Fascist Italy

[RedRedRose]

Pilgrims to Mussolini’s birthplace pray that new PM will resurrect a far-right Italy

Also, a timely reminder of the genocide by fascist Italy against Libya

Fascist Italy and the forgotten Libyan genocide

 

[friedaweed]

Pilgrims to Mussolini’s birthplace pray that new PM will resurrect a far-right Italy

Also, a timely reminder of the genocide by fascist Italy against Libya

Fascist Italy and the forgotten Libyan genocide

I read that myself and it didn't really do much for my thoughts about a rising tide of cuntishness in the world around me. Honestly, do they really forget why they hung the cunt upside down in the street.

 

[JimW]

This reads like a left liberal run-through of the post-war history that got us to the present resurgence: The Italian Far Right's Long March Back to Power
Not really well versed enough to comment but what bits I do know seem fair comment.

 

[Dystopiary]

Pilgrims to Mussolini’s birthplace pray that new PM will resurrect a far-right Italy

Also, a timely reminder of the genocide by fascist Italy against Libya

Fascist Italy and the forgotten Libyan genocide

link fixed

 

[DaveCinzano]

Film-wise, Lion Of The Desert is worth a spin, about resistance to Italian attempts to subjugate Libya. It's what you might call, ah, somewhat problematic for modern sensibilities but you're smart enough to figure it out

 

[RedRedRose]

'M. Son of the Century' by Antonio Scurati is a 'documentary novel' written from the perspective of Mussolini and has become a surprise international best-seller, despite being 700-800 pages long. So far, read very good reviews of the book.

Review and Interview in The Atlantic

Scurati wrote his novel, he says, largely in response to the fading of a certain postwar consensus, one that perceived fascism as the ultimate evil. This shift has opened the gates to a nostalgic far right previously kept at bay, but it has also, ironically, allowed a novelist to explore the regime from within—which would have been nearly taboo decades ago—rather than from the viewpoint of its victims. “I wanted to do something to rebuild anti-fascism and its democratic principles on new foundations,” Scurati told me in a telephone interview. “I wanted the reader to have a strengthened repulsion of fascism, but at the end of the book, not at the beginning.”

Scurati apportions guilt for Mussolini’s rise to a wide swath of Italy’s interwar society. The Socialists, the Catholics, the press, all appear here as democratic forces that were either too fainthearted or too shortsighted to stop Mussolini. But the shortcoming that shocks the most is that of the borghesia liberale, the liberal bourgeoisie, imbued with 19th-century ideals—a love of nation, individualism, and an economy free of government intervention. This ruling class had dominated the largely poor and illiterate country since its national unification as a modern state in 1861.

In Scurati’s account, this establishment is drawn into Mussolini’s arms by a combination of myopia and fear. On one hand, the bourgeoisie felt their world sinking; on the other, they deluded themselves into thinking that Mussolini would stop the wave of violence he had launched, if only they appeased him. Their plan, Scurati writes, was “to curb fascist lawlessness, considered a passing phenomenon, by tethering it to the constitutional arch.” But Mussolini had a “counterplan: to stir up disorder to show that only he can remedy it. Unleash the squadristi with one hand and then rein them in with the other.”

Sky plan to turn the book into an eight-part series.

 

[petee]

Review and Interview in The Atlantic

just a footnote, that review is by the daughter of a guy who was a giant in my business, and her own degree is within the field.
smart fellow, arnoldo: "He received his doctorate at the age of 21".

ARNALDO MOMIGLIANO, NOTED HISTORY PROFESSOR

www.chicagotribune.com

 

[RedRedRose]

Britain ‘secretly backed’ Mussolini’s March on Rome Times article from October 2022

Mussolini’s secret relationship with Britain had started five years earlier in 1917, when he was working as a journalist and Hoare put him on the payroll of British intelligence, paying him £500 in five months. Italy at the time was fighting alongside the UK, France and the US in the First World War but Britain was afraid it would pull out of the conflict, just as revolutionary Russia did in 1918.

Hoare, who later became Lord Templewood, revealed in 1954 that he had recruited Mussolini, before the British historian Peter Martland found evidence of payments in Hoare’s papers, which were made public in 2001.
Nero di Londra adds new details to those years, claiming Hoare used the codename The Count for Mussolini and worked with senior Italian freemasons to aid the dictator’s rise. British intelligence officers also used the Rome correspondent of The Times, William Kidston McClure, as middleman for communicating with pro-war groups.
Fasanella said Hoare brought to Rome his experience of working in the UK with the Anti-Socialist Union, which broke up left-wing meetings. “Hoare had specialised in the use of violence and propaganda in Britain and he brought that method to Italy,” he said. Cereghino added: “Mussolini’s career between 1917 and 1922 would not have taken the path we know without the influence of the British conservative establishment.”

 

[The39thStep]

Neo Nazi's arrested in Naples

Operazione antiterrorismo tra Napoli, Caserta e Avellino: 5 arresti | Polizia di Stato

Nelle provincie di Napoli, Caserta e Avellino la polizia ha arrestato cinque persone appartenenti ad un’associazione terroristica

www.poliziadistato.it

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Recommend both the piece and the bibliography:

https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/319053231/A_micro_history_of_Fascist_violence_Squadristi_victims_and_perpetrators.pdf

But the best stuff I’ve read is Portelli. Superlative oral history and bottom up accounts:

Portelli, Alessandro: The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History
Portelli, Alessandro: Biography of an Industrial Town. Terni, Italy,

Hope these are helpful.

 

[The39thStep]

Sky Italy saying that Order of Hagal group mentioned above in #39 had links with the Ukrainian far right Azov Battalion, Right Sector and Centuria * "with a view to possible recruitments", as well as paramilitary training activities and were considering a massacre like Christchurch

Terrorismo, blitz contro neonazisti: arresti e perquisizioni

Leggi su Sky TG24 l'articolo Terrorismo, blitz contro cellula neonazista: 4 arresti e perquisizioni in tutta Italia

tg24.sky.it

Info on Centuria here

Far-Right Group Made Its Home in Ukraine’s Major Western Military Training Hub | illiberalism.org

Oleksiy Kuzmenko on how the far right group Centuria penetrated Ukraine's main military academy

www.illiberalism.org

 

[Sue]

Saw Mark Cousins' March on Rome earlier. Sadly wasn't v good.

 

[RedRedRose]

Saw Mark Cousins' March on Rome earlier. Sadly wasn't v good.

Unfortunately, there are not many documentaries of the period.

 

[petee]

haven't spoken about this before, but ...
i made a tiny specialty out of fascist use of roman antiquity as a graduate student, got a paper or two out of it even, and still have a few items on my bookshelf with the fascist year marked. i honed in on this s.o.b.

Giuseppe Bottai - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[RedRedRose]

haven't spoken about this before, but ...
i made a tiny specialty out of fascist use of roman antiquity as a graduate student, got a paper or two out of it even, and still have a few items on my bookshelf with the fascist year marked. i honed in on this s.o.b.

Giuseppe Bottai - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Really interesting areas to unearth. So, divulge away...

Bottai seems to have been involved in the corporatist councils that would eventually hand over the economy to the state; he later then unpicks the Giovanni Gentile education reforms (who fucked up by introducing classics and downplaying vocational subjects) helping introduce the race laws in the process.

Despite the Germanophilia, he helped overthrow Mussolini and survived the post-1945 era with the Foreign Legion before finally receiving an amnesty.

In terms of architecture, always found the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana building creepy as fuck. An artist friend said it was because it disavows rules associated with the golden mean and it's a distortion of classical architectural norms. (Not my field of expertise!).



Couple of videos I would recommend; the first is an historical tour around Italian fascist monuments, the second is about reconciling nazi/fascist buildings in a democracy.

 

[petee]

Couple of videos I would recommend; the first is an historical tour around Italian fascist monuments, the second is about reconciling nazi/fascist buildings in a democracy.

i liked that second video (tho' they could do to remove the music ...)

bottai was education minister for a while (as the article says) and wrote entire books on the theme that the fascists were resurrecting ancient rome and mussolini should be considered another caesar. there's gobs of hack stuff along those lines. i don't have this book but i do have a full color printout of the cover:

Mussolini e i Cesari - Giovanni Viganoni - Libro Usato - Ultra - | IBS

Mussolini e i Cesari è un libro di Giovanni Viganoni pubblicato da Ultra : acquista su IBS a 21.00€!

www.ibs.it

 

[RedRedRose]

Mussolini e i Cesari - Giovanni Viganoni - Libro Usato - Ultra - | IBS

Mussolini e i Cesari è un libro di Giovanni Viganoni pubblicato da Ultra : acquista su IBS a 21.00€!

www.ibs.it

I can't read Italian

 

[petee]

I can't read Italian

the "description" is a description of the state of the book, not of the contents. the book itself is called "Mussolini and the Caesars."
is that what you meant? or do you wish you could read italian

 

[hitmouse]

haven't spoken about this before, but ...
i made a tiny specialty out of fascist use of roman antiquity as a graduate student, got a paper or two out of it even, and still have a few items on my bookshelf with the fascist year marked. i honed in on this s.o.b.

Giuseppe Bottai - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Did you ever hear of Donna Zuckerberg's work? Sounds like it might be of interest:

Why the alt-right loves ancient Rome

And Greece, too.

www.vox.com

Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age

 

[petee]

Did you ever hear of Donna Zuckerberg's work? Sounds like it might be of interest:

Why the alt-right loves ancient Rome

And Greece, too.

www.vox.com

Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age

thanks! if you're interested, here's another writer: On Auctoritas and Antiquity

 

[RedRedRose]

or do you wish you could read italian

It would be a useful acquisition.