Fascist Culture

ABSTRACT
This article investigates how Gabriele D’Annunzio’s The Triumph of
Death brings together Nietzsche’s ideas and Wagner’s music and
interweaves them with the motifs of literary Decadence and the
author’s own particular sexual politics. The novel is an experimental
text striving to be a Gesemtkunstswerk, an integrated work that
incorporates music, painting, poetry, regional folklore, and private
thoughts about personal and national power. I discuss the novel’s
themes of violent sexuality and the anxiety of powerlessness and
explore their implications for the fascist political aesthetics in which
D’Annunzio played a pioneering role.

El fascismo italiano fue uno de los fenómenos que marcó el siglo XX para siempre. Suele asociarse con la Historia de Europa y de Italia en el marco de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y el período de entreguerras. No obstante, el fascismo se alimentó con vías de propagación de su ideología a través de la propaganda, la prensa y, asimismo, los símbolos materializados en el arte, los artefactos e incluso en los rituales cívicos. Dentro de este punto se desarrolló esta investigación, la cual busca develar el caso de un pequeño pueblo de vénetos que se fundó en el siglo XIX en México, pero que vivió cercanamente el fascismo italiano en su cotidianidad: Chipilo, Puebla. A través de una antropología documental en el Archivo General de la Nación y en el Archivo Histórico, Sociocultural y Lingüístico de Chipilo, este texto busca sacar a la luz la atmósfera fascista manifestada en fotografías, rituales, y objetos que permiten construir la etapa fascista del pueblo, pero también uno de los tentáculos culturales del pretencioso imperialismo fascista. Así, el ensayo trata de entender que este régimen se inscribe dentro de una historia transnacional y global.

Dance critic and impresario, Paolo Fabbri makes a short but intense journey in the field of Italian dance during the fascist period. Mainly active at the beginning of the Thirties, Fabbri proposes an idea of modernization of the dance of his time through the regeneration of Italian classical dance. The article focuses on the pivotal elements of his work, such as the sources of inspiration, the characteristics of his critical method and language, the choices he made in terms of conception and realisation of theatrical events.

My doctoral dissertation examines the experiences of the Italian volunteers in the Waffen-SS troops using in-depth interviews with former volunteers as the main primary source. This phenomenon, even if significant in size (depending on the source, some 15 000-20 000 Italian men volunteered in the Waffen-SS), has been hitherto largely unknown to historical research. The available literature on the Italian volunteers, mainly written by military history enthusiast journalists and methodologically weak, concentrates mainly on the combat operations and military organization, and offers a rather stereotypical profile of the volunteers.

My dissertation does not aim to reconstruct the military history of the different divisions of the Waffen-SS in which Italian volunteers operated but instead to examine the subjective, private and intimate experience of the volunteers in order to understand the motivations, attitudes, beliefs and cultural and family background, as well as their political ideas. The main objective of my doctoral dissertation is to discover the ideological precepts of the volunteers’ political credo. As the last phase of fascism and its ideology, often defined as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascism, is still the object of wide academic debate, a better understanding of the volunteers’ ideology also contributes to deepening overall knowledge of the nature of this last phase.

The theoretical frame of my dissertation lies in oral history, in particular in the postmodernist approach to oral history, through which I reconstruct the volunteers’ ideology. In-depth interviews with former volunteers are the main primary source, but multiple data collection methods have been adopted. Phone interviews and correspondence with the volunteers have also been considered as primary sources. In addition to interviews and correspondence, family archives consisting of diaries, correspondence with the volunteers’ relatives and photographic material have also been collected and examined. An ethnographic observation of the volunteers’ domestic spaces has been conducted during the in-depth interviews, and photo self-elicitation techniques have been used in cases where the volunteers were willing to share their photographs.

An exhaustive portrait of the ideological structure of the volunteers has been obtained, as well as of the cultural and social origins of the values that contributed to the rise and adoption of this ideology. Further, the volunteers’ motivations to enlist have been clearly reconstructed, together with their cultural, political, social and military backgrounds. The results of the research are particularly relevant both for comprehension of the Italian phenomenon of volunteering in the Waffen-SS and for the reconstruction of the ideological dynamics of the last phase of fascism. The volunteers’ political and ideological system, which can be defined as the Italian SS-fascist ideology, disagrees strongly with the vaguely described ideological profile offered by previous studies that describe volunteers as generically “super-fascist”. The research also offers the opportunity for a deeper understanding of the final fascist ideological trajectory, currently defined, not without a certain level of approximation, as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascist ideology.

The Academy of the Foro Mussolini was the most important centre for the training of the political leaders and physical instructors of the Opera Nazionale Balilla and of the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio. After the end of the regime this Institution and its students were completely forgotten. The aim of the following article, which synthesizes the most relevant aspects of my PhD dissertation, is not only to recall the history of the Academy from the very beginning till 1943, but above all to show the relevance of this institution. The regime wanted to create a “new Italian” and the Farnesina played a central role in order to achieve this aim. It was the diamond point of the pedagogical fascist project.

Released in September 2014, the dvd L'arte della comunicazione. Il cinema di animazione di Luigi Liberio Pensuti (1930 - 1940), presents the restored films of Pensuti on project of Fondazione Cineteca Italiana with the collaboration of Istituto Luce Cinecittà and Archivio Cinema d'Impresa (Ivrea) - Csc centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.
The films are part of the anti-tuberculosis campaign launched in the thirties by the fascist regime. The use of animation and experimental language make this film the real little gems of italian animation cinema.

"""""During Mussolini’s fascist regime, the Atlante internazionale del Touring Club Italiano – produced in Milan (1927-1938) and widely recognised far beyond the borders of Italy – included among its plates two maps of European ethnic groups. The makers of the TCI’s atlas passed on to us a specific approach to determine the kind of collective that ought to be considered an ethnic group.
The enigmatic second reprint of the fifth edition (1938) was inexplicably not accompanied by the symbolic features required by the fascist authorities, but, after World War II started, the new version of the “Europa etnografica” map – on a 1:12.000.000 scale – clearly showed the changes that occurred in the political context.
Link:
http://www.j-reading.org/index.php/geography/article/view/57/50"""""

Nous nous proposons d’approfondir ici le portrait psychologique et idéologique, dessiné notamment dans Kaputt, du comte Agustín de Foxá, intellectuel espagnol phalangiste, ami de Malaparte et, comme celui-ci, romancier, journaliste, dramaturge et diplomate. Cette étude est, à nos yeux, importante pour comprendre quelques aspects Fondamentaux de l’oeuvre et de la personnalité de l’écrivain de Prato. Par exemple :
1. La valeur et le sens de notions clés de son oeuvre telles que la dichotomie cruauté-pitié.
2. La fonction importante exercée par le catholicisme dogmatique et “rhétorique” de l’écrivain espagnol dans l’itinéraire de Malaparte qui débouche sur son attitude particulière face à la souffrance réelle de l’homme.
3. La caractérisation du christianisme “anarchiste” de Malaparte par rapport au catholicisme “théologique” du comte de Foxá.

This book was the product of a conference in honor of Philip Cannistraro. Each participant was asked to present a paper that pointed to new directions in either Italian or Italian-American History, areas in which Cannistraro specialized. Former graduate students of Cannistraro and long time colleagues contributed to both the conference and the book. The contents to the volume are below:

New Directions in Italian and Italian-American History

Edited by Ernest Ialongo and William M. Adams

New York: John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, 2013

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Ernest Ialongo and William M. Adams • “New Directions in Italian and Italian American History.” (1)

Emilio Gentile • “Fabbrica del consenso o fabbrica del potere? Redefining Fascism and Totalitarianism.” (6)

Paul Corner • “Factories and their Products. A Comment on Philip Cannistraro's La fabbrica del consenso.” (21)

Ernest Ialongo • “Marinetti and the Cult of the Duce.” (27)

William M. Adams • “The Politica dei ponti in the Republic of Salò.” (40)

Stanislao G. Pugliese • “Wrestling with Two Angels: Communism and Christianity in the Work of Ignazio Silone.” (50)

Charles Killinger • “Italian Antifascist Exiles and the Italian-American Com-munity: Renato Poggioli and Gaetano Salvemini as Case Studies.” (65)

Gerald Meyer • “New York City’s Italian Americans and the Great De-pression: The Response of a Community in Distress.” (77)

Marcella Bencivenni • “The Lost—and Found—World of Italian American Radicalism.” (102)

Resulta cuanto menos paradójica la poca atención brindada a fenómenos como la participación y la experiencia política a través del franquismo, sobre todo si tenemos en cuenta que se trata de realidades esenciales para la comprensión de todo régimen político moderno que se precie y que, por lo demás, nos aportan una perspectiva privilegiada de su particular naturaleza. Este artículo pretende demostrar la gran variedad de formas de participación y experiencia políticas puestas en marcha por el franquismo como respuestas radicales al reto de la modernidad. Como trato de demostrar, en la primera década de vida del régimen todo acto cotidiano pasó a cobrar una dimensión participativa fundamental, lo cual partía de una concepción muy particular de la militancia. Sin lugar a dudas, el escenario más importante fue planteado por el 18 de Julio y la guerra, elevados a la categoría de plebiscito de la nación en armas que posibilitaría la participación masiva de los españoles en la historia y la realización del modo de ser fascista a través de una suerte de cristianismo combativo. No obstante, el artículo va más allá del horizonte omnipresente de la guerra al centrarse en la evolución de los canales de participación y representación política a lo largo de la posguerra, que culminarían en el referéndum de 1947 como hito decisivo en la constitución del régimen.

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It’s paradoxical, to say the least, the low attention paid by the Spanish historiography to phenomena as political participation and experience into Francoism, specially taking into account its importance in order to understand any modern political regime, because these realities give us an exceptional approach of its peculiar nature. Francoism got a great variety of ways to participate and experience politics off the ground as radical responses facing the challenge of modernity. This article raises some of them. As I tried to show, each daily fact took on an essential participatory dimension during the first decade of the regime, which make sense around its peculiar conception of militancy. Without a doubt, the most important scene was posed by the coup d’état and the Spanish Civil War. The regime turned both into a plebiscite of the people risen up in arms which would make possible the massive participation in History of the Spaniards and the fulfilment of the fascist way through a kind of combative Christianity. Nonetheless the article goes beyond the omnipresent horizon of the war to focus into the changing channels of political representation and participation during the post-war which were culminated by the 1947 referendum, a crucial fact in the constitution of the regime.

Edited by Helen Roche, Cambridge University and Kyriakos Demetriou, University of Cyprus

The first ever guide to the manifold uses and reinterpretations of the classical tradition in Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, Brill’s Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany explores how political propaganda manipulated and reinvented the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome in order to create consensus and historical legitimation for the Fascist and National Socialist dictatorships.
The memory of the past is a powerful tool to justify policy and create consensus, and, under the Fascist and Nazi regimes, the legacy of classical antiquity was often evoked to promote thorough transformations of Italian and German culture, society, and even landscape. At the same time, the classical past was constantly recreated to fit the ideology of each regime.

Mussolini's Fascists staged their "March on Rome" in 1922 and bluffed their way to power.

GERMAN / DEUTSCH Mit dem inszenierten „Marsch auf Rom“ tricksten sich Mussolinis Faschisten 1922 an die Macht.

KEYWORDS / SCHLAGWÖRTER
Ästhetisierung, Bewegung, Demokratie, Duce, fascismo, Faschismus, Film, Frankreich, Gewalt, Gewerkschaften, Großbritannien, Hitlerputsch, Italien, Journalismus, Marsch auf Rom, Medien, Mostra della Rivoluzione fascista, Mussolinismo, Nationalismus, Nationalsozialismus, Öffentliche Meinung, Personenkult, Presse, Propaganda, Propagandaministerium, Rechtsextremismus, Risorgimento, Ritual, Sozialismus, Straßenterror, Symbolik, Syndikalismus, Terrorismus, Vereinigtes Königreich, Volksempfänger, Zeitungen

ORGANISATIONEN: Fasci d’azione rivoluzionaria, fasci di combattimento, Faschistische Partei, Istituto Luce, Partito Nazionale Fascista, Schwarzhemden, Sozialistische Partei Italiens (PSI), Squadrismo, Squadristen, Squadristi

PERSONEN: Italo Balbo, Gustave Le Bon, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Cesare Maria De Vecchi, Emilio De Bono, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Adolf Hitler, Giacomo Matteotti, Benito Mussolini, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel, Viktor Emanuel III (Vittori Emanuelle III)

PUBLIKATIONEN: Avanti, Il Popolo d’Italia
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Abbiamo proprio bisogno della critica per capire e apprezzare i grandi testi della letteratura italiana ? È proprio necessaria la mediazione del critico letterario, dell’erudito e del professore affinché il lettore possa intendere la parola dell’autore ? Le perplessità, rispetto alla sua funzione e alla sua legittimità, accompagnano la critica letteraria sin dai suoi esordi, ma si esprimono con una violenza maggiore durante il ventennio fascista : vengono allora ad innestarsi in un discorso anticrociano e più generalmente antintellettualistico, nonché nel progetto politico di controllare anche ciò che sulla letteratura si dice e si scrive, e come si legge la letteratura. Seguendo un percorso cronologico attraverso le riviste, le università e le istituzioni culturali del Ventennio, questo libro descrive le forme di denigrazione che subirono i critici letterari e al contempo le strategie di integrazione e gli strumenti con cui anch’essi furono arruolati nel progetto politico fascista. Il libro ci racconta così l’inedita e inquietante storia di una critica letteraria che, alla fine degli anni Trenta, ambiva a divenire totalitaria.

Leggi l’intervista di «Letture.org» :
https://www.letture.org/abbasso-la-critica-letteratura-critica-e-fascismo-stephanie-lanfranchi

En el caso de muchos combatientes fascistas la actividad intelectual actuaría como una prolongación natural y necesaria del ejercicio de la guerra, precisamente por ello, nos proponemos analizar las motivaciones que impulsaron a miles de españoles a alistarse como voluntarios para la guerra en el Frente del Este, y lo haremos a través de sus propias colaboraciones en la revista La Joven Europa. En este sentido, podría decirse que dicha publicación se convirtió en un espacio de encuentro para intelectuales y combatientes fascistas que contribuyó a la legitimación ideológica de la guerra en el Frente del Este. Este propósito se vio favorecido por la construcción de una determinada imagen del enemigo y, sobre todo, de una identidad y conciencia en torno a las cuales facilitar la confluencia de los combatientes fascistas. Desde nuestro punto de vista, el análisis de las experiencias y visiones de la guerra codificadas por los combatientes de la División Azul nos permitiría penetrar en su particular imaginario colectivo.
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Intellectual activity acted as a natural and necessary extension of war experience in the case of fascist combatants, for this reason we want to analyse why thousands of Spaniards enlisted themselves as volunteers for going to the Eastern Front, and we are going to do that through their own contributions with La Joven Europa. In fact, this journal was turned into a kind of meeting point for fascist intellectuals and combatants of all over the continent, and it contributed to war’s ideological legitimation at the Eastern Front. This purpose was assisted by the construction of a certain image of the enemy, and above all a new conscience and identity. We are going to see the convergence of fascist combatants around these shared ideas. From our point of view, the analysis of the experiences and views of the war codified by the Spanish soldiers at the Blue Division allow us to deepen our knowledge on their own social imaginary.

The Cineguf and the Memory of Fascism (1944-1976) The Cineguf and the Memory of Fascism (1944-1976) wants to get deeper into the complex metabolisation of the traces of the fascist past, for some of the protagonists of the Cineguf era. The article discusses the way some Cineguf members elaborated upon their own experience into the Cineguf groups-a fascist association of amateur film clubs-and how the social and generational developments regarding the film culture impacted onto this cultural and political metabolisation, in postwar Italy. The article proposes to question the various forms of "silence" that characterizes the archival survival of the films produced by the Cineguf and the narratives of the history of the Cineguf as well.

The first motorized crossing of the Sahara Desert from the Italian Royal Geographical Society in 1937. Focusing on the breakdowns, mishaps, and miscommunications involved in this crossing, Mariani uses the figure of interruption to explore the attempt at, and resistance to, making the desert into a colonized, traversed space. From this exploration, Mariani expands the definition of miscommunication from the fields of media and communication studies and offers a way to conceptualize this phenomenon in several types of transmission, whether this involves physical travel or the transmission of information