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The Fascist Experience In Italy

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In the years after World War I, the Italian nation was bitterly disappointed of not gaining all of the territories it was promised as a reward for the country’s participation on the side of the Allies. The decisions taken in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to denude Italy of its demands and give many of the territories to Yugoslavia, brought about prevalent social unrest and outraged nationalists in the country. Moreover, as a result of the war, the Italian nation had to face many economic and social problems, which further contributed to the turmoil in the country. To a large number of the population, the current democratic government seemed helpless and unable to deal with the state’s difficulties (Beck). The nation needed a strong political …show more content…

This period, came to be known for the aggressiveness of the working class, was called “The Red Two Years”. The occupations of factories, riots and occasional violence were all as a result of the impact of the Russian Revolution on the Italian workers. The population was losing hope that the government could deal with the difficult situation, and a fear that a revolution might take place soon, made a lot of people desirous of a different, stronger government. Fascists used the nation’s fear of Bolshevism to rise to power. (The Fascist Experience in Italy and “The many problems and failures of Liberal Italy led the establishment to turn to …show more content…

However, it was not long before the Fascist’s military campaigns started failing, the culmination being the invasion of Sicily by the Allies. This weakened the party to an extent, where the King, this time backed by the army, could easily overthrow Mussolini. (Ellis and The Fascist Experience in Italy)
Fascism in Italy arose rapidly as a result of the devastating consequences of World War I, but once the regime had to face another war, it failed to protect the nation and follow the promises it made to the people. As a result, about twenty years after its creation, the Fascist party lost all credibility and disintegrated. Italian Fascism flourished in the difficult and painful years after the Great War, because of its ideas that promised the revival of the great Italian nation. People had already lost faith with the multiple democratic parties that failed to solve the economic and social problems of the country, and Mussolini was the only one that seemed to be able to fulfill their desire for a stable state. Once in power, the dictator managed to appeal to the public for the first few years, despite the terror and the aggression he ruled with. The poor ideology of the young party and the lack of specialized officials, led to the public discontent and finally its disintegration. The Fascist regime failed to endure the military difficulties, horrors and hardships of a war, and soon after

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Just nine years later, the Roman Empire and Renaissance periods, rather than seen as fallen and inefficient, are viewed as “brilliant phases of its history” (PGI 1952 5). The first is referenced as a period characterized by the birth of Christianity, engineering, and architecture: all things that would have been fascinating to the soldiers that such a country could start such a movement. The Renaissance is characterized as the period in which “Italy attained a kind of supremacy that owed…everything to the brilliance and achievements of its explorers, scientists, painters, writers, sculptors, architects, and others” (PGI 1952 6). Again, the blame is passed from the Fascist party to Mussolini himself who was killed in 1945. Words describing Italian history begin to change from negative to positive including words like “brilliant”, “enriched”, and

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He believed that only a strong leader like himself could defeat conflicts caused by other political parties (especially communists/socialists) and post-war problems (World War I). Mussolini’s first call to action was creating a group called the “Blackshirts” that would carry out beatings against communist leaders and throwing them out of office. People of all different backgrounds joined including teachers, business people, and store owners (Document 5). Mussolini constantly told his people that he was going to restore Italy back to its glorious Roman Empire era. He backed up his sayings by invading Ethiopia.

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Also, the use of the word Italy is only for convenience, as it is known that the inhibitors of the peninsula regard it as Italia. One of the main contradictions of the Italian unification was the lack of a sense of nationalism in Italy. Mazzini used nationalism, the idea that we are all Italians to motivate people to start a movement in support of Italian unification, but his revolution was suppressed and his chance at unification was lost. Cavour realised that it was necessary to use force unite Italy, which deprived this ‘movement’ of the nationalistic aura it once had. Furthermore, another contradiction in the newly unified Italy is that the king of Piedmont Emmanuel II, and his successors did not provide former independent states with the ‘territorial autonomy’ they were promised by Cavour.

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Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were similar in that both were dictatorships. Both Mussolini and Hitler came to power through legal means and believed that people were divided into either inferior or superior races. For example, Hitler was obsessed with the Aryan race and called for the genocide of Jews during WWII. In addition, both Mussolini and Hitler favored the wealthy, believed that an individual was meaningless and must submit to the decisions of their leaders, and aimed at self-sufficiency so that each could survive entirely without international trade. Furthermore, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy “had aimed for prestige and power for their countries, and brought instead humiliation and destruction” (Tarr, R.,

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The Italian peninsula was politically fragmented and divided, with no strong central government. This division made it difficult for Italy to compete on the international stage, and left it vulnerable to foreign interference and aggression. Italian unification became a pressing issue in the mid-19th century, as the country faced internal turmoil and external threats (Pearson, 22.3). The Italian unification movement was driven by a coalition of liberal and socialist political groups, who sought to create a unified Italian state based on democratic principles.

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Fascism, and more specifically the kind that was exercised in Germany and Italy in the first half of 20th century, serves as an accurate example to those atrocities. The key, however, to prevent it from happening again, is to understand how it had initially occurred. The rise and events of Italy’s fascist experiment will be explained hereafter. Mussolini and Fascist Party The Italian Parliament did not accomplish much, and its government was reflecting the divided state of the Italian society. For instance, in the course of only three years (1919-1922) and under different affiliations, five different governments were built by the Parliament.

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When the modern capitalist society has emerged, capitalism has massively impacted on many social aspects. The system had led to the dissolution and to an end of the Feudal system during the Middle Ages. There are many political thoughts, which consisted of significant frameworks for reforming and making some new changes to the society. This essay will mainly focus on two main political ideologies and identify the differences between these two houses, which are Marx and Mussolini. First, the German thinker, Marx, and a letter called “ Manifesto of the Communist Party”, bring about the concept of communism that was being used in many areas back in the olden days.

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Communism believed in a classless society, while Fascism followed a dictatorship, but maintaining a dictatorship required the suppression of the people. Fascist ideology believed that “war alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it,” which requires constant violence to prove power (Lualdi 236). By 1924, Mussolini was able to gain 65% of the vote for fascism, but in 1933, the Nazi party only gained 44% of the vote, and even with a minority ruling party was able to gain control of the government. Both Mussolini and Hitler came into power through legal means, but Mussolini was named Prime Minister in the hopes of avoiding war but after gaining control. Yet after their legal rise into power, they used coercion and violence to further their fascist rulings.

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In 1919, Benito Mussolini described fascism as “A movement that would strike against the backwardness of the right and the destructiveness of the left.” That “Fascism sitting on the right, could also have sat on the mountain of the center… These words in any case do not have a fixed and unchanged: they do have a variable subject to location, time and spirit. We don’t give a damn about these empty terminologies and we despise those who are terrorized by these words.” Fascism came into prominence in the early 20th-century Europe. It originated in Italy during World War I.

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From getting kicked out of the Socialist party to being the absolute dictator of Italy in just a few years. The techniques he used were quite brutal, but efficient. With the help of his militia the Blackshirts, he put down any opposition and gained support by shutting down peasant uprisings and taking the side of the middle class land owners. Him and his Blackshirts marched on Rome, claiming power of the important buildings of the capital. He publicly supported the king which led to Mussolini being appointed prime minister when the democracy fell apart, which gave him the ability to pass laws which gave the Fascists more and more power as the time grew on.

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Have you ever heard the saying that Fascism and Communism are two sides of the same coin? These ideologies flourished during the first half of the 20th century and influenced several European states which followed the two ideologies. Fascism was imposed in order to promote powerful and permanent nationalism within a totalitarian state led by a dictator which is ready to engage in conflict internally and with its neighbors. The doctrine of Fascism was drafted in 1919 by Giovanni Gentile and adopted by Mussolini (Mussolini is considered the founder of fascism). Gentile stated, “Everything for the state; nothing against the state” (Heywood, Politics 48).

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376) This description of Fascism indicates a government that is involved in the lives of its citizens to an extreme degree. By illustrating the government as a “powerful form of personality”, Mussolini alludes to the Fascist characteristic of organicism, where the state is seen as an organic whole being. Mussolini continues his

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The country saw the need of rebuilding their country after a long period of war among the people of different cities. Milan was considered as the most powerful city during the war period. The restoration of the Italian

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Furthermore, labor strikes in the country helped redistribute labor and wealth (Duggan, 2013). Despite those successes, the Socialists were unable to seize power in Italy. As a result, the Socialist Party split into factions, including the Communist Party. The Fascists, led by Mussolini, used the threat of communist revolution to take over Italian politics. Mussolini had socialist political origins and had a history as a journalist, editor, and socialist agitator (Duggan, 2013).

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During the inter-war period (1920-1939), totalitarian ideas, Fascism and Nazism developed rapidly in Italy and Germany respectively. Fascism comes from an ancient Latin word fasces, which is referred to an axe tied with rods. It represents a symbol of authority in ancient Rome and became the symbol of Fascist party which rose in power in Italy in 1922. While Nazism rose in Germany in 1933, whose name came from the Nazi party, National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). They threatened world peace and became an important factor of the outbreak of the WW2.

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