tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/mussolini-31413/articlesMussolini – The Conversation2022-10-28T12:39:37Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1933682022-10-28T12:39:37Z2022-10-28T12:39:37ZMarch on Rome: uncomfortable moment for Italy as Giorgia Meloni becomes prime minister a century after fascist takeover<p>Between the end of October and the beginning of November 1922, Benito Mussolini’s so-called <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/19/march-on-rome-and-coming-to-power-of-mussolini-1922">march on Rome</a> took place in Italy. This moment was of global importance. It marked the first fascist takeover of power in the world, set in place a regime which would govern for 20 years, and inspired other far-right movements. The recent election victory of far-right leader Giorgia Meloni has led to much discussion about the roots and ongoing presence of fascism in Italian society.</p>
<p>It could reasonably be argued that without the march on Rome, Hitler’s rise to power might never have happened, and the second world war would not have taken place. It has been the subject of much <a href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/italys-divided-memory">historical and political debate</a>. Some called it a bluff, some a farce, some a coup. Italian fascists claimed that the march had been a revolution. For them, 1922 was year zero.</p>
<p>From October 27 1922 onwards, blackshirted fascists (known as <em>squadristi</em>) attacked and occupied government buildings, barracks and prisons across Italy. They were often heavily armed.</p>
<p>The local insurrections came on the back of <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/4886/chapter-abstract/147259786?redirectedFrom=fulltext">violent activity</a> that had effectively destroyed local democracy in numerous towns and cities and driven many socialists and trade unionists underground or into exile.</p>
<p>The plan was then to take the capital itself, and thousands of blackshirts began to march, or take trains, towards Rome. Given this situation, King Victor Emmanuel III (the head of state) was faced with a choice – mobilise the army against the fascists, or give in. He chose the <a href="https://www.italyonthisday.com/2017/10/mussolini-appointed-prime-minister-victor-emmanuel.html">latter option</a> and Mussolini was appointed prime minister.</p>
<p>It seems likely that the king felt he could not count on the army to remain loyal in the face of the march. But there was also an element of self-interest. By appointing the head of an insurrection as prime minister, the king legitimised fascist violence and set himself up as a co-leader of the state.</p>
<p>Once thousands of blackshirts finally reached Rome, the king saluted them from his balcony as they filed past. There was then an orgy of violence in the capital itself, directed largely against oppositionists, the free press and anti-fascists. Dozens of people were killed. Others were threatened. Many saw their homes trashed and sacked. It was a warning. Mussolini was in charge of this violence, and could unleash it at any time – a threat he made explicitly in parliament soon afterwards.</p>
<p>The Liberals who voted for Mussolini’s government (the fascists had only won 35 seats in the previous elections) assumed that they could control the blackshirts. But this was a fatal error. Soon, fascism would turn on the Liberals themselves, who were beaten, intimidated and killed.</p>
<p>Within a few years, the world’s first fascist dictatorship was in place, and Italian democracy had been destroyed. Mussolini had never accepted the results of the 1919 elections, and had vowed to overturn those “shameful” results by any means necessary. He did not claim those results were fraudulent, just that they were politically unacceptable and “anti-national”.</p>
<p>Mussolini would rule until 1943, when he was arrested on the orders of the king as Italy’s war effort fell apart. His ignominious <a href="https://www.history.com/news/mussolinis-final-hours">end</a> saw him hung up by his feet in front of a baying crowd in Milan, after being shot by Communist partisans as he tried to escape disguised as a German soldier.</p>
<h2>Brothers of Italy rise to power</h2>
<p>Exactly a century later in 2022, a new prime minister has <a href="https://theconversation.com/italys-election-is-a-case-study-in-a-new-phase-for-the-radical-right-92198">come to power in Italy</a>. Her name is Giorgia Meloni. As a teenager, she joined the youth wing of the neo-fascist party Movimento Sociale Italiano.</p>
<p>The party went through splits and name changes over the years and now calls itself Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) – a reference to a line in the national anthem. Within the Fratelli d’Italia symbol is a flame, which, according to some, represents the permanent flame on Mussolini’s grave, in his birthplace of Predappio in central Italy.</p>
<p>Meloni doesn’t like to talk about fascism. She has criticised the movement’s destruction of democracy and its anti-semitic measures, but when asked for more, she slightly deflects the question. She says she is against all regimes, be they communist of fascist.</p>
<p>Meloni has grown up in a democracy, and has come to power through <a href="https://theconversation.com/giorgia-melonis-win-in-italy-proves-even-a-seemingly-successful-government-can-fall-victim-to-populism-191278">legitimate elections</a>, not violence. But you don’t have to dig too far to find more explicit <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/23/pilgrims-to-mussolinis-birthplace-pray-that-new-pm-will-resurrect-a-far-right-italy">Mussolini love and nostalgia</a> or the regime of the 1920s and the 1930s amongst her followers, and amongst many of her ministers and deputies. Even just the fact that she doesn’t publicly denounce such tendencies in her followers is an issue.</p>
<p>Italy as a nation has nothing planned to mark the 100th anniversary of the march on Rome. Perhaps this anniversary will be completely ignored, although it is being marked at a local level by conferences, commemorations and discussions. In Predappio, as on every such occasion, many will gather to pay homage to Mussolini’s tomb. They will do so undisturbed by the police, despite laws against the “reconstitution of the fascist party”.</p>
<p>Does this matter? Isn’t fascism something very much about the past rather than the present? Yes and no. The normalisation of an ambiguous attitude to fascism is something we should be worried about. But Italian democracy is robust and the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/106591294800100301?casa_token=BHTcOoXtmVoAAAAA:qXx9FqZsRHsitDAfv2iq6H2_IXY09GPcluA5zLgJU9KvbTbkP9SJhI9NMPvSeIy3fG2bvn5Xjxnh">constitution is expertly drawn up</a> with these dangers in mind.</p>
<p>That said, most Italians have no living memory of fascism at all. Anti-fascism has therefore been in decline for decades. In 1994, when post-fascist politicians entered Silvio Berlusconi’s first government, there were huge anti-fascist marches in Milan and elsewhere. This is no longer the case – and perhaps this lack of active opposition to fascism is the most worrying trend of all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193368/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Foot does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A century since the dictator staged a coup, a party with fascist roots is once again in power.John Foot, Professor of Modern Italian History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1796472022-03-28T15:47:56Z2022-03-28T15:47:56ZUkraine war: The history of conflict shows how elective wars ultimately fail<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454520/original/file-20220327-19-fg9dym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5499%2C3647&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Ukrainian police officer is overwhelmed by emotion after comforting people evacuated from Irpin on the outskirts of Kyiv on March 26, 2022. History shows that wars launched for nebulous reasons generally backfire on those who launch them.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/ukraine-war--the-history-of-conflict-shows-how-elective-wars-ultimately-fail" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Throughout history, elective wars like the one in Ukraine — armed military conflicts that countries wage without compelling and urgent reasons for action — have mostly failed to achieve their aims. Instead, they worsen the problems they set out to solve and often become the undoing of those who started the conflict.</p>
<p>Of the oldest written records of how this dynamic played out <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/thucydides">is contained in the work of Thucydides</a>, the Athenian historian and general who chronicled <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/peloponnesian-war">the Peloponnesian War</a> (431-404 BCE) between ancient Greece’s most powerful city-states: Athens and Sparta. </p>
<p>In his <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7142/7142-h/7142-h.htm"><em>History of the Peloponnesian War</em></a>, Thucydides records that in 416 BCE, the Athenians decide on a whim to invade the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Melos">island of Melos</a>, which, although an ally of Sparta, didn’t join Sparta in the war against Athens. </p>
<p>The Melians’ pleas for justice fell on the deaf ears of the Athenians who demanded that the Melians surrender, pay tribute to and join Athen’s confederacy or face destruction. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Peloponnesian-War">The campaign ended tragically</a> with the entire civilian population of Melos facing all kinds of atrocities for refusing to surrender to the Athenians, who saw their unbridled power as sufficient basis to inflict grave injustice. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A painting of a funeral during the ancient Peloponnesian War." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A painting shows Pericles’ funeral oration at the end of first year of the Peloponnesian War on a 1955 Greece 50 drachma banknote.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Intoxicated by power, the Athenians’ reply, according to Thucydides’ account, was essentially: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” This principle, Thucydides shows, was the driving force behind Athens’s aggressive approach toward its neighbours. </p>
<p>Over time, it fuelled deep-seated anger and resentment among Melians and citizens of other city-states who sought revenge by ultimately <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/peloponnesian-war">joining forces with Sparta to defeat Athens in 404 BCE</a>. </p>
<h2>Downfalls triggered</h2>
<p>As the Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrates, the dynamics of great power politics haven’t changed much in more recent history. The lure of using brute force to achieve quick economic and geopolitical gains has created a rolling tide of military mobilization that has carried countries into battle.</p>
<p>History often repeats itself in that those battles trigger the downfall of the stronger party who unnecessarily drew the first blood.</p>
<p>In the 1930s, fascist regimes used offensive wars as consolation when grandiose promises proved hollow. As <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-depression">the Great Depression</a> dragged on, Italy’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benito-Mussolini">Benito Mussolini</a> sought to divert public attention from his economic failures through a series of costly military adventures <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/italy-invades-greece">in Greece</a>, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/axis-invasion-of-yugoslavia">the former Yugoslavia</a> <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Italo-Ethiopian-War-1935-1936">and Ethiopia</a>. </p>
<p>These episodes created economic havoc for Italians rather than glory before Italy’s entry to the Second World War. The war accelerated Mussolini’s downward spiral even among <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/26/mussolini-loses-grip-on-italy-archive-1943">his own fascist clique, which ousted him in 1943</a>.</p>
<p>In the same time period, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/adolf-hitler-1#section_19">Adolf Hitler</a> thought Germany needed <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/hitler_lebensraum_01.shtml"><em>Lebensraum</em></a> — living space — to ease its economic strains. He then proceeded with unprovoked invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland to expand Germany’s territory, sparking the Second World War in 1939. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo shows a group of men in military uniforms." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High-ranking officials of the Nazi and Fascist Parties. Left to right: Herman Goering, Benito Mussolini, Rudolph Hess and Adolf Hitler.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(National Archives of Canada)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To achieve his ideal of a racial utopia, Hitler’s war not only unleashed <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust">a genocide of six million Jews</a> and persecution on a scale few could have imagined, it also undermined the entire German economy and the country’s military capabilities. </p>
<p>Hitler’s delusional leadership ultimately resulted in <a href="https://www.historynet.com/hitlers-greatest-blunders/">a series of defeats</a> <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rudolf-Hess">and defections</a>, culminating in <a href="https://www.history.com/news/6-assassination-attempts-on-adolf-hitler">assassination attempts</a> on Hitler himself and finally the collapse of Nazi Germany and <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/adolf-hitler-commits-suicide">the führer’s suicide</a> on April 30, 1945.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/could-vladimir-putin-be-ousted-over-his-ukraine-invasion-179182">Could Vladimir Putin be ousted over his Ukraine invasion?</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Middle-East">The Middle East</a> also saw a number of elective wars that marked the beginning of the end of the regimes that waged them. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Muammar-al-Qaddafi">Muammar Gadhafi’s</a> <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/chad.htm">war against Chad (1978-87)</a> is one example. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saddam-Hussein">Saddam Hussein’s</a> <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/8/1/thirty-years-on-iraqs-invasion-of-kuwait-still-haunts-region">1991 invasion of Kuwait</a> is another. </p>
<p>Both regimes envisioned wars of national glory only to plunge their countries into quagmires that took huge human and economic tolls and severely diminished public confidence in their leadership. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Oils wells burn and black smoke rises into the sky in a large oil field." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this March 1991 photo, Kuwait’s oil wells burn after defeated Iraqi troops were expelled from Kuwait.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why elective wars fail</h2>
<p>War is often a failure in itself. However, elective wars constitute a special kind of failure. </p>
<p>First and foremost, they lose public support quickly. They often <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/putin-saber-rattling-or-preparing-for-war/6323352.html">begin with sabre-rattling</a> and narratives that exalt <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022009404042129">an alleged heroic past and envision a war of national glory</a>, similar to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric prior to the invasion of Ukraine. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A balding man smiles with a red, blue and gold flag behind him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Putin attends a meeting with young award-winning culture professionals via video conference in Moscow on March 25, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But as the war drags on and the futility of war becomes more obvious, people begin to question the strategic importance and moral foundations of war. It’s difficult for regimes to galvanize public opinion or maintain people’s willingness to accept the sacrifices associated with war — especially when <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfq001">it’s a drain on resources, causes economic hardship and lowers living standards</a>.</p>
<p>When that happens, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316336182.008">regimes face two hard choices</a>. One is to admit their mistake and reverse action. That rarely happens. The second is to <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-control-over-ukraine-war-news-is-not-total-its-challenged-by-online-news-and-risk-taking-journalists-179540">suppress dissenting opinions</a>, project an image of popular support for the war and stay the course despite mistakes that later lead to further errors and conflict within the power elite. </p>
<p>Elective wars often fail because they attempt to eliminate old animosities but instead create new ones. <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/axis-invasion-of-yugoslavia">They also shred the ethnic bonds within conquered territories</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two long-haired girls join hands and dance in front of a burning effigy of Vladimir Putin." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demonstrators dance around a burning an effigy of the Russian President Vladimir Putin during an anti-war protest in Tbilisi, Georgia — a former Soviet republic — on March 27, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>This results in time bombs that can go off at any moment, since few modern economies can function well within a hostile environment. </p>
<p>“The empires of the future are empires of the mind,” <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Winston-Churchill">Winston Churchill</a> presciently said <a href="https://www.harvardmagazine.com/churchill-18">in a 1943 speech</a> at the height of the Second World War.</p>
<p>Churchill seemingly realized that wars aimed at territorial expansion won’t ensure national security or economic prosperity, and the future belongs to those who invest in education, knowledge production and innovation rather than wage meaningless wars that create nothing but misery.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179647/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edmund Adam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s difficult for regimes to galvanize public opinion or maintain people’s willingness to accept the sacrifices associated with a war waged for questionable reasons.Edmund Adam, Postdoctoral fellow, Department of Communication Studies & Media Arts, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1641362021-07-13T15:52:36Z2021-07-13T15:52:36ZThe political history of dubbing in films<p>English-speaking audiences rarely come across dubbed films and television programmes. This probably explains why they tend to find dubbing so, well, weird. Dubbed voices usually sound a bit flat and never quite sync up with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjBJZPJtD3w">the mouths we see onscreen</a>. This can be off-putting and perhaps even a bit unsettling. </p>
<p>But since the birth of sound cinema in the late 1920s and 1930s, dubbing has been commonplace in many countries, including (looking just at Europe) <a href="https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/dubbing-map">Italy, Spain and Germany</a>. Dubbing is still used in many of these countries as a way of translating <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21523643">foreign films and television</a>. In Italy, the dubbing system became so developed in the 1930s that it was even used to add voices to Italian films, right up until the 1980s when the growth of TV (which used directly recorded sound) led to changes in standard industry practice. </p>
<p>So why did such a seemingly bizarre practice gain a foothold in these countries’ burgeoning film industries? After all, aren’t subtitles a better way to <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2020/02/subtitles-vs-dubbing-what-you-need-to-know-1202212800/">keep the original film intact</a> and translate it at the same time? There are a few reasons.</p>
<h2>Nationalist voices</h2>
<p>In the early 20th century, much of Europe’s film-going population had low literacy levels. Subtitles are useless if you can’t read them (or read them fast enough). There’s also the argument that subtitles ruin a film’s images and keep the viewer’s eyes glued to the bottom of the screen. However, perhaps the most important reason for dubbing’s favour was political.</p>
<p>Dubbing is a brilliant tool for film censorship. Sound films began to appear in the early 1930s, a time when many countries were falling under the sway of totalitarian regimes. In Europe, these included those of Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco and the Nazis. Censorship had been a feature of film production and distribution in Italy, Spain and Germany since before these dictatorships took power, but it increased markedly after they did so.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People in a studio recording Italian voiceovers for an English film." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411032/original/file-20210713-21-18tktx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411032/original/file-20210713-21-18tktx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411032/original/file-20210713-21-18tktx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411032/original/file-20210713-21-18tktx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411032/original/file-20210713-21-18tktx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411032/original/file-20210713-21-18tktx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411032/original/file-20210713-21-18tktx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Italian dubbing being recorded in 1972.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppiaggese#/media/File:CINEFONICO1.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Italy and Spain, in particular, found dubbing ideologically useful. Mussolini’s Fascists, for example, manipulated foreign films <a href="https://jbilocalization.com/italian-dubbing-growing-industry/">during the dubbing process</a> by changing dialogue to remove any unflattering reference to Italy or Italians. They also used dubbing to alter morally undesirable elements of film plots. For example, the Italian dub of the 1931 American film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022137/">Men in Her Life</a> was altered to <a href="https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/meta/1900-v1-n1-meta0432/1013946ar/">remove a reference to Mussolini</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps even more nefariously, they also insisted that films be dubbed into standardised national Italian (the official form of the language that was generally understood around the country). This was an effort to stop people in different regions from speaking local dialects and minority languages, and to prevent foreign words from entering Italian culture. Dubbing became a key nationalist tool that could unify and isolate Italy at a fundamental socio-cultural level.</p>
<p>The same story played out <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/europe/spain/articles/spanish-cinema-why-all-the-dubbing/">in Franco’s Spain</a> where dubbing kept films ideologically acceptable and marginalised minority languages like Catalan, Basque and Galician. In post-Nazi Germany, dubbing was used to alter film dialogue to play down references to the country’s Nazi past and the atrocities it entailed. For example, the Nazis in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhMyp8ZvjWs&ab_channel=BFI">Notorious</a> were <a href="https://www.goethe.de/en/kul/flm/20894148.html">rebranded as generic drug smugglers</a>.</p>
<h2>International voices?</h2>
<p>In the post-second world war period, western Europe (with the exception of Spain) broke free of totalitarianism and literacy began to increase, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/18/style/IHT-when-in-rome-dont-trust-actors-voices.html">but dubbing remained</a>. This was partly because it had become an established and familiar habit. But dubbing had also become vital to the system of co-production, which European cinema was increasingly reliant upon. Co-production basically involved two (or more) production companies in different countries teaming up and <a href="http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Academy-Awards-Crime-Films/Co-productions-THE-POSTWAR-ERA.html">making a film together</a>. It was popular with producers as it meant they could pool resources and access grants and tax relief from multiple governments.</p>
<p>Like censorship, co-production had been around since the early days of commercial cinema. It was (and still is) a key initiative that allowed relatively small European countries to team up and push back against the ever-growing domination of Hollywood imports. Again, dubbing was crucial here as these co-produced films usually featured casts from several countries. </p>
<p>Dubbing meant that each actor could act in the language of their choosing on-set (if you watch an old dubbed film closely, you can often tell that actors are speaking different languages. Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a clear example of this practice). The films were shot without sound and a range of different dubs in different languages were produced in post-production, using various teams of voice actors.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rSwWUqMTpRk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Many film directors <a href="http://landscapesuicide.blogspot.com/2010/07/realisms-8-or-everything-was-lost-in.html">hated this system</a>, seeing dubbing as a way of erasing films’ national origins. And some claimed it was part of a wider political drive to homogenise Europe (NATO and the Common Market were also driving European integration at this time). In other words, totalitarianism may have waned, but for many dubbing was still a political tool.</p>
<p>Dubbing is still used as a key method of audio-visual translation in many countries and it still attracts politicised debates. For example, the film market in French-speaking Canada has argued that dubs produced in European French are <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/entertainment/arts/kevin-tierney-quebec-movies-have-a-dubbing-problem">not appropriate for that territory</a>. Dubbing frequently and unsurprisingly ends up at the centre of debates around the politics of language and cultural imperialism, the imposition of one country’s culture onto another country or people.</p>
<p>What the political history of dubbing tells us is that even seemingly minor, technical or banal elements of film and television production can serve very concrete and significant political ends. In a world increasingly saturated with audio-visual media, we should take this lesson seriously.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164136/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Damien Pollard receives funding from the Cambridge Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership.</span></em></p>Governments could use dubbing to censor ideas they didn’t like or insert messages in line with their propaganda.Damien Pollard, Junior Research Fellow, Clare College, University of Cambridge, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1539472021-02-25T13:27:39Z2021-02-25T13:27:39ZWhat is fascism?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384567/original/file-20210216-17-1q0gdrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=63%2C45%2C5885%2C3847&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Donald Trump supporter wears a gas mask and holds a bust of him after he and hundreds of others stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporter-of-us-president-donald-trump-wears-a-gas-mask-and-news-photo/1230458006?adppopup=true">Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since before Donald Trump took office, historians have debated whether <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/164170">he is a fascist</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://history.case.edu/faculty/john-broich/">teacher of World War II history</a> who has <a href="https://abramsbooks.com/product/blood-oil-and-the-axis_9781468314014/">written about fascism</a>, I’ve found that historians have a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-twentiethcentury-political-thought/fascism-and-racism/CFB19146B5E63D20089DF0AAC5CD84D9">consensus</a> definition of the term, broadly speaking. </p>
<p>Given the term’s current – and sometimes erroneous – use, I think it’s important to distinguish what fascism is and is not.</p>
<h2>Race-first thinking</h2>
<p>Fascism, now a century old, got its start with Benito Mussolini and his Italian allies. They named their movement after an ancient Roman emblem, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/fasces">the fasces</a>, an ax whose handle has been tightly reinforced with many rods, symbolizing the power of unity around one leader.</p>
<p>Fascism means more than dictatorship, however. </p>
<p>It’s distinct from simple authoritarianism – an anti-democratic government by a strongman or small elite – and “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stalinism">Stalinism</a>” – authoritarianism with a dominant bureaucracy and economic control, named after the former Soviet leader. The same goes for “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anarchism/">anarchism</a>,” the belief in a society organized without an overarching state.</p>
<p>Above all, fascists <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=NLiFIEdI1V4C&q=%22racial+thought+for+political+purposes%22#v=snippet&q=%22racial%20thought%20for%20political%20purposes%22&f=false">view nearly everything through the lens of race</a>. They’re committed not just to race supremacy, but maintaining what they called “<a href="https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.1093/embo-reports/kve217">racial hygiene</a>,” meaning the purity of their race and the separation of what they view as lower ones.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/abs/racethinking-before-racism/02AAE753AAD57BAFB03A2F003EF12538">That means</a> they must define who is a member of their nation’s legitimate race. They must invent a “true” race.</p>
<p>Many are familiar with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime’s so-called <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-5/breeding-new-german-race">Aryan race</a>, which had no biological or historical reality. The Nazis had to forge a mythic past and legendary people. Including some in the “true race” means excluding others.</p>
<h2>Capitalism is good</h2>
<p>For fascists, capitalism is good. It appeals to their admiration of “the survival of the fittest,” a phrase coined by <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/herbert-spencer-survival-of-the-fittest-180974756/">social Darwinist Herbert Spencer</a>, so long as companies serve the needs of the fascist leadership and the “Volk,” or people. </p>
<p>In exchange for protecting private property, fascists demand capitalists <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis">act as cronies</a>. </p>
<p>If, for example, a company is successfully producing weapons for foreign or domestic wars – good. But if a company is enriching nonloyal people, or making money for the imagined subrace, the fascists will step in and hand it to someone deemed loyal.</p>
<p>If the economy is poor, the fascist will divert attention from shortages to plans for patriotic glory or for vengeance against internal or external enemies. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Benito Mussolini in Agro Pontino, Italy." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384568/original/file-20210216-23-1ec0ygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Benito Mussolini taking part in the inauguration of the first rural settlements in Agro Pontino, Italy, on Oct. 29, 1939.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/head-of-government-benito-mussolini-taking-part-in-the-news-photo/141555664?adppopup=true">Mondadori via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Might makes right</h2>
<p>Important to most fascists is the idea that the nation’s “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/260578?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">patriots</a>” have been let down, that “good people” are humiliated while “bad people” do better.</p>
<p>These grievances cannot be answered, fascists say, if things remain under the status quo. There needs to be revolutionary change allowing the “real people” to break free from the restraints of democracy or existing law and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130930081524/http:/www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html">get even</a>. </p>
<p>For fascists, might makes right.</p>
<p>Since for them the law should be subservient to the needs of the people and the need to crush socialism or liberalism, fascists encourage party militias. These enforce the fascist will, break <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14058/14058-h/14058-h.htm">unions</a>, distort elections and intimidate or <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ss-and-police">co-opt the police</a>. </p>
<p>The historical fascists of Germany and <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/01/mussolinis-racial-policies-in-east-africa-revealed-italian-fascists-ambitions-to-redesign-the-social-order.html">Mussolini’s Italy</a> extended the might-makes-right principle to expansion abroad, though the British fascists of the 1930s, led by <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-49405924">Oswald Mosley</a> and his British Union of Fascists, <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/1932729.pdf">preferred isolationism</a> and preached a sort of internal war against an imagined Jewish enemy of the state.</p>
<h2>What fascists reject</h2>
<p>First and foremost, fascists want to <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/128540/the-anatomy-of-fascism-by-robert-o-paxton/">revolt against socialism</a>. That’s because it threatens the crony capitalism that fascists embrace. </p>
<p>Not only does socialism aim for equal prosperity no matter the race, but many socialists tend to envision <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=tH0jwbnj7BgC&q=%22withering+away+of+the+state%22#v=snippet&q=%22withering%20away%20of%20the%20state%22&f=false">the eventual extinction</a> of separate nations, which offends the strong fascist belief in nation states.</p>
<p>Along with getting rid of aristocrats or other elites, fascists are prepared to displace the church or seek a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/01/27/265794658/pope-and-mussolini-tells-the-secret-history-of-fascism-and-the-church">mutually beneficial truce with it</a>. </p>
<p>Mussolini, Hitler and the <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/02/spains-civil-war-produced-a-fascist-movement-that-was-disorganized-but-just-as-authoritarian-as-italys.html">Falangists in Spain</a> learned that they had to <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-churches-and-the-nazi-state">live with</a>, not replace, the church in their countries – as long as their regimes weren’t broadly attacked from the pulpit.</p>
<p>Fascists also reject democracy, at least any democracy that could potentially result in socialism or <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-or-who-is-antifa-140147">too much liberalism</a>. In a democracy, voters can choose social welfare policies. They can level the playing field between classes and ethnicities, or seek gender equality. </p>
<p>Fascists oppose all of these efforts. </p>
<h2>Fascism grows from nationalism</h2>
<p>Fascism is the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism/Extreme-nationalism">logical extreme of nationalism</a>, the roughly 250-year-old idea that nation states should be built around races or historical peoples. </p>
<p>The first fascists didn’t invent these ideas out of nothing – they just pushed nationalism further than anyone had before. For the fascist, it’s not just that a nation state makes “the people” sovereign. It’s that the will of righteous, real people – and its leader – comes before all other considerations, including facts. </p>
<p>Indeed, the will, the people, their leader and the facts are all one in fascism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153947/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Broich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Given the current, often erroneous, use of the term ‘fascist’ to describe political movements and leaders, it’s important to determine what fascism is and is not.John Broich, Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1100152019-03-12T10:45:32Z2019-03-12T10:45:32ZAfter 100 years, Mussolini’s fascist party is a reminder of the fragility of freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263188/original/file-20190311-86682-1ui6sga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler before attending a conference in Munich, Germany.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/ITALY-SECRET-MUSSOLINI/0eae050912cc469a9b5f8023605009cd/264/0">AP Photo/File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One hundred years ago, in March 1919, Benito Mussolini created the <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mussolini-founds-the-fascist-party">fascist party</a> in Italy. </p>
<p>For more than two decades, when he came to be known as “Il Duce,” or “the leader,” Mussolini wielded broad powers. At the end of World War II, he was shot by a <a href="https://www.history.com/news/mussolinis-final-hours-70-years-ago">firing squad</a> for his crimes. His body was publicly hung upside down. </p>
<p>In my <a href="https://liberalarts.iupui.edu/about/directory/gunderman-richard.html">political philosophy course</a> at Indiana University, my students and I study Mussolini’s rise to power and his dishonorable end. His life offers deep, cautionary insights for contemporary politics. </p>
<h2>The early years</h2>
<p><a href="https://biographics.org/benito-mussolini-biography-italian-dictator-and-journalist-who-was-the-leader-of-the-national-fascist-party/">Mussolini</a> was born in the small Italian town of Predappio in 1883. After qualifying as a teacher, he joined the socialists, who believed in public ownership of property.</p>
<p>He was arrested and jailed by the government for promoting strikes. His advocacy in support of World War I brought him into conflict with the socialist party, which expelled him. In response, he founded a new political movement, <a href="http://www.auburn.edu/%7Ejohnspm/gloss/fascism">Fascism</a>, from the Italian word for “bundle,” which symbolized government authority in ancient Rome.</p>
<p>Wounded while serving in the Italian military, he was discharged and began working as a journalist. Thereafter, Mussolini received funding from the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/13/benito-mussolini-recruited-mi5-italy">British secret service</a> to publish pro-war propaganda in his newspaper. He developed the idea of “vital space,” calling on Italy to reclaim from other Mediterranean nations much of the land that once belonged to the Roman Empire. In 1919, he announced that the fascist movement was becoming a political party.</p>
<h2>The fascists</h2>
<p>As the leader of fascism, Mussolini pushed for the growth of the Italian population. He believed a larger population was necessary for the nation to function as a world-class military power. He also regarded <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/mussolinis-follies-fascism-in-its-imperial-and-racist-phase-19351940/B385EFFE31E9B62F76BF40886F1388AB">Africans and Asians</a> as inherently inferior. Again and again, he called on white Italian women to produce more children. </p>
<p>Mussolini’s fascists formed squads of war veterans known as “<a href="https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/italy-1900-to-1939/life-in-fascist-italy/">Black Shirts</a>,” who would clash with the members of other political parties, particularly communists and socialists. The government harbored deep fears of a communist revolution and rarely interfered, giving Mussolini’s forces relatively free rein. </p>
<p>In 1922, <a href="https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/italy-1900-to-1939/the-march-on-rome/">tens of thousands of Black Shirts</a> gathered in Rome to demand political change. The liberal government sought to declare martial law, but the king of Italy, <a href="https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Victor_Emmanuel_III">Victor Emmanuel III</a>, fearing civil war, instead asked Mussolini to form a new government.</p>
<p>While the Fascists constituted only a small percentage of Prime Minister Mussolini’s original government, he pressured the legislature to grant him dictatorial powers over what citizens could do and not do, seeking to meld the state with the Fascist party. </p>
<p>By 1924, his national alliance won nearly two-thirds of the vote. A <a href="https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/italy-1900-to-1939/the-murder-of-matteotti/">socialist deputy</a> who decried ballot irregularities was murdered. </p>
<h2>Life under fascism</h2>
<p>Mussolini quickly built a cult of personality around himself. Those who sought to oppose him were held in check by governmental and extra-governmental means, including intimidation. Multiple <a href="https://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1241&context=jvbl">assassination attempts</a> against him were unsuccessful.</p>
<p>Mussolini selected the editors of news outlets, required all teachers to take an oath of allegiance to the Fascist regime, and invested large sums of money in projects designed to enhance his own standing <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40257305?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">domestically and around the world</a>. In “<a href="http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm">The Doctrine of Fascism</a>,” published in 1932, Mussolini and a fellow Fascist described the state as “all embracing,” declaring that outside of it “no human or spiritual values can exist.”</p>
<h2>Fascism’s fall</h2>
<p>As seeds of World War II began to germinate in the 1930s, Mussolini believed that Britain and France were doomed by low birth rates and the relatively high age of their populations, and he determined that Italy should ally itself with rapidly growing Germany. </p>
<p>When the Germans under Hitler easily invaded Poland in 1939, Mussolini <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/axis-alliance-in-world-war-ii">concluded</a> that Germany would quickly prevail and entered the war on its side.</p>
<p>Yet Italy was a much weaker war power than Germany, and by 1943, a series of defeats had left the Italian army in desperate shape. Italy’s factories were idled, and food shortages were the rule. The people <a href="https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-18-what-is-the-future-of-italy-(1945)/the-rise-and-fall-of-fascism">turned against</a> “Il Duce.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Allied soldiers walk through the entrance to a fascist youth camp and school in 1943. The gate is designed as a giant letter ‘M,’ in reference to Italy’s dictator Mussolini.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-Italy-WWII-/5030e0209ae5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/675/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Soon U.S. and Allied forces were bombing Rome. When Allied troops swept into Italy in 1945, Mussolini was apprehended by communists and <a href="https://www.theweek.co.uk/93151/how-did-italy-s-fascist-dictator-benito-mussolini-die">executed</a>.</p>
<h2>Lessons of fascism</h2>
<p>As outlined by historian <a href="https://www.martingilbert.com/">Martin Gilbert</a>, the Italian and German experiments with fascism <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23005773?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents">offer urgent lessons</a> for our own day. </p>
<p>First, the strongest protection against one-man rule is deep and widespread respect for democracy. Mussolini undermined free speech and freedom of the press. He weakened the legislative and judicial branches of government. He tried to control what people saw, heard and read.</p>
<p>A second lesson from fascism is to prevent the manufacture of emergencies. By creating a widespread sense that times were desperate, Mussolini, like Hitler, was able to suppress democratic institutions and tyrannize the population. </p>
<p>Another lesson is the danger of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-twentiethcentury-political-thought/fascism-and-racism/CFB19146B5E63D20089DF0AAC5CD84D9">racism</a>. In arguing that whites are superior to Africans and Asians, Mussolini laid the groundwork for exploitation, oppression and even extermination. </p>
<p>Ironically, it is quite possible that had Italy’s military and economy prospered during the 1940s, Mussolini would not have fallen.</p>
<h2>Fragility of freedom</h2>
<p>People all over the world need to remember that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Fascism and the hatred it breeds can undermine goodness and inflame evil. Democratic convictions that required centuries to build up can be demolished within months. </p>
<p>This cautionary tale of Mussolini’s rise to power serves as an enduring reminder of the fragility of freedom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110015/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It was 100 years ago this month that Benito Mussolini created the fascist party in Italy. Today, his life offers cautionary lessons for contemporary politics.Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1107712019-02-03T19:11:45Z2019-02-03T19:11:45ZThe great movie scenes: Rome, Open City - fascism, tragedy and the birth of Italian neo-realism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256249/original/file-20190130-108334-n8ai7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C17%2C2982%2C1477&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Still from Rome, Open City (1945)</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>What makes a film a classic? In this video series, film scholar Bruce Isaacs looks at a classic film and analyses its brilliance. (Warning: this scene contains violence and may be upsetting for some viewers.)</em></p>
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<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/314139063" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Rome, Open City (1945)</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In what way does a film reflect the politics of the time and place in which it was made? We started answering this question in the episode on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-back-to-the-future-108345">Back to the Future</a> (1985). Today, we explore this question further with Rome, Open City (Roma città aperta), directed by Roberto Rossellini and released to Italian audiences in 1945.</p>
<p>Rossellini made the film just after the German withdrawal, a couple of years after Mussolini’s death and the end of Fascism in Italy. The historical context is important because it provides an insight into what Rossellini was trying to achieve. If you are an Italian filmmaker, committed to the art form, but also to the country and its history, how do you respond to this turbulent moment in history? Rossellini used the medium of cinema to not only reconstruct Italy’s recent past under Fascism, but also its potential future.</p>
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<p><em><strong>See also:</strong></em> <br></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-vertigo-63320">Vertigo</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-antonionis-the-passenger-65395">The Passenger</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-74166">Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-steven-spielbergs-jaws-79043">Jaws</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-psycho-and-the-power-of-jarring-music-97325">Psycho</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-the-godfather-98173">The Godfather</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-stanley-kubricks-2001-a-space-odyssey-100170">Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-sofia-coppolas-marie-antoinette-101893">Marie Antoinette</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-darren-aronofskys-requiem-for-a-dream-103916">Requiem for a Dream</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-the-matrix-and-bullet-time-105734">The Matrix and bullet-time</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-back-to-the-future-108345">Back to the Future</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In this video, Bruce Isaacs looks at Rome, Open City. Made in 1945, it was Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist response to the end of German occupation, and Italy’s history of Fascism under Benito Mussolini.Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/959682018-05-03T12:43:16Z2018-05-03T12:43:16ZRome’s Flaminian Obelisk: an epic journey from divine Egyptian symbol to tourist attraction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217280/original/file-20180502-153914-1xw93e1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Piazza del Popolo</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s a great place to sit in the shade and enjoy a gelato. The base of the Flaminian Obelisk in the Piazza del Popolo on the northern end of Rome’s ancient quarter offers views of the twin churches of Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria di Montesanto. But while enjoying the outlook, take a few minutes to marvel at how this 23-metre chunk of granite ended up where it has.</p>
<p>The Flaminian Obelisk was carved at the height of <a href="https://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cultural/09476/egypt02-05enl.html">Egypt’s New Kingdom</a>, during the reign of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Seti-I">Seti I</a> (1290 to 1279 BCE), the father of <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Ramesses_II/">Ramesses the Great</a>. “Carved” is a rather clinical expression for an astounding feat of engineering. Quarrying and moving a 263-ton chunk of granite – with the additional issue of not having access to any metal harder than bronze – is no mean feat. </p>
<p>The process used by the Egyptians was surprisingly straightforward. Initially, they levelled off the ground above a vein of granite. Then the rough shape of the obelisk was marked using hard stone pounders. Channels were carved in the rock around the shape of the obelisk before it was separated from the bedrock entirely by carving under its bulk.</p>
<p>Afterwards, the obelisk was shipped on barges nearly 900km north to the <a href="http://www.heliopolisproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/EgArch-46_2015_AshmawyRaueDeDapperHerbich_Heliopolis.pdf">Temple of Heliopolis</a> near modern Cairo and dedicated to the sun god <a href="http://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/horakhty.html">Re-Horakhty</a> – and of course to the memory of both Seti and Ramesses.</p>
<h2>Egypt in vogue</h2>
<p>Though much of our current obsessive cultural interest in ancient Egypt can be traced to key events such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-mummy-what-our-obsession-with-ancient-egypt-reveals-79519">discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922</a>, other cultures at other times in history have had an equal interest in the land of the Pharaohs – and a similar penchant for creatively misrepresenting it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217505/original/file-20180503-153878-18wk4uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217505/original/file-20180503-153878-18wk4uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217505/original/file-20180503-153878-18wk4uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217505/original/file-20180503-153878-18wk4uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217505/original/file-20180503-153878-18wk4uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217505/original/file-20180503-153878-18wk4uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217505/original/file-20180503-153878-18wk4uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Villa Adriana: Hadrian’s Egyptian-style pleasure palace.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zh0rz via Dutch Wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the height of the Roman Empire, “Egyptianising” architectural elements became very popular. Sites such as the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/907">Villa Adriana</a> in Tivoli, built in the second century CE as a retreat for Emperor Hadrian, is positively lousy with Egyptianised statues and architectural elements – including an Egyptian-style shrine dedicated to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guaoO400U0A">emperor’s lover, Antinous</a>.</p>
<p>While these imitations of Egyptian styles and fashions (creatively altered for a Roman audience) were extremely popular, several Roman rulers went a step further. Rather than simply imitating Egyptian architecture, they brought some home with them from Egypt.</p>
<p>After the defeat of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony in 30 BCE, the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar, set his sights on the Flaminian Obelisk which had remained for more than 1,200 years at Heliopolis. To commemorate his comprehensive victory, Augustus opted to bring the obelisk back to Rome on a specially designed vessel, which was later destroyed in a fire in Puteoli.</p>
<p>Upon its arrival in Rome, Augustus added a Latin inscription underneath the far older hieroglyphs of the obelisk, extolling his own triumphs as the new ruler of Egypt. To show off his achievement, he ordered the obelisk raised at Circus Maximus. </p>
<p>As Christianity rose to prominence and became the official state religion of the Roman Empire, the arena fell into decay and flooding eventually toppled the obelisk. It was gradually buried in alluvial soil, lying undiscovered for nearly 1,000 years until it was unearthed at the height of the Italian Renaissance in 1587.</p>
<h2>Renaissance renewal</h2>
<p>A product of the Italian Renaissance, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sixtus-V">Pope Sixtus V</a> (1521-1590) embarked on a wide-ranging programme of urban renewal in Rome shortly after his election to the Papal Throne. Ironically, while he is credited with <a href="http://www.keyofsolomon.org/Pope%20Sixtus%20V.php">reerecting no less than four ancient obelisks in Rome</a>, he had very little appreciation for the city’s own antiquity, ordering several ancient monuments demolished and the stone reused as building material.</p>
<p>When the Flaminian Obelisk was rediscovered in 1587, Sixtus charged the noted <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Domenico-Fontana">architect Domenico Fontana (1543-1607)</a> with the task of raising the monolith in Piazza del Popolo (at that time a place of public executions), a task which he accomplished in 1589. Fontana was experienced in the art of raising obelisks – three years earlier, he had been responsible for placing the <a href="http://www.obelisks.org/en/vaticano.htm">Vatican obelisk</a> (which is heavier than the Flaminian obelisk by nearly 100 tons) in St Peter’s Square. In an attempt to detract from the quite obvious pagan nature of the monuments, both were crowned with large crosses.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217283/original/file-20180502-153866-1eoafd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217283/original/file-20180502-153866-1eoafd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217283/original/file-20180502-153866-1eoafd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217283/original/file-20180502-153866-1eoafd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217283/original/file-20180502-153866-1eoafd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217283/original/file-20180502-153866-1eoafd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217283/original/file-20180502-153866-1eoafd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">View of the Piazza del Popolo, Rome by Gaspar van Wittel (c. 1678) showing the Flaminian Obelisk and the surrounding square.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With this, the journey of the Flaminian Obelisk from an ancient Egyptian tribute to the sun god to a Renaissance curio was completed. But the monument’s impact on history continued – in 1921, a year before seizing power after the March on Rome, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/mussolini_benito.shtml">Benito Mussolini</a> (1883-1945) led a march past the obelisk during the <a href="http://www.panoramitalia.com/en/arts-culture/history/italy-benito-mussolini-s-fascist-regime-1922-1945/37/">Third Fascist Congress</a>. Later on, the Flaminian Obelisk and the many other Egyptian and Roman obelisks found throughout the city prompted the dictator to create his own: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37230455">a massive 300-ton marble behemoth</a> which still stands in Foro Italico (then Foro Mussolini) bearing the Latin inscription <em>MVSSOLINI DVX</em> (Mussolini, the Leader).</p>
<p>The Flaminian Obelisk is a multicultural monument in many ways. It remains today in its square, a physical testament to the grandiose ideas of three rulers – each in their own way both secular and divine: Pharaoh Seti I, Emperor Augustus Caesar and Pope Sixtus V.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95968/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicky Nielsen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From the Temple of Heliopolis to the centre of Rome, the massive stone column has boosted the egos of several powerful men.Nicky Nielsen, Lecturer in Egyptology, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/846562017-10-09T20:55:13Z2017-10-09T20:55:13ZInto the fascist forest – a real Italian controversy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189446/original/file-20171009-6967-qubcs6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A fire recently tore through an Italian memorial to Mussolini made of trees.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Can a forest be fascist? This may seem a facetious question, but it is one that Italians have been discussing of late due to a fire that occurred at the end of August.</p>
<p>The fire, <a href="http://www.ilmessaggero.it/primopiano/cronaca/una_passata_di_pomodoro_per_cancellare_l_enorme_scritta_dux_sul_monte_giano_visibile_anche_da_roma-3201994.html">allegedly started accidently</a> by someone cooking tomato sauce, burned down part of a historic and controversial forest on the slopes of Mount Giano, about 100km north-east of Rome. The 20,000 fir trees here, spread over eight hectares, were planted between 1938 and 1939 by recruits studying at the academy of the forestry corps in the small town of Cittaducale. They were a homage to Mussolini: planted in such a way so that from afar, they read DUX, the fascist leader’s title in Latin. <a href="http://www.leggo.it/italia/cronache/incendio_monte_giano_casa_pound_ripristineremo_la_scritta_dux-3201932.html">And some want to replant it</a>. </p>
<p>This story brings effectively together two major recent issues of debate: forest fires and the removal of inappropriate, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/08/23/post-charlottesville-confederate-monuments-begin-fall-across-united-states/595393001/">“disturbing” monuments</a>. In this instance a politically incorrect monument has been (partially) destroyed by one of the many forest fires that, every year, hit central and southern Italy. This past summer was particularly dramatic, with more than <a href="https://www.legambiente.it/contenuti/comunicati/emergenza-incendi-2017-il-dossier-di-legambiente-con-numeri-dati-e-analisi-sui-">70,000 hectares</a> of Italian forest destroyed by fires.</p>
<p>However, this forest is not just any forest, but a prime example of the <a href="http://www.whpress.co.uk/EH/EH1910.html">fascist appropriation of landscapes</a> to mark a regime’s domination on both the country and its nature. The fact that this forest survived decades of neglect and a first attempt at getting rid of it in the 1950s has allowed it to become a powerful symbol for neo-fascist groups, who gather publicity by <a href="http://www.adnkronos.com/fatti/cronaca/2017/08/25/brucia-monte-giano-fumo-scritta-dux_NX9MwOOb3AJO5pqa8VjMTJ.html">defending its historic value</a>.</p>
<p>So should we see the forest first and foremost as a forest, a natural landscape that perhaps should be restored, or as a disturbing memory of Mussolini? Ought we to recreate the forest, as a preservation of the memory of the country’s history? Or should we leave it to its destiny and forget about it?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188030/original/file-20170928-2939-ywxy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188030/original/file-20170928-2939-ywxy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188030/original/file-20170928-2939-ywxy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188030/original/file-20170928-2939-ywxy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188030/original/file-20170928-2939-ywxy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188030/original/file-20170928-2939-ywxy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188030/original/file-20170928-2939-ywxy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woody homage to Mussolini – the fascist leader’s title in Latin is DUX.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monte_Giano_-_bosco_DUX_da_Calcariola_01.png">Marco Miluzzi / YouTube: Rieti e provincia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Woody DUX</h2>
<p>In 1998, the centre-left regional government allocated 260m liras (about €130,000) for the restoration of the forest. Although the aim was to promote the forest while writing over the text with the growth of new plants, it still ignited a heated debate, <a href="http://www.senato.it/service/PDF/PDFServer/DF/17878.pdf">which even reached the national parliament</a>, but ultimately ended without further consequences. </p>
<p>Then in 2004, the new regional government, led then by a far right politician, who had never hidden his sympathy for fascist ideology, <a href="http://www1.adnkronos.com/Archivio/AdnAgenzia/2004/01/30/Cronaca/LAZIO-VERRA-RESTAURATA-LA-SCRITTA-DUX-DEL-BOSCO-ANTRODOCO_212100.php">started to restore the writing</a>. For him this woody DUX seems to be quite an obsession; after the recent fire, <a href="http://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/08/27/news/rogo_monte_giano_storace_la_scritta_dux_tornera_pronta_sottoscrizione_-173984055/">he proposed a public collection of funds</a> and the mobilisation of citizens in order to restore the forest. The region is now ruled again by a centre-left coalition, less committed to the conservation of this fossil of fascist forestry.</p>
<p>This controversy feeds into a broader discussion in Italy over <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.it/2017/09/12/emanuele-fiano-pd-giusto-rimuovere-la-scritta-mussolini-dux-dallobelisco-del-foro-italico_a_23205521/">the conservation of fascist monuments</a> and the <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/italy-lays-down-the-law-no-more-mussolini-wine-no-more-hitler-cakes">public display of nazi-fascist symbols</a>. This debate, which has been growing in Italy in the last few years, parallels the US debate on the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/23/united-states-convulsed-debate-confederate-monuments/">removal of Confederate monuments</a>.</p>
<p>But there is something unique about the DUX forest. This is not a monument made of concrete and bricks, but memory inscribed into the landscape. The fire provides an opportunity to reflect on the <a href="https://zenodo.org/record/259345#.WdUQWC_TTdQ">natural and cultural legacies that are embodied in landscape</a>, whether a vast burial field remembering the fallen of the war or even a national park set up in a border region to mark the state’s control over the area. Ghosts of the past are everywhere, not just in the more obvious human-made memorials. The stories with which they haunt the world are the lens through which we interpret the landscape.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189355/original/file-20171009-6956-1n2bcit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189355/original/file-20171009-6956-1n2bcit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189355/original/file-20171009-6956-1n2bcit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189355/original/file-20171009-6956-1n2bcit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189355/original/file-20171009-6956-1n2bcit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189355/original/file-20171009-6956-1n2bcit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189355/original/file-20171009-6956-1n2bcit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teufelsberg, Berlin: a man-made hill made from the rubble of World War II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Gold/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A burning issue</h2>
<p>Recreating past symbols as they are is not just conservation, but rather an action with much symbolic and political value. So we are not sure whether there is any defensible reason to replant a hideous symbol of fascist rule, especially considering that foresters themselves are starting to reconsider whether reforestation is <a href="https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2014/08/18/a-year-after-rim-fire-debate-sparks-over-replanting-trees/">the right answer to fires</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925857414002699">Recent studies</a> in forest ecology support the idea that replanting is not the best way to have an area recover from forest fires if the aim is to improve species variety: leaving the area to natural regrowth processes seems a better route to a sustainable and resilient forest. Plantations (such as the original DUX forest) are prone to burn again due to lower biodiversity. The variety of available plants, in particular the presence of more broadleaves, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4705065/">in fact would reduce the overall flammability</a>. Additionally, the area selected by fascist foresters for the DUX script was a calcareous, barren landscape, which may not be suited to supporting woodland in the long term anyway.</p>
<p>Given all this, one wonders why the Italian public should fund the maintenance of the forest – especially in its fascist shape. Instead, the fire should be seen as an opportunity to explore other ways of critically preserving contested memories without being forced to maintain or even recreate odious monuments. An example of how something like this could be achieved by using augmented reality and social media is provided by the <a href="http://www.antspiderbee.net/2015/07/21/creating-a-digital-wonderland-environmental-and-cultural-history-in-the-digital-age/">Digital Wonderland</a> prototype app developed, in a completely different historical and social setting, for Yellowstone National Park. The idea would be to be able to superimpose, on the screen of your smartphone, historical elements and related contextual explanations on the landscape.</p>
<p>Nature is made up of memories as much as of rocks, trees, and soil. We need to imagine a critical preservation of controversial memories, such as those haunting Mount Giano, one which does not reproduce oppression and hierarchies but frees the hidden stories of resistance and liberation. </p>
<p>Because of course, it was not tomato sauce that caused Mussolini’s own disappearance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84656/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A forest that is also a disturbing memorial to Mussolini recently burned down.Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, Senior Research Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of ScienceMarco Armiero, Director, Environmental Humanities Laboratory, KTH Royal Institute of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/810772017-07-28T05:46:50Z2017-07-28T05:46:50ZCan Italy deal with its fascist past?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180014/original/file-20170727-8501-1d89ugt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Benito Mussolini's bust and crypt in San Cassiano cemetery are a sensitive topic in Predappio, Italy. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Predappio,_cimitero_di_san_cassiano,_cripta,_tomba_di_benito_mussolini_01.JPG">Saiko/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recently, the Italian daily La Repubblica published an <a href="http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/07/09/news/la_spiaggia_fascista_di_chioggia_qui_a_casa_mia_vige_il_regime_-170332052/?ref=search">unusual and shocking beach story</a>. Evidently, a private Venice swimming spot on the famous Chioggia beach is decorated with posters glorifying Benito Mussolini, Italy’s former fascist dictator, born July 29 1883.</p>
<p>The owner, 64-year-old Gianni Scarpa, has been openly displaying Mussolini’s ideas on the walls of the Punta Cana beach club for years, some of them adorned with Nazi symbols. Scarpa is also inclined to shout messages glorifying the fascist order through a loudspeaker, reported La Repubblica.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IA6im9E00M8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">La Repubblica, July 9 2017.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Apologias for fascism and Nazism have been a recurrent issue in Italy since the second world war, and it goes beyond extreme-right nostalgia. Today, 72 years after Mussolini’s death, <a href="https://www.politika.io/en/notice/under-debate-a-museum-of-fascism-at-predappio">Italians have yet to make peace with their past</a>. </p>
<p>La Repubblica’s exposé spurred Venice’s prefect to ask for the immediate removal of any material referring to fascism. A <a href="http://www.lastampa.it/2017/07/09/italia/cronache/a-chioggia-c-la-spiaggia-fascista-dopo-le-proteste-arriva-la-digos-bWyzQQxhFHvlZkZ54wLxXK/pagina.html">local association of former resistance members also demanded that</a> the owner’s business license be cancelled. </p>
<p>But many of Scarpa’s clients spoke on his behalf. <a href="http://www.veneziaradiotv.it/blog/punta-canna-bagnanti">While they were not</a> “fascist enthusiasts”, they insisted, a business owner should be able to do as he wishes in his own establishment. </p>
<h2>An embarrassing cadaver</h2>
<p>The controversy has reopened a debate about how fascism should be dealt with in Italy. </p>
<p>A few days after La Repubblica’s story, Emanuele Fiano, a member of parliament from the Democratic Party <a href="http://www.ilpost.it/2017/07/10/m5s-legge-apologia-fascismo/">came up with a new law</a> to “severely punish those who are apologetic of Italian fascist or German Nazi propaganda”. </p>
<p>The proposal was quickly condemned as “<a href="http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2017/07/10/antifascismo-il-m5s-la-legge-del-pd-e-liberticida-renzi-no-quello-era-il-fascismo-fdi-restano-comunisti/3719685/">liberticidal</a>” by both the populist left-wing movement Cinque Stelle and extreme-right parties such as the Lega Nord.</p>
<p>In recent years, the national discussion on fascism past has focused on a museum, which, former prime minister Matteo Renzi announced in 2016, would be partly <a href="https://qz.com/993672/a-controversial-museum-is-forcing-italy-to-talk-about-its-fascist-past/">funded by the Italian government</a>. The landmark, first proposed by Mayor Giorgio Frassinetti of the Democratic Party, would be located in his northern Italian town, Predappio, and could open as soon as 2019.</p>
<p>Though it is home to just 6,500 people, Predeappio has been famous since the end of the second world war. It is the birthplace of Mussolini, the site of his family mausoleum and the place where the body of <em>Il Duce</em> himself was finally put to rest in 1957. </p>
<p>Though Mussolini was executed in 1945, his body <a href="http://www.einaudi.it/libri/libro/sergio-luzzatto/il-corpo-del-duce/978880620988">saw several postmortem adventures and controversies</a>. It was carried around by both fascist nostalgics and the post-war Italian authorities - who wanted to avoid any form of glorification - and eventually hidden in various spots across Italy, including in a convent near Milan. </p>
<p>The plaque at the entry of the Mussolini family crypt reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I would be naive to ask to be left in peace after death. There can be no peace around the tombs of the leaders of those major transformations we call revolutions. But everything that has been done cannot be effaced… [M]y only wish is to be buried next to my parents, in the cemetery of San Cassiano. <em>- Benito Mussolini</em></p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A fascist pilgrimage</h2>
<p>Some 50,000 people visit Predappio every year <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18mvkcv">to pay homage</a> to <em>Il Duce</em>, especially on anniversaries like his birth (July 29 1883), his death (April 28 1945), and the March on Rome, which brought Mussolini to power (October 28 1922). </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179622/original/file-20170725-10560-1gd6j68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179622/original/file-20170725-10560-1gd6j68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179622/original/file-20170725-10560-1gd6j68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179622/original/file-20170725-10560-1gd6j68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179622/original/file-20170725-10560-1gd6j68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179622/original/file-20170725-10560-1gd6j68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179622/original/file-20170725-10560-1gd6j68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wines in Predappio display Il Duce’s face.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/scaccia/40242488/">Stefano/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The town, which has had left-wing leadership since 1945, struggles to deal with these tourists, though their presence enriches the local economy. The pilgrimage has encouraged the commercialisation of fascism in Predappio.</p>
<p>Today, vendors sell t-shirts, mugs, and glasses printed with the slogan, “I love Duce”. There are even wine labels commemorating Mussolini, including “Nero di Predappio, <em>Eia Eja Alala</em>”, “<em>Vino del camerata</em>” (which references Mussolini’s armed squad, the Black Shirts) and “<em>L’Italia agli Italiani</em>” (Italy for the Italians).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ae107ZLOG-M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘La Duce Vita’, a 2012 documentary by Cyril Bérard et Samuel Picas about the fascist pilgrimage to Predappio.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A museum to counter fascist ideas</h2>
<p>Not everyone agrees with the idea of adding a Fascism museum to the mix.</p>
<p>The memorial, which would be housed in the former headquarters of the National Fascist Party, the 2,400-square-metre <em>Casa del Fascio</em>, draws its inspiration from Munich’s <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/munichs-nazi-museum-opens-at-old-party-headquarters/a-18422490">documentation centre on Nazism</a>. According to Mayor Frassinetti, <a href="https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/fascism-museum-mussolini-hometown-predappio-429647">the museum aims to transform Predappio’s propaganda tourism</a> into tourism of knowledge.</p>
<p>Some agree with him. The <a href="https://www.politika.io/fr/notice/a-permanent-exhibition-on-fascism-at-predappio-a-strange-discussion-among-historians">Italian historian Marcello Flores</a> and museum promotors Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci and Maurizio Ridolfi, believe the initiative will change the way people look at Predappio, disassociating it from fascism and Mussolini. </p>
<p>They point to the positive impact of similar sites, including <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/topography-of-terror-opens-on-site-of-former-gestapo-headquarters/a-5545090">Berlin’s former Gestapo headquarters (now a documentation centre)</a>, which have been transformed to teach the public about the horrors of Nazism.</p>
<p>But many well-known historians and intellectuals oppose the fascist museum plan. Giulia Albanese, Patrizia Dogliani, Simon Levis Sullam and Carlo Ginzburg, among others, <a href="https://www.politika.io/fr/notice/the-memory-of-fascism-beyond-predappio">argue</a> that the museum would actually reinforce Predappio’s symbolic association with fascism.</p>
<p>The museum would be surrounded by various shops that would, inevitably, make the celebration of this bellicose 20th-century ideology official. And in any case, Adolf Hitler did not get a memorial in Braunau am Inn, his hometown, they have reminded Italians, nor has El Ferrol in Spain, dedicated a museum to General Francisco Franco.</p>
<p>Instead, the historians say, the museum of fascism should be located in Milan or Rome, two cities that played central roles during the fascist era.</p>
<p>But the proposed landmark could make it seem that fascism is solely identified with Mussolini, thus absolving Italians of their collective responsibility for the 1925-1940 <em>ventennio</em> period, when <a href="http://www.laterza.it/index.php?option=com_laterza&Itemid=97&task=schedalibro&isbn=9788842075448">the country turned fascist</a>.</p>
<p>This is one thing that all parties can agree on: rather than reflect on the crimes perpetrated under Mussolini, Italians have preferred to focus on passive narratives in which they are the victims. Collective Italian history depicts a the nation that suffered greatly from fascism and revealed its true anti-fascist self once those leaders fell.</p>
<p>This vision has allowed Italians to disregard fundamental questions of national history, including the extent of popular support for fascism, Italians’ responsibility in the persecution of Jews, colonial crimes and so on.</p>
<p>The <em>Bel Paese</em>, or beautiful country, has yet to come to terms with its fascist past.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was published in collaboration with the journal <a href="http://gehm.ehess.fr/index.php?3579">Past Futures</a>, accessible through the platform <a href="https://www.politika.io/">Politika</a>, from the French and international social sciences laboratory Labex Tepsis.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81077/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sabina Loriga does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Politicians hope that a “museum of fascism” in Benito Mussolini’s hometown can help the country face its demons. Historians aren’t so sure.Sabina Loriga, Directrice d'études- historienne , TEPSISLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/776552017-05-18T00:48:57Z2017-05-18T00:48:57ZFrom Nazis to Netflix, the controversies and contradictions of Cannes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169847/original/file-20170517-24325-133bc8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students and striking workers occupy the projection hall of the Cannes Film Festival Palace to prevent showing of films in 1968.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-International-News-Ente-/50efedf94e4642a28bce05ae440845ac/168/0">AP Photo/Raoul Fornezza</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On May 17, the 70th edition of the Festival de Cannes kicked off with the opening-night screening of director Arnaud Desplechin’s “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5687040/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Ismael’s Ghosts</a>.” It will wrap up 11 days later, when the Pedro Almodovar-led jury bestows the highly coveted Palme d’Or on one of the 19 international productions in the festival’s main competition. </p>
<p>In between, dozens more motion pictures will flicker to life in theaters along the Croisette, a sun-kissed promenade dotted with luxury hotels that attracts a swarm of paparazzi with the promise of celebrity sightings and scantily clad starlets. </p>
<p>But behind the pageantry, controversy has been brewing. Netflix has two entries premiering during this year’s event. The popular streaming service will then release the films to its millions of subscribers – foregoing the exclusive run in French cinemas requested by the organizers. In turn, they’ve threatened to ban Netflix from submitting any films to future editions of the festival. Telegraph reporter Robert Mendick <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/10/cannes-film-festival-goes-war-netflix-fight-future-cinema/">called this dustup</a> Cannes’ “most explosive.” </p>
<p>If it is, it’s only the latest.</p>
<p>As Lucy Mazdon, one of the few film scholars to have studied this annual event, <a href="https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/46231/">points out</a>, the Festival de Cannes has long functioned as an expression of France’s national identity. It reinforces the important place that film occupies in the country’s culture, along with its reputation as a purveyor of artistic – rather than strictly commercial – cinema. </p>
<p>But Cannes has sometimes struggled to live up to this ideal, and the competing agendas of art, commerce, international politics and national pride have long roiled the festival.</p>
<h2>Anti-fascist origins</h2>
<p>In 1938, French diplomat Philippe Erlanger, film critic René Jeanne and Minister of National Education and Fine Arts Jean Zay were disturbed by that year’s Venice Film Festival, when pro-fascist films from Germany and Italy – Leni Riefenstahl’s “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030522/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Olympia</a>” and Goffredo Alessandrini’s “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030393/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Luciano Serra, Pilot</a>” – jointly won the top award (the tellingly named Coppa Mussolini). </p>
<p>They were also appalled by the hostile reception given to Jean Renoir’s anti-war masterpiece “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028950/">The Grand Illusion</a>” one year earlier. (Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich’s minister of propaganda, who had been a “guest of honor” at the Venice Biennale, <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/F/bo5891108.html">had called it</a> “Cinematic Public Enemy Number One.”) </p>
<p>In response, they came up with the idea of a French “counter-festival” that would stand in opposition to Italy’s. Originally branded as the “Festival International du Film,” the organizers hoped the event would outshine its European counterparts, <a href="http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Criticism-Ideology/Festivals-HISTORY-OF-FILM-FESTIVALS.html">celebrating the art</a> – rather than political value or propagandist content – of cinema. </p>
<p>However, politics almost immediately came into play. On the night of the inaugural gathering on Sept. 1, 1939 – as guests were arriving at the Casino Municipal, including Hollywood stars Gary Cooper, George Raft, Norma Shearer and Mae West – Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Following a single screening of the RKO production “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031455/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">The Hunchback of Notre Dame</a>,” organizers brought the festival to a sudden halt.</p>
<p>Great Britain and France declared war against Germany two days later. It would take another seven years before Erlanger, Jeanne and Zay’s vision was finally brought to fruition. </p>
<h2>Art clashes with commerce</h2>
<p>In 1946, the first full-fledged film festival held in post-Liberation France took place, featuring soon-to-be classics like Roberto Rossellini’s anti-fascist neorealist film “Rome, Open City” and Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller “Notorious.” </p>
<p>Even then, <a href="https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/46231/">the festival was torn between dueling agendas</a>, with European ideals of art cinema rubbing up against popular Hollywood productions that many French audiences clamored for.</p>
<p>The contradictory nature of the Cannes Film Festival has only intensified since. </p>
<p>In 1959, the French Minister of Cultural Affairs André Malraux called for the establishment of an international “film market,” the controversial Marché du Film.
Intended to strengthen the commercial appeal of the festival, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Film_Festivals.html?id=VMLLTapCpEUC">the Marché brings together industry professionals</a> for the purposes of networking and brokering deals between buyers and sellers. Meet-and-greet opportunities are formalized through the inclusion of daily breakfasts, round-table talks and workshops with industry leaders. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169849/original/file-20170517-24315-1d4pk3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169849/original/file-20170517-24315-1d4pk3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169849/original/file-20170517-24315-1d4pk3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169849/original/file-20170517-24315-1d4pk3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169849/original/file-20170517-24315-1d4pk3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169849/original/file-20170517-24315-1d4pk3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169849/original/file-20170517-24315-1d4pk3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1967 photograph of French film director François Truffaut.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/François_truffaut.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Significantly, that initial foray into the business side of cinema took place just as the festival helped launch the “Nouvelle Vague” (French New Wave), a hugely influential, decidedly noncommercial film movement. Led by François Truffaut, whose autobiographical coming-of-age tale “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053198/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The 400 Blows</a>” earned him a Best Director award that year, French New Wave cinema privileged the personal expression of young filmmakers. Films like “The 400 Blows” and Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” (made one year later, in 1960) also expanded storytelling possibilities through a reflexive foregrounding of the cinematic medium itself (with characters frequently “breaking the fourth wall” and looking directly at the camera). (Ironically, Truffaut <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=I5dwBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Closely+Watched+Films:+An+Introduction+to+the+Art+of+Narrative+Film+Technique+By+Marilyn+Fabe&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi60N2s5_XTAhUP22MKHQ9uDdsQ6AEIIzAA#v=onepage&q=Closely%20Watched%20Films%3A%20An%20Introduction%20to%20the%20Art%20of%20Narrative%20Film%20Technique%20By%20Marilyn%20Fabe&f=false">had been banned</a> from Cannes one year earlier after he criticized the festival for prioritizing entertainment and spectacle over art and personal expression.) </p>
<p>A decade later, in 1968, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/world/europe/11iht-paris.4.12777919.html">student and worker protests swept through Europe</a>. Truffaut and other French filmmakers and intellectuals, including Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Lelouch, called for a premature end to the 21st edition of the festival. The festival, which was supposed to run between May 10 and May 24, was shut down six days early in a show of solidarity with those who were opposed to American cultural imperialism, the Vietnam War and the global spread of capitalism.</p>
<p>Since then, other well-publicized episodes have disrupted the Festival de Cannes, from the discovery of a handmade bomb beneath a stage at the closing ceremony <a href="http://fresques.ina.fr/festival-de-cannes-en/parcours/0005/1978-1986-a-wind-of-change.html">in 1978</a> to Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier’s explosive (if jesting) claims that he was a Nazi who “understood” Hitler <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/may/18/lars-von-trier-cannes-2011-nazi-comments">in 2011</a>.</p>
<h2>Grappling with Netflix</h2>
<p>This year’s edition of the festival is no exception to that history of politicized hullabaloo. Much of the recent commentary surrounding Cannes concerns the current state and future of film exhibition and distribution.</p>
<p>Specifically, the decision of the festival’s artistic director, Thierry Frémaux, to include two Netflix-produced films – South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s “Okja” and American filmmaker Noah Baumbach’s “The Meyerowitz Stories” – has been criticized.</p>
<p>The move has drawn the ire of the National Federation of French Cinemas (FNCF), an organization that represents the interests of local theater owners who worry international streaming services <a href="https://www.wired.com/2015/10/theater-owners-are-furious-about-netflixs-new-movie/">will threaten not only their own livelihood</a> but also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/movies/in-an-era-of-streaming-cinema-is-under-attack.html?_r=0">the quality of cinema</a> in the years to come.</p>
<p>Almost immediately after this year’s Cannes program was announced in early April, speculation arose in the pages of U.S. trade magazines as to whether online streaming services and small-screen platforms would be blocked from entering forthcoming film festivals. According to <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-purists-decry-netflix-inclusion-as-dangerous-precedent-1001663">The Hollywood Reporter</a> and <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/news/cannes-film-festival-maintains-netflixs-movies-in-competition-sets-new-rule-amid-turmoil-1202420874/amp/">Variety</a>, a new rule set to go into effect next year will require any competing film at Cannes to be distributed in French theaters before being made available for online viewing.</p>
<p>Moreover, current <a href="http://variety.com/2014/digital/global/netflix-forces-french-biz-to-try-to-modernize-digital-landscape-1201329166/">French law</a> requires a window of 36 months between theatrical release and streaming availability, a stipulation that Netflix, Amazon Studios and other streaming services aren’t likely to abide by. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-unique-strategy-netflix-deployed-to-reach-90-million-worldwide-subscribers-74885">The wrenching changes</a> brought by streaming services to the TV and movie industries mark a departure from the political conflicts of years past. But controversy is certainly nothing new on the Cote d'Azur: a long view of its history suggests that strife and contention have distinguished this French cultural event since its very beginnings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Scott Diffrient does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>At a festival intertwined with France’s national identity, the tension of art, politics and commerce always looms.David Scott Diffrient, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/696132016-12-12T03:41:21Z2016-12-12T03:41:21ZNormalizing fascists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149493/original/image-20161210-31396-4hib8e.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://research.archives.gov/id/540151#.WErivM6rzno.link">National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, 1675 - 1958</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>How to report on a fascist? </p>
<p>How to cover the rise of a political leader who’s left a paper trail of anti-constitutionalism, racism and the encouragement of violence? Does the press take the position that its subject acts outside the norms of society? Or does it take the position that someone who wins a fair election is by definition “normal,” because his leadership reflects the will of the people?</p>
<p>These are the questions that confronted the U.S. press after the ascendance of fascist leaders in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.</p>
<h2>A leader for life</h2>
<p>Benito Mussolini secured Italy’s premiership by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/March-on-Rome#ref276619">marching on Rome</a> with 30,000 blackshirts in 1922. By 1925 he had <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/benito-mussolini-9419443#the-break-with-socialism-and-rise-to-power">declared himself leader</a> for life. While this hardly reflected American values, Mussolini <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/when-we-loved-mussolini/">was a darling</a> of the American press, appearing in at least 150 articles from 1925-1932, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/441.html">most neutral, bemused or positive in tone.</a></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Benito Mussolini speaks at the dedication ceremonies of Sabaudia on Sept. 24, 1934.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Saturday Evening Post even <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Autobiography_(Mussolini)">serialized</a> Il Duce’s autobiography in 1928. Acknowledging that the new “Fascisti movement” was a bit “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=sWB9BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=diggins+mussolini+rough+in+its+methods&source=bl&ots=rTXM3FoSTZ&sig=6nigpggTFpNwdEP0KxbEjPevjdQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjt9deVzOfQAhXEhVQKHcuHDbMQ6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=rough%20in%20its%20methods&f=false">rough in its methods</a>,” papers ranging from the New York Tribune to the Cleveland Plain Dealer to the Chicago Tribune <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/441.html">credited it</a> with saving Italy from the far left and revitalizing its economy. From their perspective, the post-WWI surge of anti-capitalism in Europe was a vastly worse threat than Fascism.</p>
<p>Ironically, while the media acknowledged that Fascism was a new “experiment,” papers like The New York Times <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/441.html">commonly credited it</a> with returning turbulent Italy to what it called “normalcy.” </p>
<p>Yet some <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=1c9QAQAAQBAJ&lpg=PT4&dq=Mussolini%3A%20Biggest%20Bluff%20in%20Europe%20Hemingway&pg=PT51#v=onepage&q=Mussolini:%20Biggest%20Bluff%20in%20Europe%20Hemingway&f=false">journalists like Hemingway</a> and journals like <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=sWB9BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA318&dq=diggins+mussolini+and+fascism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjtzqms0OfQAhVLrFQKHT0NC4oQ6AEIHjAB#v=snippet&q=%22the%20new%20yorker%22&f=false">the New Yorker</a> rejected the normalization of anti-democratic Mussolini. John Gunther of Harper’s, meanwhile, wrote a razor-sharp account of Mussolini’s masterful manipulation of a U.S. press <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/441.html">that couldn’t resist him.</a></p>
<h2>The ‘German Mussolini’</h2>
<p>Mussolini’s success in Italy normalized Hitler’s success in the eyes of the American press who, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, routinely called him <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/441.html">“the German Mussolini.”</a> Given Mussolini’s positive press reception in that period, it was a good place from which to start. Hitler also had the advantage that his Nazi party enjoyed stunning leaps at the polls from the mid ‘20’s to early ‘30’s, going from a fringe party to winning a dominant share of parliamentary seats in free elections <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_July_1932#Results">in 1932</a>.</p>
<p>But the main way that the press defanged Hitler was by portraying him as something of a joke. He was a <a href="https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/2541.htm">“nonsensical” screecher</a> of “wild words” whose appearance, according to Newsweek, “suggests Charlie Chaplin.” His “countenance is a caricature.” He was as <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UZkC2D6WkHEC&pg=PR4&lpg=PR4&dq=Dan+Nimmo,+Political+Commentators+in+the+United+States+in+the+20th+Century&source=bl&ots=RLFXWfPuPm&sig=BEfgzFfEUKa9-92j8VpRGVnLLbc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyscvlsOfQAhVX8GMKHahiDNgQ6AEIJTAC#v=onepage&q=Dan%20Nimmo%2C%20Political%20Commentators%20in%20the%20United%20States%20in%20the%2020th%20Century&f=false">“voluble” as he was “insecure,”</a> stated Cosmopolitan.</p>
<p>When Hitler’s party won influence in Parliament, and even after he was made chancellor of Germany in 1933 – about a year and a half before seizing dictatorial power – many American press outlets judged that he would either be outplayed by more traditional politicians or that he would have to become more moderate. Sure, he had a following, but his followers were “impressionable voters” duped by “radical doctrines and quack remedies,” <a href="http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/doc/150031488.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Sep+16%2C+1930&author=&pub=The+Washington+Post++%281923-1954%29&edition=&startpage=6&desc=THE+GERMAN+ELECTIONS.">claimed the Washington Post</a>. Now that Hitler actually had to operate within a government the “sober” politicians would “submerge” this movement, according to <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9801E6DB123BE433A25750C2A9609C946094D6CF&legacy=true">The New York Times</a> and <a href="https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/csmonitor_historic/doc/512913766.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Feb+24%2C+1931&author=&pub=The+Christian+Science+Monitor++%281908-Current+file%29&edition=&startpage=20&desc=Germany%27s+Tactics">Christian Science Monitor</a>. A “keen sense of dramatic instinct” was not enough. When it came to time to govern, his lack of “gravity” and “profundity of thought” <a href="http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/csmonitor_historic/doc/512996876.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=May+16%2C+1931&author=&pub=The+Christian+Science+Monitor++%281908-Current+file%29&edition=&startpage=15&desc=Hitler+Explained">would be exposed.</a></p>
<p>In fact, <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9906EEDB1539E033A2575AC1A9649C946294D6CF&legacy=true">The New York Times wrote</a> after Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship that success would only “let him expose to the German public his own futility.” <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9506E3D8163BEF3ABC4950DFB7668388629EDE&legacy=true">Journalists wondered</a> whether Hitler now regretted leaving the rally for the cabinet meeting, where he would have to assume some responsibility. </p>
<p>Yes, the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Beyond_Belief.html?id=IMELYD5xxXAC">American press</a> tended to condemn Hitler’s well-documented anti-Semitism in the early 1930s. But there were plenty of exceptions. Some papers downplayed reports of violence against Germany’s Jewish citizens as propaganda like that which proliferated during the foregoing World War. Many, even those who categorically condemned the violence, repeatedly declared it to be at an end, showing a tendency to look for a return to normalcy. </p>
<p>Journalists were aware that they could only criticize the German regime so much and maintain their access. When a CBS broadcaster’s son was beaten up by brownshirts for not saluting the Führer, <a href="https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781467117623">he didn’t report it</a>. When the Chicago Daily News’ Edgar Mowrer wrote that Germany was becoming “an insane asylum” in 1933, the Germans pressured the State Department to rein in American reporters. Allen Dulles, who eventually became director of the CIA, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Beyond_Belief.html?id=IMELYD5xxXAC">told Mowrer</a> he was “taking the German situation too seriously.” Mowrer’s publisher then transferred him out of Germany in fear of his life.</p>
<p>By the later 1930s, most U.S. journalists realized their mistake in underestimating Hitler or failing to imagine just how bad things could get. (Though there remained infamous exceptions, like Douglas Chandler, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=OeVTAAAAMAAJ&q=Douglas+Chandler+changing+berlin&dq=Douglas+Chandler+changing+berlin&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj48dPnyefQAhUrsVQKHStxCqY4ChDoAQgfMAE">who wrote</a> a loving paean to “Changing Berlin” for National Geographic in 1937.) <a href="http://www.historynet.com/encounter-dorothy-thompson-underestimates-hitler.htm">Dorothy Thompson</a>, who judged Hitler a man of “startling insignificance” in 1928, realized her mistake by mid-decade when she, like Mowrer, began raising the alarm. </p>
<p>“No people ever recognize their dictator in advance,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lixOlrqPeqoC&pg=PA172&dq=thompson+No+people+ever+recognize+their+dictator+in+advance&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwimkr6qyefQAhUJjVQKHX2zDn4Q6AEIJjAC#v=onepage&q=thompson%20No%20people%20ever%20recognize%20their%20dictator%20in%20advance&f=false">she reflected</a> in 1935. “He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will.” Applying the lesson to the U.S., she wrote, “When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Broich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the 1920s and early 1930s, American journalists tended to put the ascendant fascists on a normal footing.John Broich, Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/690142016-12-01T01:54:45Z2016-12-01T01:54:45ZDonald Trump is no Mussolini, but liberal democracy could still be in danger<p>Observers continue to draw parallels between President-elect Donald Trump and the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. But the similarities – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/22/is-donald-trump-a-textbook-narcissist/?utm_term=.e0059e4b0a77">narcissism</a>, opportunism, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2016/11/06/trump-and-authoritarian-propaganda/#4b27f3561283">authoritarianism</a> – coexist with sharp differences. One came from a working-class, socialistic background and saw himself as an intellectual and an ideologue. The other is a billionaire real estate magnate with a pronounced <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-08-02/policy-expert-explains-how-anti-intellectualism-gave-rise-donald-trump">anti-intellectual</a> streak.</p>
<p>A more important question is not whether Trump is an American Mussolini, but if American democracy is as vulnerable to fascistic erosion as Italian democracy was. <a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/102220457/public-intellectuals-we-need-you-four-lessons-from-max-ascoli-intellectuals-lj-s-foreign-relations">My research</a> on how Italian immigrants helped shape U.S. foreign policy toward fascist Italy reveals that Italians exiled by Mussolini believed America was also in danger.</p>
<p>The warnings issued in the 1920s and 1930s by <a href="http://unz.org/Pub/Search/?ContentType=Article&Author=gaetano+salvemini&Action=Search">Gaetano Salvemini</a> and <a href="http://unz.org/Pub/Search/?ContentType=Article&Author=%22max+ascoli%22&Action=Search">Max Ascoli</a> seem particularly salient today. In a vast number of published books, journal articles, newspaper op-eds, public speeches and radio addresses, as well as in the 1939 founding of <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1943/06/italy.htm">the Mazzini Society</a>, Ascoli and Salvemini argued that Americans need to recognize the fragility of democracy. </p>
<p>Salvemini was an Italian politician and historian who fled Mussolini’s regime in 1925 and emigrated to the United States. In 1933, he began a career at Harvard University. Ascoli was a Jewish Italian professor of political philosophy and law. Forced into exile in 1928, Ascoli came to the United States in 1931 with the aid of the <a href="http://thenewschoolhistory.org/?page_id=79">University in Exile at the New School for Social Research</a>.</p>
<p>Once in the United States, the two scholars explained to Americans that fascism overcame Italy not by revolutionary storm, but by the “clever” hollowing out of Italy’s democratic institutions. Democracy, they warned, can be used against itself.</p>
<h2>‘We want to rule’</h2>
<p>Mussolini legally seized control of the Italian political system in 1922 amid economic crisis and political instability. Italians had lost faith in the ability of feuding political parties to restore order. This left an opening for an authoritarian leader who marched on Rome with <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520046436">no elaborate agenda</a>: “Our program is simple: We want to rule Italy.” </p>
<p>Ascoli and Salvemini pointed out in their writings that Italian fascism emerged from a <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1019175">relatively stable system</a> of liberal democracy. The fascists repeatedly emphasized their commitment to democracy – or rather, a commitment to what they regarded as “the purest form of democracy,” one in which the state protected its decent, hard-working citizens against excessive individualism – that is, individual rights and liberties that are valued more than the state. In “<a href="http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm">The Doctrine of Fascism</a>,” coauthors Giovanni Gentile, the “father of the philosophy of fascism,” and Mussolini declared fascism to be “an organized, centralized, authoritarian democracy.”</p>
<p>Not until Mussolini had been in power for several years did he begin to articulate and elaborate a distinctive fascist ideology. Immediately after constitutionally taking power, albeit with considerable use of intimidation, he started eroding liberal democratic institutions and ideas. He did so by legally and often indirectly attacking the freedoms on which Italian democracy had been based.</p>
<h2>Muzzling the press</h2>
<p>Mussolini exploited the freedom of the press as he was rising to power. In 1914, he had founded the newspaper Popolo d'ltalia. Ascoli <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1022352?seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents">said</a> the paper “stopped at nothing, not even at personal scandalmongering” to beat its enemies. After seizing power, Mussolini and his lieutenants – most of whom were businessmen with no experience in government – persuaded pro-fascist industrialists to purchase a number of Italian newspapers. Doing so ensured the papers promoted the agenda of the new government. </p>
<p>Newspapers that were not bought were “fascistized” under an obscure Italian law that <a href="https://www.unz.org/Pub/Nation-1927jan12-00034">authorized the government</a> to “take emergency measures when necessary to maintain public peace.” In December 1924, the government invoked the law to quiet its critics. Claiming that the anti-fascist press had the potential to disturb the public peace, the Mussolini regime was thus <a href="https://www.unz.org/Pub/Nation-1927jan12-00034">authorized</a> “to take any measures they thought fit to muzzle it.”</p>
<p>Within five years of Mussolini’s March on Rome, the opposition press was effectively silenced. “The passage of the Italian press from a regime of legal freedom to one of tight control,” <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1022352?seq=12#page_scan_tab_contents">commented</a> Ascoli, “bears witness to the cleverness that the fascist leading group displayed in seizing fortunate occasions. The present condition has been reached without too much violence and even without the enforcement of very drastic laws.” </p>
<p>Italians found themselves living in a country with <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1997-11-01/rise-illiberal-democracy">democratic institutions</a>, but without reliable sources of information with which to judge official pronouncements.</p>
<p>Salvemini and Ascoli also drew attention to the restrictions placed on intellectual freedom. They saw Italian intellectuals as complicit in their own muzzling. Liberal intellectuals had been caught off guard and were <a href="https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/358">unprepared and bewildered with the intolerance of fascism</a>. Many of Italy’s leading intellectuals not only failed to defend liberal democracy, but went over to the other side, as evidenced in 1925’s “Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals.”</p>
<h2>Democracy without freedom</h2>
<p>Italy’s schools and universities, which had for centuries promoted free thinking, were quickly replaced with a system that emphasized professional training and embraced the mission of strengthening nationality through the <a href="https://archive.org/stream/nationalisminita00marr#page/2/mode/2up/search/common+culture">“cultivation of a common culture.” </a></p>
<p>This switch was not unopposed, but teachers and university faculty protested in a piecemeal fashion. The refugee scholars described how Italian academics failed to recognize the severity of the threat posed to their principles and livelihoods. Ascoli <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1022352?seq=18#page_scan_tab_contents">explained</a> that “in its legalistic aspect, academic freedom has not been radically affected in Fascist Italy, but the individual professors have been morally and intellectually reconditioned so as to become, each one for himself, an obedient self-censor in the interest of the regime…”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Italian citizens were being persuaded to equate nationalism with the fascist program. Before Mussolini took power, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=odN4AAAAMAAJ&dq=%22italian+fascist+activities+in+the+united+states%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22the+term+Italianism%22">observed</a> Salvemini, “one was able to feel Italian and at the same time Catholic, anti-Catholic, conservative, democratic, monarchic, hostile to royalty, socialist, communist, anarchist, and what not…” But after 1922, concluded Salvemini, “The Fascist party became Italy, and the term Italianism came to mean Fascism… Many innocent people swallowed this deceit hook, line and sinker. They were patriots who were unable to disentangle one from the other the notions of nation, state, government, and party in power.” </p>
<p>As exiles, Salvemini and Ascoli devoted themselves to warning Americans that their country was <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=fxVbAAAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=democratic+tools+">as vulnerable as Italy</a> to “the method of using democratic tools and emptying them of democratic goals.” </p>
<p>“Once political freedom is eliminated,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Na4qAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22fall+of+mussolini%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22instruments+of+democracy%22">wrote</a> Ascoli, “the instruments of democracy can be so used to multiply the power of the tyrannical state. This constitutes the essence of fascism, that is democracy without freedom.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69014/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kimber Quinney is a member of the California Faculty Association and the California State League of Women Voters.</span></em></p>Two Italian scholars who fled fascism in the 1920s urgently warned that American democracy was vulnerable to the same gradual erosion as in Italy. Their message still rings true today.Kimber Quinney, Assistant Professor, History Department; Campus Coordinator for the American Democracy Project, California State University San MarcosLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/656832016-09-20T13:35:25Z2016-09-20T13:35:25ZHard right, soft power: fascist regimes and the battle for hearts and minds<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138443/original/image-20160920-16646-1knzkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Josef Jindřich Šechtl</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c20d03e2-2fa6-11e6-bda0-04585c31b153">global “soft power” ranking</a> recently reported that the democratic states of North America and Western Europe were the most successful at achieving their diplomatic objectives “through attraction and persuasion”. </p>
<p>Countries such as the US, the UK, Germany and Canada, the report claimed, are able to promote their influence through language, education, culture and the media, rather than having to rely on traditional forms of military or diplomatic “hard power”. </p>
<p>The notion of soft power has also returned to prominence in Britain since the Brexit vote, with competing claims that leaving Europe will either <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-05/brexit-killed-britain-s-new-vibe">damage Britain’s reputation abroad</a> or <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rio-2016-team-gb-meals-brexit-soft-power-after-leaving-eu-a7192181.html">increase the importance of soft power</a> to British diplomacy.</p>
<p>Although the term “soft power” was popularised by the political scientist <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2004-05-01/soft-power-means-success-world-politics">Joseph Nye</a> in the 1980s, the practice of states attempting to exert influence through their values and culture goes back much further. Despite what the current soft power list would suggest, it has never been solely the preserve of liberal or democratic states. The Soviet Union, for example, went to great efforts to promote its image to intellectuals and elites abroad through organisations such as <a href="http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/mp-denied-bail-over-shooting-child-156181">VOKS</a> (All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries).</p>
<p>Perhaps more surprisingly, right-wing authoritarian and fascist states also used soft power strategies to spread their power and influence abroad during the first half of the 20th century. Alongside their aggressive and expansionist foreign policies, Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and other authoritarian states used the arts, science, and culture to further their diplomatic goals.</p>
<h2>‘New Europe’</h2>
<p>Prior to World War II, these efforts were primarily focused on strengthening ties between the fascist powers. The 1930s, for example, witnessed intensive cultural exchanges between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Although these efforts were shaped by the ideology of their respective regimes, they also built on pre-fascist traditions of cultural diplomacy. In the aftermath of World War I, Weimar Germany had become adept at promoting its influence through cultural exchanges in order to counter its diplomatic isolation. After 1933, the Nazi regime was able to shape Weimar-era cultural organisations and relationships to its own purpose.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s film-maker.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bundesarchiv Bild</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This authoritarian cultural diplomacy reached its peak during World War II, when Nazi Germany attempted to apply a veneer of legitimacy to its military conquests by promoting the idea of a “New Europe” or “New European Order”. Although Hitler was personally sceptical about such efforts, Joseph Goebbels and others within the Nazi regime saw the “New Europe” as a way to gain support. Nazi propaganda promoted the idea of “European civilization” united against the threat of “Asiatic bolshevism” posed by the Soviet Union and its allies.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As seen in Poland: a BNazi anti-Bolshvik poster.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given the lack of genuine political cooperation within Nazi-occupied Europe, these efforts relied heavily on <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674545748">cultural exchange</a>. The period from the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 until the latter stages of 1943 witnessed an explosion of “European” and “international” events organised under Nazi auspices. They brought together right-wing elites from across the continent – from women’s groups, social policy experts and scientists to singers, dancers and fashion designers. </p>
<p>All of these initiatives, however, faced a common set of problems. Chief among them was the challenge of formulating a model of international cultural collaboration which was distinct from the kind of pre-war liberal internationalism which the fascist states had so violently rejected. The Nazi-dominated <a href="http://jch.sagepub.com/content/48/3/486.abstract">European Writers’ Union</a>, for example, attempted to promote a vision of “völkisch” European literature rooted in national, agrarian cultures which it contrasted to the modernist cosmopolitanism of its Parisian-led liberal predecessors. But as a result, complained one Italian participant, the union’s events became “a little world of the literary village, of country poets and provincial writers, a fair for the benefit of obscure men, or a festival of the ‘unknown writer’”.</p>
<h2>Deutschland über alles</h2>
<p>Despite the language of European cooperation and solidarity which surrounded these organisations, they were ultimately based on Nazi military supremacy. The Nazis’ hierarchical view of European races and cultures prompted resentment even among their closest foreign allies. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jesse Owens after disproving Nazi race theory at the Berlin Olympics, 1936.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bundesarchiv, Bild</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These tensions, combined with the practical constraints on wartime travel and the rapid deterioration of Axis military fortunes from 1943 onwards, meant that most of these new organisations were both ineffective and short-lived. But for a brief period they succeeded in bringing together a surprisingly wide range of individuals committed to the idea of a new, authoritarian era of European unity.</p>
<p>Echoes of the cultural “New Europe” lived on after 1945. The Franco regime, for example, relied on cultural diplomacy to overcome the international isolation it faced. The Women’s section of the Spanish fascist party, the Falange, organised “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlNiekJq8_s">choir and dance</a>” groups which toured the world during the 1940s and 1950s, travelling from Wales to West Africa to promote an unthreatening image of Franco’s Spain through regional folk dances and songs. </p>
<p>But the far-right’s golden age of authoritarian soft power ended with the defeat of the Axis powers. The appeal of fascist culture was fundamentally undermined by post-war revelations about Nazi genocide, death camps and war crimes. At the other end of the political spectrum, continued Soviet efforts to attract support from abroad were hampered by the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/4/newsid_2739000/2739039.stm">invasion of Hungary in 1956</a> and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2008/aug/21/1968theyearofrevolt.russia">crushing of the Prague Spring</a> in 1968.</p>
<p>This does not mean that authoritarian soft power has been consigned to history. Both <a href="http://europe.newsweek.com/russian-chinese-soft-power-booms-turkey-wanes-report-470381?rm=eu">Russia and China made the top 30</a> of the most recent global ranking, with Russia in particular leading the way in promoting its agenda abroad through both <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/02/russia-today-launch-uk-version-investigations-ofcom">mainstream</a> and social media. </p>
<p>The new wave of populist movements sweeping Europe and the United States often also put the promotion of national cultures at the core of their programmes. France’s <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20140528-france-national-front-policy-eu">Front National</a>, for example, advocates the increased promotion of the French language abroad on the grounds that “language and power go hand-in-hand”. We may well see the emergence of authoritarian soft power re-imagined in the 21st century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65683/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Brydan receives funding from the Wellcome Trust.</span></em></p>How Hitler’s Germany, fascist Italy and other authoritarian states tried to win friends and influence people.David Brydan, Postdoctoral Researcher, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.