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South European Society and Politics

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Italian Fascism: Political Religion, Political Ritual or Political Spectacle? Emilio Gentile and his Critics
Tobias Abse Version of record first published: 19 Nov 2007.

To cite this article: Tobias Abse (1998): Italian Fascism: Political Religion, Political Ritual or Political Spectacle? Emilio Gentile and his Critics, South European Society and Politics, 3:2, 142-150 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13608740308539542

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REVIEW ARTICLE

Italian Fascism: Political Religion, Political Ritual or Political Spectacle? Emilio Gentile and his Critics
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TOBIAS ABSE

The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy. By EMILIO GENTILE. Translated by KEITH BOTSFORD. Cambridge, Mass and London: Harvard University Press, 1996. Pp.xi + 208; 24 photographs; index. 33.50, ISBN 0-674-78475-8 (hb). Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy. By MABEL BEREZIN. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997. Pp. xv + 267; 21 figures; index. $45.00, ISBN 0-8014-3202-2 (hb) and $18.95, ISBN 0-8014-8420-0 (pb). Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolinis Italy. By SIMONETTA FALASCA-ZAMPONI. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Pp. xi + 303; 21 illustrations; bibliography; index. $40.00, ISBN 0-520-20623-1 (hb).

Emilio Gentiles The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, first published in Italian in 1993, has precipitated both new research into, and vigorous theoretical debate about, the myths, rituals, symbols, monuments and other spectacles of Fascist Italy. In view of Gentiles substantial record of publications about Fascist ideology and the organisation of the PNF, and his status as the best-known pupil of the late Renzo De Felice, it would have been no surprise if such a response had emanated from the Italian academic community. Few would have predicted a debate whose epicentre appears to be situated on the USAs West Coast. The two most direct responses to Gentile have come from two American female sociologists, both of whom teach at the University
South European Society & Politics, Vol.3, No.2 (Autumn 1998) pp.142-150
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of California - Mabel Berezin at UCLA and Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi at Santa Barbara. The two authors, whose viewpoints - although both situated on what might be broadly defined as post-modernist terrain are in some respects as far apart from each other as from Gentile, may find such a comparison invidious. However, one assumes that as sociologists they also would be unlikely to ascribe the synchronicity in their intellectual production to mere coincidence. The virtually simultaneous appearance of Making The Fascist Self and Fascist Spectacle has meant that neither text could refer to the other. Although one article by Berezin appears in Falasca-Zamponis exhaustive 25-page bibliography, there is no sense of any dialogue between the two women. Nor can they be neatly pigeon-holed as part of a Californian school, given that Berezins intellectual formation took place at Harvard, even if Falasca-Zamponi obtained her doctorate at Berkeley. It is arguable that sooner or later the kind of cultural history centred on rituals, spectacles and symbols, influenced by Foucault and other post-modernist theorists and originally more focused on Early Modern Europe, which has gained particular prominence in certain American universities, might have seen Mussolinis regime, whose theatrical character was commented upon by contemporaries, as a natural field for investigation. However, Gentiles role as a precipitant should not be under-rated. The fact that Gentile openly acknowledges an enormous intellectual debt to George Mosse should not be allowed to detract from this. No American scholar spontaneously considered applying Mosses German-centred theories to the Italian instance, despite the decades of renown enjoyed by the author of The Nationalization of the Masses. It is interesting that Falasca-Zamponi shares the Duces fondness for Nietzsches advice to live dangerously, joining open debate with Gentile on page 4 of her text and stating her position in relation to the sacralization of politics on page 187 of her Conclusions. In contrast, Berezin, although evidently haunted by the spectre of Gentiles work as cited in footnotes to what are somewhat spuriously presented as more generally targeted criticisms on pages 50, 88 and 121, only plucks up the courage to inscribe his name in the text on page 163. This in a book whose opening chapters display no such pusillanimity in directly referring to a plethora of secondary authorities, whose relevance to her primary research might frequently seem a little dubious to readers whose principal interest is Fascist Italy. There is a considerable degree of overlap in the subject matter of the three books. All deal in various ways with Fascist spectacle, a side of Mussolinis regime that both traditional Anglo-Saxon empiricists and most European Marxists - although not Falasca-Zamponis key

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influence, the maverick Walter Benjamin - have tended to neglect, ridicule or dismiss as instrumental propaganda because of their own rationalism. However, Gentiles analysis is conducted in terms of political religion, whilst Berezins conceptual armoury employs ritual and identity, and Falasca-Zamponi is primarily preoccupied with the aestheticization of politics. It is somewhat surprising that both Gentile, as an advocate of the relevance of the notion of political religion, and the two sociologists who dismiss it in varying degrees, fail to make any mention of the most theoretically coherent attempt to argue that Italian Fascism was a political religion. This was Paul Brookers The Faces of Fraternalism: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan (Oxford, 1991), an ambitious piece of comparative historical sociology in a rigorously Durkheimian tradition, far removed from the post-modern eclecticism of the two American texts under review. Gentiles lack of awareness of the New Zealanders work becomes even more striking, given his own insistence that the impetus for an Italian variant of political religion which culminated in Fascism first came from the Nationalist Corradinis admiration for the religion of heroes and nature he found in Japan (p.14). This insistence unwittingly endorses Brookers thesis that Imperial Japan had a more effective political religion than Fascist Italy. Any vestigial doubt about the Italian scholars genuine ignorance of his precursor is removed by Gentiles assertion that the use of political religion in Bolshevism and Nazism have already been studied, but this aspect of Italian Fascism has not really been considered or at best only marginally (p.158). While Brookers definition of political religion is far more all-encompassing than Gentiles, incorporating organizational as well as symbolic dimensions of the Fascist experience, the Italian historians general interpretation of his empirical material would draw greater strength from the New Zealand political scientists more theoretical taxonomy than can be provided by quotations from Bertrand Russell or Maynard Keynes. At the end of the day, this lacuna is not so surprising; Gentile is not by training a social scientist but an empirical historian who has adopted the emphasis on the use of archival material and other contemporary sources, preached, although not always practised, by his teacher Renzo De Felice. Given the controversies unleashed by De Felice himself, it ought to be underlined that Gentile is best characterised as a Left De Felicean. In other words, whilst he shares his mentors anti-Marxism and distance from the Catholic tradition (a distance that some might argue has had a negative effect on Gentiles understanding of what constitutes a religion), he is genuinely committed to the Anglo-Saxon ideal of liberal democracy and is not an intellectual fellow-traveller of Gianfranco Fini.

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Inspired by Mosses work and encouraged by his direct personal incitements, Gentile has sought to adapt the interpretation propounded in The Nationalization of the Masses to any surviving Italian primary sources that seemed relevant to such a project. Therefore, Gentiles book is the most accessible of the three under review and the one whose merit is least dependent on agreement with its general theory. The main body of the text (pp.1-152), largely made up of a mixture of narrative and description of the type associated with traditional historiography, is admirably lucid. It is easily comprehensible to any historian with some basic knowledge of modern Italy, in a way that the work of Falasca-Zamponi and, to an even greater extent, Berezin, is not. Therefore, his account is undoubtedly the best brief introduction to the Italian Fascists use of public spectacle, ranging from annual commemorations of the March on Rome and other key events in the Fascist calendar to the construction of monumental architecture. At times, his allocation of space to particular themes may be excessively influenced by the ready availability of vivid primary sources. For instance, it is arguable that ten pages (pp.110-21) discussing the Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista, held as a celebration of the regimes tenth anniversary in 1932, and another ten pages on buildings that in the vast majority of cases were planned but never constructed (pp.121-31), is extravagant in comparison with the mere two pages devoted to the regimes introduction of a new calendar (pp.50-52) and the use of the fasces as a symbol (pp.42-5), both significant developments which had a far greater impact on more people over a longer period. Moreover, Gentiles decision to postpone discussion of the Mussolini myth to his final chapter, Italys New God (pp.132-52), may strike many readers not already committed to his definition of political religion as eccentric. It also puts him at the opposite end of the spectrum from FalascaZamponi, whose first two chapters are entitled Mussolinis Aesthetic Politics and Mussolini the Myth. Nonetheless, there are few glaring omissions, even if the regimes use of film as opposed to theatre or still photography has been neglected. Furthermore, the question of reception, as Berezin calls it, is acknowledged to pose an historical problem. Despite his consistent, and in my view mistaken, use of the label totalitarian to describe the Italian Fascist Regime, Gentile does not seek to present consensus for Mussolini - which he acknowledges to be more widespread than consensus for the regime - as universal. However, he dodges the issue of the degree, motives and intensity of such consensus by claiming that it is not a task within the scope of this book (p.149). Gentiles scrupulousness in distinguishing between adherence to the Mussolini myth and consensus

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for Fascism as such extends to the presentation of some primary sources indicating dissent or apathy. He admits, There were certainly certain classes and milieus in which the myth had little if any effect - for instance, among groups that had been powerfully secularized, or among those, especially peasants and workers, who had suffered violence at the hands of the squadristi or were more solidly attached to a socialist, republican or Communist tradition (p.149). It is also worth underlining that his extremely well-argued demonstration of how the Fascists cunningly but gradually took over the cult of the Fatherland in the 1920s - appropriating 24 May (the anniversary of Italys declaration of war in 1915) and 4 November (the anniversary of the Armistice in 1918), downgrading the essentially monarchist Statute Day and marginalizing 20 September (the anniversary of Italys seizure of Rome in 1870) until the Concordat gave them an excuse to drop it altogether - may be linked to his distinction between civic religion and political religion. But its validity as an insight into the subtlety of Fascist political strategy can be accepted regardless of ones position on his central theory. However, despite the fascination of his material, the clarity of his exposition and the persuasiveness of some of his comparisons with French revolutionary spectacles, Gentiles central theory that Italian Fascism can be explained as a political religion is unconvincing. Gentile distinguishes political religions from civic religions, both of which he presents as variants of secular religion - a phenomenon he maintains was prevalent in the increasingly secularized societies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - by arguing that the former are characteristic of closed totalitarian societies whilst the latter are to be found in open democratic ones. Thus, his theoretical framework is totally dependent on reviving the completely bankrupt notion of Italian Fascism constituting a totalitarian regime to be ranked alongside Nazism and what Gentile quaintly calls Bolshevism. It is revealing that Gentile writes as if the concept of totalitarianism was unproblematic in the Russian and German instances, but this apparent ignorance of well-known debates about Nazism and Stalinism is not crucial to an argument about Fascist Italy. Nobody would seek to dispute the aggressively totalitarian aspirations of Mussolini and many leading Italian Fascist ideologues, and few would challenge Mussolinis proud claim to have copyrighted the very word totalitarian. However, it seems ridiculous to write as if the massive amount of detailed empirical research into the workings of the Fascist mass organizations such as the Dopolavoro or the Balilla, the practical embodiments of the regimes totalitarian ambitions, had never been undertaken and the gap between rhetoric and reality remained unexplored. Despite his pretensions to theoretical sophistication in

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anthropology and sociology, Gentile seems to have regressed to the antiquated political science cliches of a Germino (1959), as if Tannenbaum (1972), De Grazia (1981) and Koon (1985) had never investigated Italian society under Fascism. Even if one ignores the underlying theoretical weaknesses of Gentiles schema, the notion of Italian Fascism having any great success as a political religion can be disputed on empirical grounds. First and foremost, it is undermined by the increasing strength of the Roman Catholic Church in Italy during the Fascist period. While Gentile rightly draws attention to the Churchs serious concerns about Fascisms attempts to usurp its spiritual role and the conflicts that arose out of Pius XIs observations on these matters in 1931 and 1938 (pp.69-75), he shies away from the fact that in the last analysis the Duce needed the Popes blessing in a way that the Fuhrer did not. The majority of Italians would have chosen the Cross rather than the Fasces in a full-scale showdown. Whatever deficiencies may mar other parts of her account, Berezin is correct in claiming that T h e Italian devotion to Catholicism as a form of popular cultural practice... limited what was ideologically possible on the part of the regime (p.248). Secondly, the Kings continuing presence as a source of traditional secular authority, particularly in the eyes of army and navy officers, is played down, despite Gentiles interesting account (pp.32-52) of how the Fascists succeeded in taking over the religion of the Fatherland between 1923 and 1932. Thirdly, insofar as the masses accepted Fascism in what might be loosely described as a religious sense, it was the cult of Mussolini that they subscribed to. And, as Gentile himself admits, The popular cult of Mussolini... came about largely for reasons that referred back to traditions of faith rather than to belief in the views and dogmas of the Fascist religion (p.150). Fourthly, even if, unlike Gentile himself, one is willing to equate the Mussolini myth with Fascism as a political religion, as Gentile confesses: There were certainly certain classes and milieus in which the myth had little if any effect (p.149). Fifthly, Gentiles rather cavalier dismissal of possible objections to the credibility of Fascism as a political religion on the grounds that it might in large measure have been founded on demagoguery and bad faith (pp.160-1) involves more incantation than argument. Raising the question of sincerity about belief is not as moralistic as he seems to imagine, as the fact that most Germans followed the Fuhrer to the bitter end must dent Italian Fascisms credibility as a political religion in any historical comparison. Berezin rejects Gentiles view of Italian Fascism as a political religion. But, as hinted earlier, she seems strangely reluctant to enter into a direct debate of the kind that would clarify her differences with him for those

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readers whose prime interest is in Italian Fascism rather than in sociological or anthropological theory. It is clearly no accident that in a footnote on page 149 of Making the Fascist Self, Berezin quotes the very same passage from the anthropologist Clifford Geertz that Gentile reproduces with approval on the very last page of his Conclusion. But she introduces it with the hostile but, presumably unintentionally, enigmatic observation that Geertzs position is diametrically opposed to the one espoused here. Perhaps readers who are more familiar with Geertz than I am will have less difficulty in decoding what is being hinted at here; one does not need to subscribe to the ethics of the fascist heroes that Berezin describes in her sixth chapter to believe that a frontal assault is preferable to a stab in the back. Berezins analysis centres on the notion of political rituals, although the following statement: public political spectacles or rituals (I use the words interchangeably) (p.5), suggest that for practical purposes she is writing about very similar phenomena to Falasca-Zamponi and Gentile himself. Berezins lengthy attempt to retheorize fascism, which ultimately concludes rather platitudinously that it is a form of anti-liberal but non-Marxist communitarianism, fails to advance our understanding. It would probably allow the word fascist to be applied to non-fascist movements such as Islamic fundamentalism, which also repudiates the notion of a division between a public and a private self. Gross and easily avoidable factual errors, such as the assertion on the very first page, that the Piazza Fontana bombing took place in 1974 (rather than 1969) or the thrice-repeated claim that Czechoslovakia is in the Balkans (pp.133, 142, 193), are bound to try any historians patience. Yet it would be a serious mistake to dismiss this book out of hand, for Berezins empirical research, as distinct from her prolix posturing as a grand theorist, makes a major contribution. On specific issues, she advances our knowledge far beyond the point reached by her adversary, Gentile. Chapter three (pp.70-100) provides us with a detailed account of the Fascists celebrations of the first anniversary of the March on Rome, and of their first experiments with political ritual that, despite later modifications, set a pattern for the next two decades. Chapter four (pp. 10140) discusses the subsequent evolution of this particular ritual in the period up to 1938 in an illuminating way, relating changes in the form of the spectacle to shifts in the regimes aims over time. Chapter five (pp.141-95) attempts an analysis of a variety of Fascist rituals in Verona over the entire 1922-42 period, demonstrating the extent to which they affected everyday life in a provincial city by colonizing time. Such events generally occurred either on a Sunday (33 per cent) or an ordinary working day (60 per cent) rather than on designated national

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holidays (7 per cent), meaning that they disrupted both Catholic ritual practice and daily working routines. Chapter six (pp.196-244) investigates some fascist heroes killed in Spain, Africa and the Balkans between 1936 and 1942 using obituaries and extracts from both letters and diaries collected by the Fascist authorities for the twentieth anniversary of the March on Rome in an effort to discuss the fascist self; although the material is intrinsically fascinating, Berezins procedures raise as many questions as they answer. Falasca-Zamponi agrees with Gentile that The sacralization of politics doubtless accounts for the regimes recourse to liturgical practices as a means to transform politics and induce the populace to share a panoply of myths and cults. It illuminates the internal organization of the hierarchical order of fascist institutions through reference to the dogmas of faith and belief. And it expresses fascisms reliance on, and appeal to, the superiority of a spiritual conception of reality (p.187). However, she believes that there are many aspects of fascism, particularly its apparent contradictions, that cannot be explained within Gentiles framework. Whilst Falasca-Zamponi shares, albeit in lesser measure, Berezins tendency to theoretical eclecticism, making it impossible to summarize her argument in the space available, the underlying thrust appears to be a more nuanced variant of Walter Benjamins thesis about fascism being the aestheticization of politics. Falasca-Zamponi accords a centrality to Mussolini that is absent from the work of Gentile and Berezin. This emphasis is in part a product of the nature of her empirical research, for despite an impressive number of references to archives, newspapers and films, her primary source has been Mussolinis own writings and speeches. She seizes avidly upon quotations from Mussolini about the politician as an artist, more specifically as a sculptor who uses human beings as his material, and portrays him in that light. Those characteristics of Mussolini on which Falasca-Zamponi tends to focus, such as his ability as an actor and his growing self-delusion in later years, have long been remarked upon by Mack Smith and other biographers, and Mussolinis interest in Le Bon and other crowd theorists is not exactly a startling discovery, so much of the material in the early chapters amounts to a more sophisticated rendering of familiar themes rather than the breaking of new ground. Where Falasca-Zamponi displays some originality is in situating Mussolinis self-conscious efforts to create a myth about himself in the context of a general cultural shift in early twentieth century Europe and North America, in which the notion of personality replaced that of character and the rise of the charismatic leader can be correlated with the rise of the Hollywood film star. Moreover, her third chapter, The

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Politics of Symbols, gives a rather more detailed account of areas that Gentile merely glanced at, such as the use of the fasces and Staraces attempts to transform the rituals of everyday life. It should be stressed to any unwary reader who assumes that Falasca-Zamponi is a Situationist that, despite her chosen title and the reference to the society of the spectacle in the blurb, there is no sustained engagement with the work of Guy Debord, who is mentioned in only one of her 843 footnotes. Finally, in contrast to Berezin, who seems to suggest that the role of violence in Italian Fascism has been exaggerated and that 1938 saw a shift in foreign policy, and to Gentile, who lays his emphasis on the attempt to create collective harmony within Italy, Falasca-Zamponi believes The spectacle of fascism exuded war and narratively prefigured the imperialistic outcome of the totalitarian states aims (p.148).

REFERENCES Brooker, Paul (1991): The Faces of Fraternalism: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan, Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Grazia, Victoria (1981): The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Germino, Dante (1959): The Italian Fascist Party in Power: A Study in Totalitarian Rule, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Koon, Tracy H (1985): Believe, Obey, Fight: Political Socialization of Youth in Fascist Italy, 1922-1943, Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press. Mosse, George L (1975): The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich, New York: Cornell University Press. Tannenbaum, Edward R (1973): Fascism in Italy: Society and Culture, 1922-1945, London: Allen Lane.