Two new books on Fascism. A review, the authors’ responses and the reviewer's comments

Abstract

This section contains a review by the Italian historian Emilio Gentile of Paul Corner's new book on the Fascist Party and public opinion, and of Christopher Duggan's intimate history of Mussolini's Italy. The review is followed by responses from Corner and Duggan, and the section concludes with comments by Gentile.

Keywords::

• Fascism
• consensus
• totalitarianism
• popular opinion

Notes

¹ As far back as the years immediately following the end of Fascism, testimonies given by ordinary people about their experience of Fascism and autobiographies like those collected in Autobiografie di giovani del tempo fascista (1947) were published by reviews and newspapers. More recently, letters by ordinary people living in Fascist Italy have been included in several anthologies. For example, see, Mazzatosta and Volpi (1980); Caro Duce. Lettere di donne italiane a Mussolini (1989); and Lepre (1992).

² Philip Cannistraro's La fabbrica del consenso was published in 1975. Simona Colarizi (1976), in her L'Italia antifascista dal 1922 al 1940, examined some aspects of consensus to Fascism from the standpoint of the anti-Fascists; and Piero Melograni (1979), in his Rapporti segreti della polizia fascista. 1938–1940, studied the attitudes towards Fascism of public opinion in Milan at the beginning of the Second World War. The Culture of Consent. Mass Organizing in Fascist Italy by Victoria de Grazia was published in 1981. In 1984, Luisa Passerini's Torino operaia e fascista, based on oral sources, came out. In 1991, Simona Colarizi published L'opinione pubblica degli italiani sotto il regime. 1919–43, the first systematic research carried out using mostly the same sources as those used by Corner, and before that by other scholars such as Angelo Imbriani (1992), and Antonio Gibelli (2005; which uses unpublished diaries from the Archivio ligure della scrittura popolare, Genoa). Furthermore, almost all the studies of Fascism at a local level examine the population's attitude towards the regime. A synthesis of the research on public opinion during Fascism is highlighted in Patrizia Dogliani's (2008) social history, Il fascismo degli italiani.

³ Organizzazione per la Vigilanza e la Repressione dell'Antifascismo (Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism).