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Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v... and submerged fascism's motifs and goals in the colonial war. This black-and-white depiction of reality assigned the League, as the "coalition of egoisms and plutocracies," [105] the role of villain. "Gigantic" Italy, in contrast, was still trying to avoid a world conflict in spite of the injustice imposed upon it. A people of "saints," "artists," and "heroes," Italy was crying for virtue. It represented good in a world of villains. In the next weeks, Mussolini's speeches continued to assault the image of the League in an attempt to unveil its fundamental immorality. By making recourse to hyperbolic terms, Mussolini defined the eventual sanctions as a "supreme shame" that "all civil people of the world should feel." [106] The League's economic measures constituted "the most costly of injustices." [107] On November 18, 1935, about a month after the beginning of the Italo-Ethiopian war, the League of Nations finally applied sanctions against Italy. This event naturally unchained a strong reaction within the regime. The same day, the party's Foglio d'Ordini (Sheet of Orders) communicated that the Gran Consiglio, after deliberating in session, invited Italians "to deck their houses with flags for twenty-four hours on the day of Monday November 18." Moreover, the Gran Consiglio ordered the erection in every town council building of a stone engraved in remembrance of the siege, "so that it will be documented in the centuries the enormous injustice consummated against Italy, to whom the civilization of all continents owes so ― 173 ― much." [108] The regime described Italy as being in a state of siege, and all the newspapers and many official documents published a count of the days of siege under the current date. Newsreels also followed that practice; a stentorian voice would announce: "Today, twenty-third day of economic siege. . . ." Thus, the whole of the Italian people were rhetorically involved in the campaign. In one of his first public speeches after the sanctions, Mussolini, in heightened rhetoric, pointed out the dramatic and immoral character of the siege. His audience being the mothers of the Great War's soldiers, Mussolini managed to touch emotional chords and very sensitive issues as he accused the countries for whose defense these women had donated their sons' lives of training and arming Ethiopians: If somebody, in the glorious and tragic years of the World War, when the painful news reached your houses, came and told you that a day would come in which the countries to whom you have offered the youth of your sons would have supplied with explosive guns the enemies who are fighting against Italian troops, you would have rejected this hypothesis as one tries to push back a bad dream. [109] Mussolini's tone became more dramatic when he quoted World War I hero Filippo Corridoni, a figure exalted by the regime and in whose honor a town had been named: "We go to fight for the martyr Belgium, for the invaded France, for threatened England." Then Mussolini continued: Now those we helped, are conspiring against Italy. But what is the crime that Italy supposedly has perpetrated? None, unless it is a crime to bring civilization to backward lands, to build roads and schools, diffuse the hygiene and the progress of our time. [110] Italy was only accomplishing good, according to Mussolini. But the League of Nations completely disregarded her civilizing mission and, at the zenith of immorality, was even placing Italy on the same plane as Ethiopia. It is not the economic side of sanctions that we disdain. . . . What we find disgusting in the sanctions is their moral character. It is this having put on the same level Ethiopia and Italy . . . the People who has given so many contributions to world civilization. [111] Italy was conducting "a war of civilization and liberation," a "war of poor, disinherited, proletarian people." [112] Its only sin consisted of breaking the shackles of slaves in "barbaric" lands. In spite of this, egoistic and hypocritical countries were disregarding Italy's moral superiority. In his dramatic appeal ― 174 ― to students, Mussolini defined European politicians as "bloodthirsty." He warned that the "satanic pressure of imperialist and bloody sects" could cause a world conflict of incredible proportions in which students, not politicians, would be called to fight. [113] Italy did not want a war, Mussolini affirmed, but 102 of 199 7/11/2006 12:54 AM
Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v... sanctions would not bring peace either. "That sanctions mean peace in Europe is the mystification of criminals. It is a mephistophelian fraud of sectarians," [114] Mussolini declared. Hence, he incited the students against the "insatiable imperialists," the "bloody propagandists" with their "diabolical intrigues." [115] In the face of these criminals Italy cried out its innocence and emphasized the moral mission it was leading in Ethiopia—a mission of civilization and liberation from slavery. The antagonism between Italy, the invading country, and the other nations, which condemned the invasion, was framed as a struggle between a victimized country, whose only fault lay in bringing light to backward regions, and superpowers who wanted to deny Italy a piece of their colonial cake—as Mussolini called it, "a little place in the sun." While evil (the League) imposed its rule by discrediting and humiliating virtue (Italy), virtue prepared, in a crescendo, the moment of revelation and triumph. The dramaturgy of virtue the regime applied to its relationship with the European powers continued in fascism's discourse about the "aggressors" in the Italo-Ethiopian conflict—that is, the Ethiopians themselves. Almost playing a secondary role in Italy's moral drama, the Abyssinians were never considered real and equal interlocutors of Italy on the colonial issue, and Mussolini always maintained a dismissive tone toward them. Colonies, Mussolini claimed, were a right for civilized countries, no matter the reason for initiating their conquest. As a matter of fact, by calling it a colonial question, Mussolini considered Italy's war in Africa a natural outcome, a necessary stage in the expansionist process. There were wars and wars, Mussolini wrote in his appeal to the European students when defending Italy from the accusation that it was provoking a European crisis. Because "the Ethiopian dispute was a colonial question," [116] it should not have created any protest or opposition from the great powers. A conflict in Europe was a serious matter; a colonial war did not deserve anybody's attention. It involved different, inferior cultures that had not been able to develop a stable and civilized political system. They were thus rightly subjected to other countries' expansionist activities. [117] From this ideological position, a derogatory and diminished vision of the Ethiopians ensued. Mussolini's government presented the League of Nations with a memorandum that documented the history of Italy's political and diplomatic relations with Ethiopia. Using graphic evidence, the dossier ― 175 ― vividly placed the African country at the bottom of civilization. Photos of prisoners in chains, of public whippings, and of men mutilated in the application of a backward justice system advertised Ethipia's primitive conditions. [118] Images of hangings, violence, plundering, and the eating of raw meat were supposed to inspire feelings of condemnation in the viewers. [119] Italian pamphlets of the time followed the formula of the Geneva memorandum in presenting the Ethiopians. For contrast, they showed pictures of Italy's positive interventions in other African colonies: health care; medical treatments; distribution of food; urban development; and the building of roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals. These were all facts Geneva "refused to see." [120] Mussolini's official declarations also continuously indicted Ethiopia's savagery and barbarism. The Abyssinians were variously defined as "savage raiders," "slavers," "cutthroats," "barbarians," "bloodthirsty," and "rapacious," [121] and Ethiopia was called "the land of emperors and ras, of shackles and chains, of slaves' merchants." [122] Ethiopia constituted "a mixture of authentically and irremediably barbarian races." [123] Even though at the beginning of the conflict Mussolini denied that Italy had any interest in Africa other than to guarantee the security of its own territories, the regime made continuous recourse to the rhetoric of civilization during its colonial campaign. Ethiopia's moral inferiority, as depicted in the regime's narration, magnified the value of Italy's civilizing mission. [124] Next to the Ethiopians' cruelties, their lack of morals, their wild customs and brutality, Italy's values would glow; next to Ethipia's low degree of civilization, Italy's virtue would shine. [125] Thus, on December 18, 1935, Mussolini told farmers at the inauguration of Pontinia: "The war we began in the African land is a war of civilization and liberation." [126] And on March 23, 1936, he told the Assembly of Corporations: The sacrifice faced by the Italian People in Africa is an immense service to civilization and world peace. . . . Italy in Africa conquers some territories, but in order to free the populations who for millennia have been at the mercy of few blood-thirsty and rapacious leaders. [127] According to the regime's narrative, the same indigenous populations welcomed Italy's liberating actions and recognized its superiority. On December 7, 1935, Mussolini told the Chamber of Deputies that the Ethiopians had been waiting a long time for Italy's civilizing intervention. [128] A few months later, in the article to the European students, he wrote that in the Tigrai region Italy was being "waited for and invoked by the tortured populations," who actually joined the Italians in battle against the 103 of 199 7/11/2006 12:54 AM
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