Fascist Spectacle.pdf

Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v...
A theory on the demographic occupation of territories was developed by the nationalist Enrico Corradini at the Florence
Congress of 1910. Corradini turned the question of emigration from a humiliating issue for Italy into a potential element for
colonial development, a positive factor in imperialist struggles. After the Libyan war of 1911, which gave Italy her first colonial
success, several political groups, also from among the social-democrats, considered Italy's expansion an expression of "healthy
imperialism." The conquest of foreign territories was interpreted as an effective answer to the agricultural population's need for
expansion, especially those from the South, who were otherwise forced to emigrate. Libya came to be conceived as a "populating
colony" ( colonia di popolamento ), and her economic organization was supposed to preserve the agricultural interests of the
southerners. See Luigi Goglia and Fabio Grassi, Il colonialismo italiano da Adua all'impero (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1981).
46. Scritti e discorsi , vol. VI, pp. 43-44, 45-46.
47. See Mussolini's speech to rural workers of October 26, 1935, in which he affirmed that fascism had sympathy for the 24
million peasants because from them "came and will come the million infantry soldiers, necessary when the moment comes, to
defend the legitimate interests of the Nation" ( Scritti e discorsi , vol. IX, p. 222).
48. In its original German version Korherr's book had been prefaced with an essay by Oswald Spengler.
49. Opera Omnia , vol. XXIII, pp. 209-210.
50. Ibid., p. 216.
51. Scritti e discorsi , vol. VI, p. 45.
52. Scritti e discorsi , vol. V, p. 433.
53. Opera Omnia , vol. XXI, p. 356.
54. Scritti e discorsi , vol. VI, p. 259.
55. "I prefer those who work hard, straight, a lot, in obedience and, possibly, in silence. To this last category, the true, authentic
rurali of the Italian Nation belong" ( Scritti e discorsi , vol. V. p. 430 [October 10, 1926]). He repeated this concept in Pole-sine
on December 15, 1926: "Among all the workers, the most noble and disciplined are the workers of land" ( Scritti e discorsi , vol.
V, p. 474). On December 8, 1929, he
told farmers: "The [rural] army is immense, ordered, disciplined, faithful" ( Scritti e discorsi , vol. VII, p. 172).
56. Archivio Fotocinematografico, Istituto Nazionale Luce, 1933-312. Mussolini had pronounced the sentence "The war we prefer"
in his speech of December 19, 1932, for the foundation of Littoria ( Scritti e discorsi , vol. VIII, p. 148).
57. Archivio Fotocinematografico, Istituto Nazionale Luce, Cinegiornale 1933-207.
58. The slogan was drawn from Mussolini's speech of December 16, 1934, pronounced for the inauguration of the Province of
Littoria in the Pontine Ager. See Scritti e discorsi , vol. IX, p. 154. The speech was recorded in the Cinegiornale 1934-595, in
Archivio Fotocinematografico, Istituto Nazionale Luce.
59. Scritti e discorsi , vol. VI, p. 36.
60. Scritti e discorsi , vol. IV, p. 295.
61. Scritti e discorsi , vol. III, p. 51 (speech of January 28, 1923, to workers of Poligrafico ).
62. Ibid., p. 108 (speech at the University of Padova of June 1, 1923).
63. Ibid., p. 135.
64. Mussolini wrote on January 1, 1919: "Imperialism is the eternal and immutable law of life. It is after all the need, desire, will
of expansion that every individual, every living and vital people ( popolo ) brings within itself" ( Opera Omnia , vol. XII, p. 101).
Also see Giorgio Rumi, Alle origini della politica estera fascista (1918-1923) (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1968).
65. See "Dottrina del Fascismo," where Mussolini wrote: "One can think of an empire, i.e. a nation that directly or indirectly leads
other nations, without the need to conquer one only square kilometer of territory" ( Scritti e discorsi , vol. VIII, p. 88).
66. Mussolini contrasted the mean economic expansion of the British and the brutal territorial conquests of the Germans to
Rome's domination in the Mediterranean, which contributed to world civilization and development ( Scritti e discorsi , vol. I, p.
374; vol. II, p. 201). In 1932 Mussolini told Ludwig: "I intend the honor of nations in the contribution they gave to the culture of
humanity" (Emil Ludwig, Colloqui con Mussolini [Milan: Mondadori, 1932], p. 199).
67. Scritti e discorsi , vol. I, p. 374.
68. See for example Scritti e discorsi , vol. II, pp. 22, 32.
69. Article of April 20, 1919, in Il Popolo d'Italia , now in Opera Omnia , vol. XIII, p. 72. Also see Giorgio Rumi, "'Revisionismo'
fascista ed espansione coloniale (1925-1935)," in Alberto Aquarone and Maurizio Vernassa, eds., Il regime fascista (Bologna: Il
Mulino, 1974).
70. Scritti e discorsi , vol. I, p. 374.
71. Ibid., pp. 374-375.
72. Mussolini's considerations on foreign politics reflected the liberal government's approach to the colonial question, whereas
both the fascists and the liberals insisted on Italy's right to a powerful position in the world order, and both affirmed the
legitimacy of a poor, proletarian country's claims to expansion. See Goglia and Grassi, op. cit.
73. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). Frye includes melodrama in
the romance mode.
74. Scritti e discorsi , vol. VI, p. 120 (synthesis on internal and foreign politics to the Ministers' Council, December 15, 1927).
75. For a discussion of fascism's foreign politics and its relation to interior politics, see Jens Petersen, "La politica estera del
fascismo come problema storiografico," Storia Contemporanea , vol. III, no. 4 (December 1972), pp. 661-705. Petersen,
however, tends to underplay the importance of war in fascism's self-definition.
76. Scritti e discorsi , vol. V, pp. 190-191.
77. Scritti e discorsi , vol. VI, p. 283.
78. On March 24, 1924, the fifth anniversary of the fasces' foundation, Mussolini told the Italian mayors convened in Rome:
"One does not have the right to believe in humanitarian, peaceful ideologies. They are very beautiful, you see, in theory. They
are magnificent, poetic utopias. But the factual reality admonishes us to be vigilant and to consider the ground of foreign politics
as a highly mobile ground" ( Scritti e discorsi , vol. IV, p. 72). A few months later, in a June 4, 1924, speech at the Chamber,
Mussolini declared: "But one needs to be vigilant. That is why next to a foreign politics of peace—because only peace can allow
us to stand up again—we need to keep ready and efficient all our land, sea and air forces" (ibid., p. 173).
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