Mussolini and Italian Fascism

The rising tide of populist politics in the 2010s and early 2020s has brought the word ‘fascism’ back to the centre of international political and cultural debate. Historians such as Ruth Ben Ghiat and Federico Finchelstein have addressed the connections and similarities between today’s ‘strongmen’ and the autocrats ruling much of Europe between 1922 and 1945. On the subject of Italian fascism, in addition to the political climate, the centenary of the 1922 March on Rome has stimulated further debate on the subject. Whether it was indeed a totalitarian regime remains the fundamental, underlying question. In 2018, Guido Melis published La macchina imperfetta. Immagine e realtà dello stato fascista (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2018) arguing that the effect of fascistization on the Italian state was limited, for Italian institutions during the ventennio showed continuity with the most authoritarian elements of liberal Italy’s tradition, and servile conformism was far more widespread than sincere adherence to the fascist ideological project, especially in bureaucracy. Like earlier works such as Paul Corner’s analysis of consensus in fascist Italy, Melis’ book can be seen as an answer to the recent Italian historiography on fascism’s focus on fascist ideology, particularly its totalitarian discourse. Giulia Albanese underlined that emphasizing ideology might lead to overlooking how these translated into practice and that Melis’ study on Italian institutions suggests that, after all, there was no fascist totalitarianism. The integration of ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ in Mussolini’s totalitarian efforts is the focus of Rethinking the History of Italian Fascism (London: Routledge, 2022), edited by Albanese and containing contributions from many of the main Italian historians of fascism. In this case, the fascist experience emerges as a watershed moment with liberal Italy in fields such as the use of political violence, consensus creation via welfare measures or flexible propaganda, mass mobilization-based colonial policy, the redefinition of citizenship and even in certain areas of scientific research. Rethinking Fascism also suggests that the Italian fascist experience should not be studied in a vacuum. Albanese’s chapter in particular focuses on the diffusion of Italian fascist ideas to other European countries. Indeed, the last decade has seen a steady expansion of transnational approaches to the history of fascism. Although transnational history transcends Italian fascism, Mussolini’s attempt to fascistize Europe or indeed the rest of the world is one of its main focuses. One important example is Fascism without Review Article