Fascist Spectacle.pdf

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Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v... We are all vindicating Victory. . . . We are in sum decided to defend at any cost the Revolution within and Italy's rights in the world. [80] To those who uselessly want to worry the world by representing an Italian imperialism, we will remind them yet another time that Italy contains its expenses for arms within the limits of the most elementary necessities of security and defense. We will remind them that Italy wants to live in peace with all people, and in particular with those next to her; that Italy has stipulated friendship and trade treaties with many states, and that frequently these acts have dispersed fog, thwarted intrigues, reestablished equilibrium in the spirits; we will remind them that Italy, since it is engaged in the interior in her work of economic and political reconstruction . . . does not want to disturb peace, but is ready to defend her interests in any part of the world. [81] Fascism's ambiguous rhetoric gyrated between peaceful proposals and warlike threats. But the latter were presented as consequences; other countries' malignant behavior determined Italy's military stance. As Mussolini told the Senate in 1925: One cannot think, honorable Senators, that an eventual war tomorrow in Europe would spare us the sacrifice. We need to get ready. Nor can one think that the war starts and leaves us the time to get ready. War can fall on us suddenly. [82] ― 166 ― Mussolini firmly asserted Italy's duty to be militarily prepared, although he cast Italy less as the initiator of any potential conflict than as its victim. The war would "fall" on Italians suddenly, without them knowing it. Whether ready or not, Italy would be involved in the battle. There was no chance that the sacrifice could be avoided. The frustration over the European nations' unwillingness to help Italy achieve its goals through peaceful means led Mussolini to take a more militant tone in his speeches of the early 1930s. At this time, the regime's discourse on war escalated, though it maintained the familiar narrative format, especially in its second variant. On May 11, 1930, Mussolini thus addressed the people of Livorno: I want to tell you, and not only you, but all the Italian people and also the people beyond the borders, that we are not anxious for precipitous adventures, but if anybody made an attempt on our independence and future, they do not know yet at what temperature I would bring all the Italian people! [83] Things had come to a turning point when the regime could legitimately claim its right to respond to other nations' threats. If Italy the virtuous were provoked, then it would defend itself, as Mussolini reiterated in his Milan speech of May 24, 1930, anniversary of Italy's intervention in the Great War. At this event, Mussolini first warned the Italian people not to be deceived by the "bleating of lambs who are authentic wolves." [84] Then he affirmed that the Italian people were armed—i.e., "ready to defend their right under the sign of the Littorio ." [85] Then he evoked the injustice of Versailles: We left Versailles with a mutilated Victory. But Victory is still in our hands. It was mutilated in the diplomatic protocols, but it is not mutilated in our arms and hearts. [86] This highly dramatic address asked the whole of Italy to share the same emotions and feel the injustice. In the wake of these sentiments, Mussolini's message for Year IX of the regime (October 27, 1930) responded to the accusations that his recent speeches in Tuscany and Milan were a declaration of war. Mussolini denounced what he called "a state of 'moral' war against us" by a "hypocritical Europe that stutters peace in Geneva and prepares war everywhere." [87] He then accused the League of Nations of being responsible for "perpetually maintaining two categories of states: armed and unarmed ones." [88] What kind of justice was this? Mussolini asked. What judicial and moral equality could exist between armed and unarmed states? ― 167 ― The principles guiding the League were unfair, and Italy as a victim was paying the price. "Some injustices have been committed, also against us, above all against us," Mussolini told the people of Milan on October 25, 1932. [89] He continued: "And nothing is more sad than the task, which sometimes we need to take, of having to defend what has been the magnificent sacrifice of blood of all the Italian people." [90] Debased, wealthy nations were denying Italy the rights it had earned through the sacrifice and blood of millions of soldiers. The rhetoric of blood, which Mussolini had adopted for the cult of fascist martyrs, resurfaced in the regime's representation of Italy's moral stance in world politics. The sanctified blood of war heroes functioned to dramatize further the degree of injustice to which Italy was being subjected. The image of Italy as virtuous victim served Mussolini's attempt to 98 of 199 7/11/2006 12:54 AM
Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v... negotiate the polyvalent meanings he was attributing to power, war, and empire. This image constituted a constant motif in the regime's discourse. As such, it prepared the ideological and symbolic terrain on which fascism founded its justification for war as the time approached for Italy to initiate its Ethiopian conquest. The fascist regime's interest in Ethiopia followed a history of Italian expansionist attempts beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, during the governments of Agostino De Pretis and Francesco Crispi. Both prime ministers focused their search for new territories in the African area around the Red Sea; during their regency Italy initiated its penetration of Eritrea, Somalia, and Abyssinia, although amid some unfavorable circumstances. A most significant failure occurred in 1893, during Crispi's second government, when Italy advanced its politics of expansionism in Abyssinia. The emperor Menelik reacted to the Italians' military threat by organizing a strong army, and in 1896 he managed to inflict a large defeat on the Italians at Adowa, where Italy lost six thousand soldiers. The defeat remained vivid in popular memory and became a symbolic moment in Italy's colonial struggle, a humiliation to be revenged. With the beginning of the new century, Italy's colonial politics was still oriented toward the northern African coast. Diplomatic agreements established between 1902 and 1904 with France, England, and Tunisia acknowledged Italy's interests in Tripolitania (Libya) and Cyrenaica. In 1911, backed by this political support, Giolitti, then prime minister, decided it was time for Italy to actualize its colonial goals. Although Italy had no economic interest in those regions, questions of prestige and the geopolitics of the time [91] encouraged Giolitti's government to declare war on Turkey, on whom Libya depended. Within a month, because of the political and economic crisis of the Ottoman Empire, the Italian army was able to occupy a strategic point in the Tripolitania region, but in the long run the ― 168 ― persistence of sporadic warfare created several obstacles to the successful completion of the invasion. Within this context, and because Giolitti's government intended to avoid a compromise peace pact, two months after the first attack, and well before the war was concluded, Italy printed a royal decree establishing its absolute sovereignty over Libya. A year later the Lausanne peace treaty conferred upon Italy the right of sovereignty over Libya, and public opinion acclaimed the country's first colonial success. With respect to its colonial politics in Ethiopia, Italy's military preparation during the 1900s and 1910s was conceived primarily in terms of a defensive strategy against an eventual Abyssinian invasion of the Italian possession of Eritrea. [92] In the 1920s Mussolini's fascist government continued the policy of the liberal government and even signed a treaty of friendship with Ethiopia in 1928. [93] By the end of the decade, however, the fascist regime called for a politics of force that would pursue the disintegration of the Ethiopian empire. [94] Thus, in 1932, with Mussolini's consent, Minister of Colonies Emilio De Bono officially began the preparation for an aggressive campaign in Abyssinia. At its inception, the campaign's exact goals were not clear, nor was the beginning date decided. The operation actually underwent several changes over the following year, partly because of the presence of two different centers of power, the military and the politicians, whose opinions on war objectives and strategies differed widely. [95] In February 1934 Mussolini convened the first meeting on the operation and communicated his decision to begin the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. [96] Military leaders expressed concern about this early date because, according to them, it did not leave adequate time to prepare for what they envisioned as a war of conquest. The course of events, however, contributed to determine this early start to the colonial war. The relations between Italy and Ethiopia having deteriorated drastically at the end of 1934, rumors spread about an Abyssinian mobilization. The rumor proved to be unfounded, but the situation motivated Mussolini—who was convinced for a series of reasons that "time works against us"—to prepare a final plan of aggression in Ethiopia. The invasion, as he wrote in his memorandum to the highest authorities of the regime, was supposed to take place in 1935; and, Mussolini added, it needed to aim at the "total conquest of Ethiopia." The problem of the Italo-Abyssinian relations recently moved to a different level: from diplomatic problem it has become a problem of force . It is a historical problem that we need to solve with the only means with which such problems have always been solved: with the employment of arms. . . . ― 169 ― Committed to this war, the objective cannot but be the destruction of the Abyssinian armed forces and the total conquest of Ethiopia. The empire cannot be done otherwise. [97] 99 of 199 7/11/2006 12:54 AM
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