Fascist Spectacle.pdf

Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v...
fascism and the "October revolution." [106] However, Mussolini failed to acknowledge that the Milizia
also granted him a larger hegemonic role within the fascist movement. First, by recruiting its members
from the violent fascist squads who used to act
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on the orders of a local ras , the Milizia highly diluted the power of local fascist leaders. The militiamen
now responded directly to Mussolini and were supposed to obey him with absolute, blind
discipline. [107] Second, through the Milizia Mussolini was able to exercise control over fascist leaders
and prevent challenges to his authority. On October 13, 1923, the Gran Consiglio decreed that holding
both military and political positions was inadmissible. [108] Those who held posts within the party could
not lead the Milizia nor, by implication, have any influence on it. As a matter of fact, the cadres of the
Milizia mostly came from the regular Italian army and presumably obeyed the head of government out
of a sense of duty. [109] Hence, with the Milizia Mussolini undermined the possibility that any fascist
member could ever hold enough power to challenge his own leadership.
The organization of the Milizia constituted a further step in the process of neutralizing the party's
role, a process that Mussolini carried out first as prime minister and later as head of the regime. Other
measures Mussolini adopted in this direction included the opening of party enrollment immediately
after the March on Rome. [110] This opening helped devitalize the identity of the party by allowing
people of minimal conviction to become members. The new rule of October 15, 1923, further
undermined the political vitality of the party. The rule stated that many appointments within the
Fascist Party should be determined from above and no longer through internal elections. [111] In
October 1926 the new statute of the PNF definitively proclaimed the system of nominations from
above, suppressing the voice from the base and any form of debate within the fascist
membership. [112]
The laws on the Gran Consiglio had opened the way to Mussolini's supremacy over the party. From
the juridical point of view, and in the face of the Gran Consiglio's transformation into a state organ in
1928, the laws also marked the end of the division between party and state—a division that had
already been dissolved in practice with the establishment of the dictatorship. [113] However, in this
case the state encapsulated the party, and not vice versa. Since the beginning of his appointment
Mussolini had emphasized the difference, in terms of authority, between party and state and had
privileged the state over the party. In the first measure of a series aimed at weakening the party's
role, on June 13, 1923, Mussolini circulated to the prefects of the provinces a note in which he gave
them power over party representatives. [114]
The Prefect and nobody else is the one and only representative of the Government authority in the provinces. . . . The
fascist province leaders and other party authorities are subordinated to the Prefect. It is intended
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that since fascism is the dominant party, the Prefect has to keep contacts with the local fasces in order to avoid dissent
and whatever else can disturb public order. [115]
Mussolini conceded that because the Fascist Party was the dominant one, the prefect had to be in
touch with local fascist sections, primarily in order to avoid disagreements and violence. Nevertheless,
he stated in absolute terms that any illegal act, independent of its origin, needed to be curbed:
"Phenomena of illegalism must be inexorably repressed, no matter who practices them." [116] This
clause doubtless applied to his own party. On April 3, 1926, Law Number 660 definitely affirmed the
power of the prefects. The following year, in the document to the prefects of January 5, 1927,
Mussolini wrote that the prefect was the highest authority of the state: "He is the direct representative
of the central executive power. All citizens, and first of all those who have the great privilege and
highest honor to serve Fascism, must respect and obey the maximum political representative of the
Fascist Regime." [117] The party, Mussolini continued, needed to be "a conscious means of the state's
will, at the center and at the periphery." [118] Two years later, on September 14, 1929, Mussolini told
the party's high hierarchies gathered at the PNF assembly: "The Head of the Province (the prefetto )
has at his orders all the peripheral forces in which the State and the Regime express themselves; this
also includes the Party, and the federal Secretary who plays his function of subordinate collaborator of
the Head of the Province, a true functionary of the regal Prefettura ." [119]
On October 28, 1925, Mussolini inaugurated a formula that became a password of fascism:
"Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." [120] Four years
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