3 Italian Fascism .sx Proto-fascism in Italy .sx If we were concerned simply with reconstructing the evolution of Fascism then it might be sensible to start with the inaugural meeting of Mussolini's Fasci di combattimento held in March 1919 and thus before the full extent of the structural damage which the war had inflicted on Italy's liberal institutions had become apparent .sx Our primary concern , however , is to establish how forces at work in the political culture of modern Italy exemplify the nature of generic fascism .sx Thus we must go back several years earlier to consider the pro-war lobby which formed in the autumn of 1914 when , despite its conspicuous failings , Italian liberalism still seemed unassailable .sx Some of these 'interventionists' were democrats and included Radicals , right-wing Liberals , reformist Socialists and several cabinet ministers , as well as the two most important members of the government , the prime minister , Salandra , and the foreign minister , Sonnino .sx They all hoped that by fighting on the winning side Italy would not only secure territorial gains and enhanced international prestige but create a new style of dynamic , authoritative parliamentary government , so finally putting an end to the rise of revolutionary socialism and the weakness they identified with the Giolittian system .sx What interests us here , however , is the intensive extra-parliamentary campaign mounted between August 1914 and the 'radiant days of May' when Italy formally joined the Entente Cordiale .sx Though highly disparate in their surface ideology and in the degree to which they constituted a recognizable political grouping , the different elements which joined forces to become revolutionary interventionists had one thing in common :sx the belief that entry into the war would inaugurate a new post-liberal Italy .sx In other words , the shared mythic core which made their alliance possible was a palingenetic variety of ultra-nationalism , so that , according to our ideal type , the pressure group they formed can be considered the first significant manifestation of fascist politics in Italy .sx The oldest component had no organizational form as such but was essentially a publicistic phenomenon .sx It nevertheless represented an important current in the political counter-culture of pre-war Italy .sx One of its foremost representatives was Papini , who as early as 1904 had co-written 'A Nationalist Programme' attacking the decadence of liberalism and the divisiveness of socialism .sx Presented as a lecture in several Italian cities that year , the programme called for the diffusion of the allegedly aristocratic virtues of authority and heroism to revitalize the middle classes so as to create a 'world of revived energy' in which not only would the arts flourish once more , but patriotic armies and entrepreneurs would work together to create a flourishing colonial empire in Africa ( see Lyttleton , 1973b , ) .sx Palingenetic myth is not only the Leitmotif of Papini's publicistic activity in these early years , even dictating the titles of some of his articles , 'Italy is Reborn' , 'Campaign for the Forced Reawakening of Italy' ( see Papini , 1963 ) , but three decades later it still provided the central theme of Italia mia , his most famous work of propaganda for the Fascist regime :sx " Italy's nature is like that of the phoenix :sx cut in two it reconstitutes itself , and hardly has it arisen once more than it soars even stronger than before " ( ibid .sx , ) .sx He made important contributions to a number of periodicals such as Il Leonardo , Regno , La Voce , Lacerba and L'Anima which helped establish the respectability of anti-socialist , anti-liberal and ultra-nationalist ideas in pre-war Italy .sx The most influential of these was La Voce , edited by Prezzolini who had set up Leonardo with Papini in 1903 and co-written with him the Nationalist Programme .sx The articles and editorials of these two men , along with the contributions of the poet Soffici , preached an eclectic blend of aesthetic politics which drew on Nietzsche and other currents of anti - materialist philosophy ( Crocean idealism , Bergsonian vitalism , as well as conservative nostalgia for a strong unitary state) .sx The result was a sustained critique of the mediocrity of Italian society and the call for a revolution in Italy , not merely cultural but ethical and political which would place the country in the hands of a new spiritual elite .sx As early as 1904 Prezzolini had been arguing that the 'old Italy' of corruption and decadence had to give way to the 'new' one of energy and heroism ( for example Prezzolini , 1904) .sx This vision of Italy's rebirth became the central creed not only of the Voce circle in Florence ( 1908-16 ) , but of numerous self-appointed Vociani who felt they belonged to a new generation destined to complete the risorgimento in a political order which was not merely post-Giolittian but post - liberal .sx In 1914 all three men threw their publicistic energies into the pro - war campaign .sx Prezzolini turned La Voce into an uncompromisingly interventionist magazine , while in the pages of Lacerba Papini and Soffici fused avant-garde art with heady visions of an Italy regenerated through the war experience ( see Gentile , 1972 ; Anderson , 1989) .sx Another component of revolutionary interventionism was closely related in its origins to Papinian and Vocian 'cultural ultra-nationalism' but operated as a formally constituted political pressure group .sx In December 1910 , amid the heightened nationalist passions aroused by Austria's expansion into Bosnia in 1908 and the imminent prospect of a colonial war with Libya , a Nationalist Congress was held in Florence , home of the Voce circle .sx At this congress Corradini , who had co-edited Il Regno with Papini in 1904 , and his close collaborator Federzoni founded the Associazione Nazionale Italiana .sx The core ideology of the ANI's more radical members , spelt out emphatically in its periodical , L'Idea Nazionale , perpetuated the Vocian myth of the 'new Italy' but also contained two distinctive elements .sx The first , elaborated by Corradini on his return from Latin America in 1908 , was a quasi-Marxist justification of Italian expansionism as the act of a 'proletarian' nation asserting its right no longer to submit to the hegemony of plutocratic 'capitalist' ones such as Britain and Germany .sx The second was provided by the legal theorist , Rocco , who had been recruited by the ANI in 1913 .sx His drive to promote a new post-liberal order in Italy was rooted in a philosophy of history which focused on the decline of state authority allegedly brought about by the diffusion of liberal and socialist principles ( 'demo - socialism' ) in the wake of the French Revolution .sx The remedy he proposed to the corruption and class conflict he saw about him was a peculiar blend of technocratic faith with both conservatism and modern imperialism .sx He proposed the replacement of the liberal system by a corporativist order in which a powerful industrial class would control sectors of the economy under the auspices of a strong state in which the authority of the monarchy , the military and the Church had been restored .sx In 1914 L'Idea Nazionale predictably turned itself into a major organ of interventionist argument ( Roberts , 1979 , ch .sx 5 ; De Grand , 1971 , 1978) .sx Both Vocian and ANI ultra-nationalism was of a distinctly elitist , right - wing complexion and represented a transformation of the conservative tradition , albeit in a revolutionary rather than a restorationist direction .sx In this respect they can be placed at the opposite end of the spectrum from a third component of anti-democratic interventionism , neo-syndicalism .sx This term refers to a number of revolutionary socialists who since the turn of the century had , in contrast to the 'maximalist' ( that is revolutionary Marxist ) mainstream , increasingly looked to a technologically advanced Italy as the precondition for the creation of a heroic proletariat and for the subsequent realization of socialism through a network of worker-led unions .sx Though an attempt was made to make this political vision the basis of a formal organization with the setting up of the Unione Sindacale Italiana in 1912 , it remained essentially a diffuse current of revolutionary agitation represented by some trade-union activists and propagated in periodicals ( for example Avanguardia socialista and Il divenire sociale ) and books ( for example Labriola , 1910) .sx The openly palingenetic and increasingly nationalist trend of neo - syndicalist thinking predisposed a number of its most prominent theorists , notably Lanzillo , De Ambris , Rossoni , Corridoni and Panunzio , to campaign alongside their natural enemies , the 'right-wing' extra-parliamentary interventionists in 1914 .sx They believed that " the war would bury for good the forms and ideologies of the past and prepare the way for something radically new .sx .. Whoever remained passive would be left behind as history accelerated and Italy entered a new era " ( Roberts , 1979 , ) .sx The only vestige of socialism in their belief in the revolutionary virtues of national war was the underlying assumption that society would one day belong politically and economically to the 'producers' rather than to the parasitic ruling , landowning and industrial classes who had dominated Italy hitherto .sx To promote their cause they set up a network of pressure groups , the Fasci di azione rivoluzionaria ( the adjective ' internazionalista' which originally appeared in their name had been quietly dropped ) , while Corridoni proved his mettle as one of the most effective speakers at the mass rallies held in Milan to whip up public pressure against neutrality ( see Roberts , 1979 , ) .sx A fourth political grouping which promoted interventionism in 1914 had an even less orthodox pedigree than the neo-syndicalists :sx the Political Futurists .sx In 1909 their leader , Marinetti , had achieved international fame with the publication in Paris of the Futurist Manifesto announcing a radical break with all tradition ( passatismo or 'pastism' ) in the name of an art which would celebrate the dynamism of the modern machine age .sx In this respect 'Futurism' was a child of the same age which gave rise to fauvism , expressionism , abstractionism , surrealism and constructivism ( see Hughes , 1980 , ) .sx What set it apart from such aesthetic movements was that from the beginning the inauguration of a 'futurist' age was inextricably bound up with the call for national regeneration .sx The legacy of Italy's imperial , religious or cultural past was regarded by futurists as a dead weight preventing her from becoming a technologically advanced , militarily strong national community .sx Liberalism , which embodied the 'pastist' mentality had to go .sx The mythic core at the heart of such ideas was again unmistakably palingenetic :sx " Political futurism was the irrational and activist commitment to the violent destruction of the old world and the creation of a new society whose form was as yet ill-defined , in which Marinetti intended to have the role of leader and ideologue " ( Gentile , 1982 , ) .sx The policies which flowed from this curious form of aesthetic politics were distinctly bellicose ( " war is the sole hygiene of the world " was one of Marinetti's more memorable aphorisms) .sx Futurism thus managed to combine chauvinism and imperialism with policies in keeping with its anti - establishment pose , namely republicanism , egalitarianism and anti - clericalism .sx As a result , Futurists such as Boccioni were to be found campaigning against the Church and for national expansion in the 1909 elections , and in 1914 were eager to support the interventionist cause :sx indeed , Marinetti became one of its most effective spokesmen .sx In addition , the urge to translate avant-garde aesthetics into political change drew support from the periodical Lacerba , produced by Papini and Soffici in their short-lived Futurist phase ( Joll , 1965 ; Gentile , 1982 , ch .sx 4 ; Mosse , 1990) .sx Another permutation of aesthetic politics was to be found in the interventionist alliance , this time embodied not in a formally constituted political group , nor even a current of political culture , but in a single ideologue of visionary politics :sx D'Annunzio .sx His personal discovery of Nietzsche in 1893 had been the starting point for a decisive shift from exploring the perverse delights of the 'decadent' sensibility ( that is in Il piacere of 1891 ) to a self - appointed 'superman' .sx Though initially he felt his role was to resist the rising tide of mediocrity unleashed by modern mass society ( that is Le vergine delle rocce of 1895 ) , the wide-spread food riots of 1898 left a deep impression on him .sx From then on he saw himself as a seer called upon to use his lyric and dramatic genius to inspire patriotic fervour in the masses and bring about " the rebirth of Italy " ( La Gloria of 1899 ; Il fuoco of 1900 ) as an heroic , imperialist , modern nation .sx But D'Annunzio was not content to be the poet laureate of nationalism .sx True to his new vision of himself as a synthesis of artist and leader , he was drawn irresistibly into the political arena .sx