The Tragedy of Line C Ruggeri, Amanda
World policy journal,
12/2010, Letnik:
27, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
ROME-all roads leading to Rome are measured from a patch of grass in the middle of Piazza Venezia. Overlooking the square, a 400-foot monument celebrates the reunification of Italy. It was here, at ...the piazza, that Mussolini hung over a balcony and declared, to the electrified crowds below, a new Italian empire. Both the republican and imperial forums, with their triumphal arches and ruined temples, stand a few steps away. And at the end of the road leading southeast from the piazza, against the sky, looms the Colosseum. Adapted from the source document.
Mussolini's abrupt turn towards antisemitism in October 1938 is conventionally explained by virtue of external factors, most importantly, as an aspect of Fascist Italy's strategic alliance with Nazi ...Germany. Adler explores a complementary hypothesis that accounts for racism in terms of factors internal to the dynamics of Italian Fascism itself, namely, a progressive radicalization of the regime during the 1930s aimed at the realization of a new imperial-totalitarian state, one that, in turn, would create a new homogeneous nation and indeed a New Man, a uomo fascista. Unlike Nazi racism, oriented backward towards the preservation of a given racial purity, Fascist racism categorically rejected Italians as they had been constituted historically. Instead, it was oriented towards a future project, an anthropological revolution that would create nothing less than a new race. Jews were seen as obstacles to this cultural transformation because they were historically bound to the decadent liberal state, as well as to the corrupting bourgeois spirit that informed it.
Recent political statements have revitalized the debate over Fascist antisemitism and the response by Italians to Benito Mussolini's anti-Jewish campaign. Luconi offers an overview of the current ...reassessment of the attitude of Italians towards Jews during Il Duce's rule in English- and Italian-language scholarship. Contrary to previous findings that have tended to emphasize the Italian people's effective contribution to efforts to help Jews under the Fascist regime and the Nazi occupation of their country, more recent research has stressed that, notwithstanding remarkable exceptions, Italians-both inside and outside the Fascist hierarchy-were far from being immune to antisemitism and, therefore, did not refrain from actively participating in the discrimination, persecution and deportation of Jews in the pre-war and war years. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd
This article examines the origin, development and controversies concerning the 'Manifesto of racial scientists', the document published in July 1938 that laid the foundations for the forthcoming ...racial policies of the Fascist regime. The article seeks to explain Mussolini's rationale for adopting a racial ideology in the first place, and for including within this ideology such diverse (and contradictory) concepts as the 'Nordic Aryan' racial identity of Italians; the 'purity and uniqueness' of the 'Italian' race; anti-Semitism; anti-Africanism; and a 'biological' definition of race. These concepts, in general alien to traditional Italian thought, provoked a backlash among some prominent Italian scientists and Fascists of such magnitude as to throw the entire program of racial propaganda in disarray for the remainder of the regime's existence. The article also highlights the career of Dr Guido Landra, the actual author of the Manifesto, and considers the extent to which his ideas influenced the text. Questo articolo esamina l'origine, lo sviluppo e le controversie relative al Manifesto degli Scientisti Razziali. Il documento fu pubblicato nel luglio del 1938 e fornì la base ideologica per i successivi programmi razziali del regime fascista. L'articolo tenta di illustrare il motivo principale per cui Mussolini adottÒ un'ideologia razziale e incluse in tale ideologia concetti diversi e contraddittori come l'identitÀ razziale "Ariano-Nordica" degli Italiani; l'eccezionalitÀ e la pureza della razza italiana; l'antisemitismo; l'anti-Africanismo; e una definizione biologica del concetto di razza. Questi principi, che in generale sono contrari agli ideali comuni italiani, provocarono un contraccolpo, in grande scala fra molti scientisti italiani di fede fascisti e portarono il programma di propaganda razziale a uno stato di confusione per il resto dell'esistenza del regime. L'articolo esamina anche la carriera del dottor Guido Landra, il vero autore del Manifesto, e considera fino a che punto le idee di Landra influenzarono il contenuto del testo.
This article analyzes the political and diplomatic relationships between the Zionist-Revisionist movement and Fascist Italy and attempts to re-construct the imago the latter had of Zionism. Both ...sides were convinced that theirs was the truly realistic expression of their respective political priorities: the Fascist regime wanted to 'win the peace' by a revision of the 1919 Versailles settlement; the Revisionist movement claimed that the only genuine interpretation of the 'spirit of the Mandate' was the establishment of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan. This article argues that the flirtation between Italy and Revisionism did not give substance to a strong realistic 'marriage of interest' because of the gap existing between imago and res, that is to say, what Fascism perceived as the 'Jewish movement,' and the role the Revisionist movement effectively played within the Zionist struggle for an independent Jewish political body in Palestine. This gap was not only due to a cynical estimate of Revisionism's real strength, but was mostly due to the so-called 'ideology of Realpolitik' which affected Fascist policy. Reprinted by permission of Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.
