aspects of

the programs attractive and worthwhile; it is not difficult

even today to find elderly Italians whose memory of fascism

is linked, for example, to the experience of holidays or

day-trips enjoyed under the aegis of the fascist party.

These were undoubtedly novel experiences for many and

involved large sections of the population.xlix But social

assistance should also be understood as one of the

mechanisms of social control. In this respect the issue is

less what people received from the various aspects of the

system than what they had to do to qualify for services and

assistance. As already stated above, the prime

qualification for participation in most of the schemes was

work; indeed, it was the essential factor, given that

5

contributions were levied on wages at source. But, even so,

not all workers qualified. For example, domestic servants,

actors, and - after 1938 - ‘persons of non-Aryan race’ were

excluded. These were relatively small categories

numerically, but the same was not true of the landless

agricultural labourers, who were excluded from

participation and from benefits for most of the ventennio.

They constituted, according to the 1931 census of

population, around 35% of the total agricultural

population, although the true figure was probably nearer to

40%. More significantly, they were the category most

susceptible to heavy unemployment. Their exclusion was

justified on the grounds that the braccianti were said to be

a shifting population of casual labour and that it was

therefore difficult for them to pay contributions on a

stable basis. In reality, as the parliamentary discussions

between 1919 and 1922 had demonstrated, the landowners

simply did not want to pay their part of the contributions

for the braccianti in their employment.l In the late 1930s,

when certain categories of landless labourers were finally

5

admitted to certain programs, their rights to many benefits

were limited by other factors. Unemployment pay was refused

those who had sources of income or employment other than

day labour; even a small vegetable garden or allotment was

judged to constitute a further revenue and thus excluded

braccianti from benefit.li

The exclusion of the landless labourers said a lot about

where power lay in fascism; the landowners of the Po valley

may have become politically less important during the years

of the regime, but they were still sufficiently powerful as

a lobby to be able to maintain their control on legislation

concerning their particular workforce. In general terms,

exclusion relegated people to a kind of ghetto of isolation

from the state, something which would - paradoxically -

make them more dependent on state hand-outs and fascist

charity in times of need. lii Of greater importance, because

far more people were involved, is the way in which

assistance programs worked to discipline those who were

included. Here a variety of factors operated. The key

5

point, however, is that it was impossible to have access to

services or to benefits without passing through one of the

fascist organizations, sometimes without passing through

more than one. Participation - in the sense of going along

with the regime - was, to all effects and purposes,

compulsory, therefore. Access to most services was broadly

similar. People would have to fill in special application

forms, available on request from the fascist organization

in question.liii They would usually have to present, with

their application, their work documents (the libretto di

lavoro), which was the evidence that they were, or had been

in employment. This libretto was held by the employer and had

to be requested from the employer.liv If they were applying

for unemployment pay, they would also have to produce a

certificate of unemployment from the fascist labour

exchange. Usually they might have to present a medical

certificate; and, for many services, they would have to

present a detailed account of the circumstances - financial

and medical - of all members of the family. Any request for

assistance meant dealing first with the fascist authorities

6

and the employers, therefore. More significant is the fact

that applications would usually be vetted by committees

formed of those competent in the particular area - the

functionaries - and by local dignitaries, including

representatives of the local PNF and the civic

administration. For example, the 1937 regulations for the

formation of certain assistance committees stipulated that

they should be composed of the head of the local Fascio, the

head of the Fascio femminile, the local President of the Opera

Nazionale Balilla (the fascist youth movement), the President

of the Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia, the President of the

Provincial Association of War Veterans, the local President

of the Association of War Handicapped, and the leading

provincial doctor.lv And control did not stop there. If

benefit was granted, people had to present themselves to

the authorities on a regular basis in order to withdraw the

money. The unemployed, for example, had to sign on every

day at the labour exchange.

6

In the later years of fascism, these committees would have

before them, besides the information included in the

application, a written report on the person or the family

concerned from the visitatrice fascista(fascist woman visitor).

These figures, in some ways analogous to those in Weimar

Germany who aroused so much resentment among the working

class for their alleged 'snooping' into private

circumstances, were endowed by the authorities with a heavy

moral function. Their task was defined as being that of

rooting out malingerers and the work-shy and they were

instructed to use strong methods 'with the apathetic, moral

hypochondriacs who relax in their misery as if it were a

bed which has become comfortable through long use...'lvi

They were encouraged in their reports, therefore, to

mention untidiness, dirtiness, laziness, and signs of

excessive consumption of alcohol (i.e. empty bottles) - all

factors which could be brought into play in deciding

whether families would receive assegni familiari (child

benefit) or subsidies in kind or not, whether children

would be allowed to go on holiday to the colonie, and so on.

6

Sometimes, on the basis of these reports, fairly drastic

disciplinary measures would be taken against the family.

Particularly involved because of the demographic policies

of the regime, the Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia had the

power to take children away from their parents, to require

'assignment to an institution of education and

instruction', and, for more difficult cases, 'temporary

reclusion for reasons of public safety (from 9 to 18 years

old)’, and even ‘ confinement in institutes of re education

and improvement (teachable sub-normal children and deviants

from 9 to 18 years old) '.lvii The application for public

assistance risked provoking a strong repressive reaction

from the authorities, therefore.

All these procedures meant, of course, that access to

benefits was determined by authorities either near to

fascism or specifically fascist. And it was determined in

this way in various stages - employer, possibly doctor,

fascist visitor, committee. Such a situation was not by

itself necessarily abnormal - state benefits are, after

6

all, generally administered by state authorities. But in

fascist Italy the strict identification of the state with

fascism meant that the system was - very obviously - run in

such a way as to reinforce fascist control. In part, as

already stated, this meant showing that assistance was real

and that people should be grateful to the fascist state for

it; the propaganda aspect was undoubtedly extremely

important. In part, however, the right of access to the

benefits of the system depended on fascist approval and

this gave fascism an enormously influential lever vis-à-vis

the population. As one fascist writer acknowledged, the

INFPS was ‘an extremely powerful instrument of political

action’ and should be used as such.lviii It was very much a

case of the stick and the carrot; benefits were available,

but clearly they were available to those who conformed to

the rules laid down by fascism. Otherwise people would be

punished and benefits withheld. On the one hand fascism

proclaimed the wonders of the system, on the other it

threatened to exclude the unworthy from that system on the

grounds that they were subverting the national cause.

6

The rules were in many ways unwritten rules and could only

be guessed at - something which gave the authorities a

great deal of discretionary power. Fascism had constructed

a system of benefits which, in theory, involved most of the

population - and then reserved the right to say who should

and who should not benefit. Inclusion and exclusion were

politically determined, therefore. It is here that we come

closer again to the questions of consensus and opposition

under fascism. Direct, police repression of dissent is one

thing, exclusion from the apparent benefits of a welfare

system is another. The second is much more subtle in its

mode of operation; it is clearly an implied threat which

need rarely be made explicit, but, for a large part of the

population who do not dream of open and vocal opposition,

it is likely to be more potent. Open opposition is able to

identify its enemy and act accordingly; reaction to the

discretionary use of power is far more difficult, precisely

because the terms on which that discretion is exercised are

more difficult to identify with any certainty. Without

6

enforcing order through draconian measures of repression,

fascism could ensure its hold on the population through its

control of the distribution of relatively scarce resources.

After 1925, most people were probably not in the position

of having to make the choice about fascism as a political

movement; but they did have to make choices about houses,

jobs, schools, pensions, welfare - all of which were

controlled by the fascist authorities. In other words, they

were forced 'to go towards fascism'.lix People might have

little choice in the matter of conforming, therefore;

exclusion from subsidies or other benefits could damage the

family far more than the individual. To put it another way,

for most people the necessity of conformity with the

fascist system would be so obvious that it would make any

choice almost automatic.

Discretionary power, of course, could not only deny access

and take away, but also provide. This was the other side of

the coin. Controlling everything, the fascist authorities

were in a position to reward collaboration - indeed, in

6

some circumstances to 'buy' some kind of consensus. Where

the allocation of public housing was concerned, political

affiliation was likely to have the better of real need.lx

Housing queues, which tend to last for years, are excellent

guarantors of good behaviour. But it is in the realm of the

concession of pensions that the possibility of using state

power for party ends is particularly apparent. According to

the Annuario statistico italiano - an official source - more than

half the applications for pensions made between 1931 and

1935 were turned downlxi. The reasons are not given, but it

is clear that a discretionary element on the part of the

authorities is present. This impression is confirmed when

it is considered that between 1929 and 1939, while the

total number of pensions for the disabled and the elderly

rose from 174,588 to 572,515. The proportion of disability

pensions in this figure rose from 31% to 56%. Moreover, the

proportion of these paid to people resident in the South of

Italy rose from 14% to 21%. In absolute terms, therefore,

the South saw an increase in the number of disability

pensions paid from 7,680 to 66,621, a rise of some 900%.lxii

6

This can, of course, be read as an extension of the welfare

network as the state itself extended its control, but the

disproportionate rise in the South gives rise to the

suspicion, at least, that fascism was using the pension

system in order to extend its political control through a

typical patron-client relationship. This meant complaisant

bureaucrats and doctors but, given that these were

categories generally favourable to fascism, this was

unlikely to constitute a problem. Conclusions exactly of

this kind have, of course, been drawn about the

relationship between disability pensions, Christian

Democracy and the South for the 1950s and '60s.lxiii

Discretionary use of power could operate in a further way,

reinforcing fascism in a classic process of divide and

rule. The complicated mechanisms of welfare and social

insurance, which created numerous different categories

among workers and assigned different levels of benefit to

each category, aimed very clearly at the fragmentation of

any residual worker solidarity as people struggled to

6

maintain differentials which were advantageous to them or

to rise to the level of the more privileged. As people's

expectations were fragmented, so were their requests. New

hierarchies were established and reinforced by preferential

treatment. This was true among blue-collar workers, where

different jobs brought differing benefits, but it was

particularly true of the division between workers and the

impiegati – the white-collar employees of state and private

administration. The class generally considered to have been

the backbone of the regime (in part created and certainly

greatly reinforced by the regime) was rewarded by

favourable treatment vis-à-vis workers in non-clerical

jobs. An immediate indication of class preference was the

fact that benefits for children of workers were stopped

when the children reached 16; in the case of the impiegati,

they were stopped when the children reached 18. It was

clearly assumed that middle class children would stay

longer in education. Impiegati also had privileges when it

came to recognition of the right to disability pensions.

Workers qualified if their earning capacity was reduced, by

6

illness or accident, to less than one third of what it had

been previously, whereas for the impiegati it was sufficient

that it should be reduced by a halflxiv. The same

distinction is apparent in the difference in the value of

pensions paid to impiegati and workers. The white-collars

were accorded particularly preferential treatment, given

that most workers consistently paid a higher proportion of

their total income in contributions than did the impiegati

(around 15-20% and 10-15% respectively; the more you

earned, the less you paid proportionately; the

contributions were in every sense regressive). Yet

pensions for impiegati were 114% higher than those paid to

workers, on the basis of the full payment of the necessary

contributions for both categories. Even on those rare

occasions when impiegati and workers ended up having made

exactly the same total contribution to the pension fund,

impiegati inexplicably received significantly higher

pensions.lxv

7

The position attributed to you in the social hierarchy was

extremely important in deciding the way in which you were

treated, therefore. This inevitably gave considerable

discretionary power to those fascist authorities

responsible for determining classes and categories within

the hierarchy. And the more people were aware of the

economic importance of distinctions between social classes

and sub-groups, the more those who perceived that they

benefited in respect of others were likely to hold to

fascism and to the politics of hierarchy. Within classes

and categories fascism also maintained the traditional

division between men and women. In some occupations, the

standard, published rates of pay for women were half those

offered to men.lxvi Often both gender and social class were

factors which influenced access to benefits, with gender

inevitably following and reinforcing distinctions made on

the grounds of class. This was what fascism called the

'discipline of difference’ which avoided 'the absurd

levelling of equality’ and imposed 'respect of the

hierarchical order’ lxvii

7

Conclusions. Consensus and regimentation.

The intention here is certainly not to deny that there was

any consensus for fascism. To do so would be to mistakenly

identify fascism with a simple authoritarianism. Obviously

many groups did benefit from fascism and accorded their

support to the regime for reasons of material gain, social

status, a conservative defence of what was thought to be

law and order, or for real, if misguided, ideas related to

national resurgence. The ‘lay religion’ of fascism, which

for some was certainly a kind of faith, undoubtedly had

many highly committed followers.lxviii And there was a

difference in the support given to Mussolini himself at a

popular level and that given to the functionaries and the

corrupt 'spoils system' of the regime.lxix But the claims

made for mass consensus for fascism are a somewhat

different matter and go beyond the recognition that some

7

groups, in particular the urban middle and lower middle

class, did support the dictatorship.lxx

.

Our purpose is to make two points about how the question of

consensus should be considered. The first is to query the

way in which the 'repression/consensus' division is usually

presented. A re-reading of De Felice - but not only De

Felice - leaves the impression that repression and

consensus are, to use a metaphor, two halves of an apple,

the same apple; what is not controlled by repression and

prevention is controlled by active choice. We are presented

with what appear to be alternatives - a kind of specular

relationship between agreement and disagreement. The above

remarks are intended to suggest that this vision is largely

mistaken, at least in as far as the mass of ordinary

Italians were concerned. After all, the existence and the

threat of repression can by itself determine silence and

acceptance of the status quo; in this sense, in some

circumstances, repression and passive acquiescence should

be seen as elements along a continuum. But it is surely

7

also mistaken to assume that, when the individual moves out

of the sphere of activity which might be controlled by

direct repressive measures, he or she automatically moves

into a sphere in which there is freedom of choice and in

which 'consent' or 'dissent' become the alternatives

available. Much of what we have said above - about

employment, housing, in particular welfare - suggests that

fascist control was very strong in all these areas and that

what might be termed 'access to civil society' was firmly

in the hands of fascist organisations and fascist officials

who could use their very large discretionary powers as they

wished. In reality most people had little choice in their

behaviour - not, or not only, because Italy was a police

state which repressed active opposition very efficiently,

but because so many areas of normal civil activity were

also controlled by fascism. Popular reactions to fascism –

in this case absence of open protest - cannot be judged,

therefore, by the same criteria which would be applied to

popular political reactions under democracy. To do so is to

risk misreading the meaning of silence and to misunderstand

7

the kind of control which a totalitarian regime exercises.

It is not so much made up of repression, terror and the

thought-police as it is of the control of most of the

essential elements of ordinary life, creating a situation

in which acceptance of the rules of that control, and the

observance of those rules, is a necessity of survival, not

a choice. It is this which generates the ‘spontaneous’

plebiscites so typical of totalitarian regimes. After the

initial seizure of power, fascism created a situation in

which the vast majority of people were not presented with

the choice of being either fascist or antifascist; there

was simply no feasible alternative to toeing the line if

you wished to continue to lead a normal life.lxxi Except for

a relatively privileged and/or very courageous few,

antifascism was just not an option. It should be noted that

when fascism collapsed literally overnight in July 1943,

for a multitude of reasons, not least of which was a

disastrous war, this was the first time since 1925 that

many Italians had been presented with a choice, an

alternative - and they took it with impressive rapidity.

7

This, of course, makes the whole question of the mass

consensus extremely problematical. Indeed, it suggests that

it might be better to abandon the word 'consensus' because

it is burdened with connotations of choice which are in

reality absent in the situation in question. If we want to

say that, by the early 1930s, the mass of the people went

along with fascism without obvious and open protest, that

there was a kind of pragmatic acquiescence with the regime,

then there is no problem. This would in many ways conform

to De Felice's concept (used by him for the period after

the armistice of 8 September 1943) of a vast 'grey area'

among the population, in which people attempted to avoid

making choices which would identify them with one side or

the other.lxxii But if we move from the recognition of non-

resistance to fascism to the idea of a popular consensus

based on choice, we are perhaps going beyond what is

legitimate and ignoring the totalitarian nature of fascist

control of society. This may not have been the monolithic,

big brother, totalitarianism to which George Orwell has

7

accustomed us - a vision which may in fact mislead. Not all

totalitarianisms have to be the same, and in Italy, as is

well known, autonomous centres of power such as the church

and the monarchy did continue to provide certain limits to

fascist control. But, in the context of day-to-day

existence, fascism did exercise a totalitarian control

which was capillary in its operation, present in every

local context, and able in one way or another to permeate

almost all areas of everyday life. It produced a form of

regimentation, of conformism, which was not based on choice

but, on the contrary, on the lack of any real alternatives.

And successful regimentation was the precondition of

effective mobilisation. To deny this is to miss the essence

of fascism.

The absence of alternatives prompts a second, final,

consideration. The use of the concept of consensus to

suggest that people chose fascism and that, by this token,

fascism is somehow less reprehensible, cannot be accepted

if, at the same time, it is agreed that most people really

7

had no choice. Yet this 'slippage' - from a claim for the

existence of a consensus for fascism to a justification of

fascism (justified because chosen and supported

spontaneously by the people) - is part of the cultural

operation which is now taking place in Italy, directed from

areas of centre-right and self-styled 'liberal' thinking.

This is not the open justification of the regime by the

former neo-fascist chief, now leader of the right-wing

Alleanza nazionale and deputy prime minister, Gianfranco Fini,

who will wear his definition of Mussolini ('the greatest

statesman of the [twentieth] century'lxxiii) around his neck

for the rest of his political career; it is a much more

subtle operation of revision which seeks to discredit the

antifascist tradition and masquerades as a political

pragmatism devoid of the allegedly 'preaching' ethical

values of the founding fathers of the first republic.lxxiv

Hence the contemptuous references to antifascist judgments

on fascism as being no more than the 'vulgate of the

winners'; hence the recent attempts at the rehabilitation

of Mussolini’s Repubblica di Salò and the invitations to

7

empathise with ‘our boys of Salò’; hence the shouts of joy

at revelations about the compromises of prominent

antifascists with the regimelxxv; hence, above all, the

continual repetition of the 'mass consensus' theme to

suggest that, in the end, fascism was not that bad after

all.

In the face of this campaign, it is necessary to review the

evidence and to recognise, on the basis of this evidence,

that fascist dictatorship ensured, for the vast majority of

people, that there were no choices to be made; that this is

what constitutes the real totalitarian nature of fascism

(and not the greater or lesser level of open and direct

repression); and that it is this which makes Italian

fascism directly comparable to its justly reviled partner

and ally, German Nazism.

7

8

8

xlvii The colonie were, of course, financed through the fascist enti,

which were in turn financed by the contributions of the workforce,

deducted at source from the pay packet.

xlviii See, for an excellent example, M.Casalini, Le realizzazioni del

regime nel campo sociale (Rome, 1938)

8

xlix Again it is to be noted that, although fascism presented these

programmes as its own inventions (and people continue to believe

this), there was already a well-consolidated tradition of factory

holidays, workers’ trips to the sea, etc. in existence before

fascism. The real fascist innovation, of course, was that of

persuading the participants to relate the experience to a political

party and to the state.

l Proposals were made in 1919 to introduce a scheme which would

give unemployment pay to the braccianti, a measure which could have had

extremely important political consequences in the circumstances of

the immediate post-war. The large landowners blocked it consistently

until the first fascist government abandoned the idea in late 1922.

E.Campese, L’assicurazione contro la disoccupazione in Italia (Rome,

1927), 46-8.

8

li Landless labourers with vegetable gardens lost both ways. They

were likely to be classified as small proprietors from the point of

view of the population census, thus permitting the fascists to claim

success for their much-proclaimed policies of sbracciantizzazione (the

elimination of the class of braccianti). If so classified, of course,

the braccianti were no longer dependent labour and did not come within

the terms of social insurance. If not so classified, they were

excluded on the grounds of having a secondary source of income. The

fate of the families of sharecroppers was somewhat analogous. The

sharecroppers (mezzadri) were continually extolled by fascism for

their sturdy rural independence and family spirit; but families of

sharecroppers were specifically denied any subsidy if the head of the

family contracted tuberculosis precisely on the grounds that they

were sturdy, independent, family orientated, etc., and could

therefore look after themselves. See, for the relevant legislation,

INFPS, Al di là del lavoro, 51.

8

lii Local fascist organisations had the job of drawing up lists of

the deserving poor each year. These lists were published every

December and only those on the lists could ask for assistance. See

Partito Nazionale Fascista, Federazione Provinciale dei Fasci

Femminili, Nozioni per Visitatrici Fasciste (Padua, 1937), 25.

liii INFPS, Al di là del lavoro, 31-2

liv INFPS, ibid., 29

lv U. Lovo, L’Ente Opere Assistenziali (Padua, 1937), 4-5. Other

committees required the presence of the local chief of police and the

fascist podestà (mayor).

lvi Partito Nazionale Fascista, Federazione Provinciale dei Fasci

Femminili, Corso Preparatorio per Visitatrici Fasciste (Novara,

1940), 12

lvii ibid, 19 and 22. The number of minors (persons under the age of

18) kept in special institutes of correction and re-education rose

8

dramatically from 975 in 1927 (more or less the yearly average up to

that point) to 8,966 in 1939. The precise significance is not clear,

but the increase certainly shows a much greater degree of control of

the condition of young people within the family. See Sommario 1861-

1955, 103

lviii INFPS, Al di là di lavoro, 10.

lix See the conclusions of Sapelli: 'The organisations for

assistance carry out a fundamental role in reinforcing the provincial

capillary structures of the PNF which, in this area, was able to

utilise all discretionary instruments to select and then dismantle

pre-existing areas of solidarity, in order then to reconstruct,

through an out-and-out use of charity, interest systems among social

groups reduced to the level of simple survival, on the basis of a

client network …’, in Annali della Fondazione G. Feltrinelli, XX,

1979-80 (Milan, 1981), .XXXII. Also illuminating on the impact of

the crisis and the response of employers is A.Cento Bull, Capitalismo

8

e fascismo di fronte alla crisi. Industria e società bergamasca 1923-

1937 (Bergamo, 1983), ch.4.

lx Often the first houses would go to those in need who genuinely

qualified for them, the others to the less qualified. See Corner,

Fascism in Ferrara, 286. The same priorities are described in

G.Salvemini, Under the Axe of Fascism (London, 1936), 335.

lxi G.Gaddi, La misère des travailleurs en Italie fasciste (Paris,

1938), 148. Gaddi quotes the Annuario Statistico Italiano1937, 239

8

lxiii See D.Hine,Governing Italy. The Politics of Bargained Pluralism

(Oxford, 1993), 63

8

lxii Figures, but not conclusions, drawn from L.Beltrametti and

R.Soliani, “Alcuni aspetti macroeconomici e redistributivi della

gestione del principale ente pensionistico italiano (1919-39)”,

Rivista di storia economica, 2, 16 (2000), tables 5 and 6. This

article demonstrates the ways in which the enormous surpluses

generated by the contributions made to INFPS were utilised to finance

other projects, the most notable being the launching of the state

holding company IRI in 1933.

lxiv U. Belloni, La previdenza sociale a favore dei lavoratori

(Novara, 1940), 78

lxv INFPS, Al di là del lavoro, 14. The level of pensions is not

strictly relevant to the question of social control, except in the

sense that the continued existence of relative poverty did

undoubtedly strengthen the hand of the fascists. In this respect it

should be noted that the examples given in the literature on

pensions, which speak of pensions of 5600 lire per year for a worker

8

with 43 years of employment (see Belloni, Previdenza, 85) are belied

by the national statistics. In 1938, for example, the average old age

pension was 852 lire per year. If it is calculated that impiegati

received much more than workers, then it seems likely that the

average worker’s pension was in the region of lire 300-400 per year,

or 30-35 lire per month, at a time when a male domestic worker was

paid 48 lire per week; INFPS, cit., 41-48

lxvi Belloni, Previdenza, 96

lxvii INFPS, Al di là del lavoro, 8

9

lxviii On this theme, see the fundamental work of Emilio Gentile; in

particular, Il culto del littorio (Rome-Bari, 1994).

lxix The definition is that of G.Melis, Storia dell'amministrazione

italiana 1861-1993 (Bologna, 1996), 357. On the distinctions made by

popular opinion between Mussolini and the regime, see L.Passerini,

Mussolini immaginario. Storia di una biografia 1915-1939 (Rome-Bari,

1991).

lxx The quality of some of this support emerges clearly in the

illuminating study by V. de Grazia, The Culture of Consent. Mass

Organisation of Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, 1981) who

concludes, on the basis of her research on the fascist leisure

organisations, that the very low level of politicisation of

activities, dictated by fear of the consequences of political debate,

produced a generalised political apathy among participants. See also

the conclusions of P. Melograni, Rapporti segreti della polizia

9

fascista (Rome-Bari, 1979), 10; '...the consensus of the Italians

for the regime was a very limited consensus and much less

'politicised' than appearances suggested. Almost always the masses

participated at political demonstrations as a ritual: the circulation

of information was curbed by censorship and the degree of debate was

extremely limited, even within the PNF...'

9

lxxi Exemplary in this context the reply of a “disappointed

fascist” to the question about his experience of fascism while a

young man, ‘Were you forced to enrol in the GUF [fascist university

groups]?’. “We were not forced to join. But there was no other

choice’. Gianni Granzotto, quoted in A. Grandi, I giovani di

Mussolini, (Milan, 2001), 126.

9

lxxii De Felice uses this concept to argue that the majority of

Italians shared neither the antifascist ideals of the resistance nor

the extreme fascist position of the repubblichini (the supporters of

Salò) and to suggest that most people were simply too occupied with

the problem of survival. ‘…I don’t think it’s right to speak of

opportunism. I refer the concept of opportunity; each choice was made

as a simple necessity…’ (R. De Felice, Rosso e Nero, (interview

edited by P.Chessa) (Milan, 1995), 58-60). He never extends the idea

backwards in time to relate it to his theories of consensus for

fascism, although it would seem reasonable to do so.

9

lxxiii La Stampa, 30 March 1994

lxxiv For example, the prominent journalist Giuliano Ferrara, who

argues against an ethical (i.e. antifascist) basis for

politics:'...we believe that democratic politics has other, more

empirical, bases, and that it must attempt to correct and improve

man’s condition through experiment, not impose an obligation in any

one direction. Il Foglio, 5 June 2000. Ferrara does not say who decides

what constitutes 'improvement' in this context.

lxxv See the ecstatic reaction of the right to the publication of

A. d'Orsi, La cultura a Torino fra le due guerre (Turin, 2000) in

which he documents the various compromises which the philosopher

Norberto Bobbio, one of the most influential intellectuals associated

with the foundation of the republic, made with the regime when a

young man.

9