similarly to the majority of Italian people since 1948 onwards, I grew up knowing and being told & taught that Fascism arose because of violent actions and King’s passive stance about Fascism. Vittorio Emanuele III’s choice to do nothing when Mussolini organized his farcical march towards Rome is something everybody knows. Fascism was believed to solve the “Red unrest” (1919-1921) on behalf of democratic parties and entrepreneurial leaders. This is what anyone would read in any Italian primary school text of history. This is substantially true.
Consequently, Italian people during re-established democracy (1948-) split in two factions: Fascism as a dictatorship is evil per se; Fascism was wrong but not everything was so bad. This dichotomy is absolutely unsolved in contemporary Italian Republic. This dichotomy fuels perennial querelles. Usually the shame of Racial Law issued in 1938 that openly discriminates Italian Jewish people is the only shared judgement between these two cultural parties. Racial Law is the ultimate threshold of decency. My opinion is that this is by far too mild against fascism: fascism was evil itself since the very beginning and I wouldn’t forget & forgive all fascism did before 1938.
Those believing that Fascism is evil (I proudly belong to this party) can make a infinite list of abuses and crimes – making an implicit assumption that lenght is a proof of one’s point. People on the other side of the spectrum – although the spectrum implicitly foresees different degrees of tepid absolution – deploy the art of distinctions via false facts, often using the phrase “not all was a disaster”. The main “good thing” anyone would agree is the Agro Pontino reclamation. I can’t find a second example. Very often people on this latter side propose false facts instead. My favority falsity is the fact that Mussolini would have invented the Italian Welfare State (please, this is totally wrong!).
All these endless disputes are swept off by “M, il figlio del secolo”.
Antonio Scurati’s novel based on official historical documents imposes a deeper analysis to any Italian person. Fascism is incredibly worse than any anti-fascist may dare to think. Still, manicheims really does to match reality. Fascism per se is not evil, albeit being the most shameful invention Italy exported in some several centuries for centuries. Reading this book, I realised that Italian democratic society did not only underevaluate Fascism at its beginning. Italian ruling class did worse. Italy (I mean Italian political, intellectual and economic ruling class) simply and spontanously (here is what tragedy’s fabric is made up of) abdicated. This abdication is somehow pivoted on some kind of sloth.
Fascism is not evil per se. Fascism is a vector of a sort of evil which is the Italian malicious side of its own culture. I insist that this has to do with sloth exemplified by Don Abbondio – one of the characters in “I promessi sposi”, the most famous novel any Italian had to read in compulsory school. Fascism is a specific historical manifestation of the worst of Italianess – I concluded reading the novel. Indifference, self-destruction, incapacity to accomplish modernity all the way, misogeny, un-accountability as a way-of-life are all some of the main ingredients of such a not-very-yummy Italian dish.
Fascism as it was is not going to repeat itself. Under different forms, it can indeed. This is another lesson one may get from this book.
Nowadays (since Mario Monti government I’d say) Italian debate is dominated by “elite people” questioning if current government is a sort of Fascism coming back just exactly 100 yers later. This novel helps dramatically in disentangling if, to what extent, and in what sense this might be true. I agree with Andrea Camilleri who recently said that Fascism is a mentality. This book with its 800+ pages of historical reconstruction is helping us getting Camilleri’s point. Today, like 100 years ago, some people are indefferent to some disgusting manifstations of Italian politics; some others are proudly against anyting that may remotely look like fascism. Immigration from Lybia is just the hottest of the topics, but not the only one, fuelling such debate.
Both those who like to define themselves as “disgusted but some realpolitik is necessary” and “anti-Fascist at all costs all the way” would benefit from reflecting upon such reconstructions of how Mussolini got power from 1919 until beginning of 1925.
I hope and I wish such a book will trigger a strong debate among whoever, in Italy or abroad, like to define oneself “anti-Fascista”. I say so because I feel the necessiy to talk to my own people.
giuliomarini 