La Costruzione Dello Stato Nuovo

Il 21 giugno 1921 Mussolini pronuncia alla Camera dei deputati il suo primo discorso parlamentare, un esordio che segna un «punto di svolta nella sua carriera politica». Da «agitatore, giornalista e tribuno» si accinge a trasformarsi in uomo di governo che «traduce quotidianamente i termini della disputa in indicazioni di carattere generale», che a loro volta diventano i capisaldi della costruzione di uno Stato nuovo. Con un approccio storico-critico rigoroso, Fabio Frosini raccoglie gli interventi che racchiudono i temi essenziali alla comprensione di questo progetto nel suo primo decennio, fino a quel 1932, anniversario della marcia su Roma, che ne sancirà la piena stabilizzazione ma anche l’inizio della crisi. Se la storiografia dell’ultimo cinquantennio si è occupata ampiamente della personalità e delle prese di posizione di Mussolini e ha dedicato invece poca attenzione ai suoi testi, questo volume sottrae articoli, saggi, interviste e discorsi al «raggio dell’eredità storica del fascismo» in cui sono stati quasi per intero confinati. Dall’analisi delle dinamiche sottese alla genesi di un «regime che provvede e prevede» – il rapporto fra politica e cultura, fra tecniche di gestione e governo, e fra Stato ed economia, il mito della rivoluzione, il capitalismo nascente, l’ideologia post liberale – emerge il ruolo chiave svolto dal corporativismo nel fare del popolo, adeguatamente disciplinato, lo strumento della potenza della nazione. Considerato in quel momento da buona parte dell’opinione pubblica «tutt’altro che una disgrazia», il fascismo degli anni venti è apparso, persino a Benedetto Croce e Antonio Gramsci, come la forza che ha traghettato l’Italia fuori dalla crisi d’autorità in cui era precipitata dopo la guerra e come il mezzo che, di fatto, ne ha unificato il «tessuto» morale e sociale.

How do we understand the return of fascism today? In a world shaken by ecological, economic and political crises, the forces of authoritarianism and reaction seem to have the upper hand. How should we name, map and respond to this state of affairs? Late Fascism turns to theories of fascism produced in the past century, testing their capacity to illuminate our moment and challenging many of the commonplaces that debate on this extremely charged term devolves into. It can be tempting for any contemporary assessment of fascism to reach for historical analogy. Fascism is defined by returns and repetitions, but it is not best approached in terms of steps and checklists dictated by a selective reading of Italian Fascism or National Socialism. Rather than treating fascism as an unrepeatable phenomenon or identifying it with a settled configuration of European parties, regimes, and ideologies, Toscano approaches fascism as a problem and a process, one that is intimately linked to capitalism's demands for domination. Drawing especially on Black radical and anti-colonial theories of racial fascism, Late Fascism makes clear the limits of identifying fascism simply with the political violence of bygone European regimes. Developing anti-fascist theory is a vital and urgent task. From the "Great Replacement" to campaigns against critical race theory and "gender ideology", today's global far-right is launching lethal panics about the threats to traditional political, sexual and racial regimes. Late Fascism allows us to rediscover some truly inspiring anti-fascist thinkers, rooted in their turn in largely anonymous collective practices of worldmaking against domination, traditions of the oppressed that remain a resource for those set on dismantling the hierarchies and segregations that the partisans of Order and Tradition seek to revive and reimpose.

With populist, nationalist and repressive governments on the rise around the world, questioning the impact of politics on the nature and role of law and the state is a pressing concern. If we are to understand the effects of extreme ideologies on the state's legal dimensions and powers – especially the power to punish and to determine the boundaries of permissible conduct through criminal law – it is essential to consider the lessons of history. This timely collection explores how political ideas and beliefs influenced the nature, content and application of criminal law and justice under Fascism, National Socialism, and other authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century. Bringing together expert legal historians from four continents, the collection's 16 chapters examine aspects of criminal law and related jurisprudential and criminological questions in the context of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Nazi-occupied Norway, apartheid South Africa, Francoist Spain, and the authoritarian regimes of Brazil, Romania and Japan. Based on original archival, doctrinal and theoretical research, the collection offers new critical perspectives on issues of systemic identity, self-perception and the foundational role of criminal law; processes of state repression and the activities of criminal courts and lawyers; and ideological aspects of, and tensions in, substantive criminal law.

An insightful look into the origins of modern Italian media culture by examining a sensational crime and trial that took place in Rome in the late 1870s, when a bloody murder triggered a national spectacle that became the first great media circus in the new nation of Italy, crucially shaping the young state's public sphere and image of itself.

The author explains the sustained and wide-ranging interest in penal-law reform that defined this era in Italian legal history.

Agli inizi del Novecento, l’inserimento delle masse nella vita politica del paese divenne un problema non più rinviabile. Intellettuali e politici si misero alla ricerca di una nuova formula, per conciliare ordine e mutamento, tradizione e modernizzazione, Stato nazionale e società di massa. Sorse così il mito dello «Stato nuovo», ossia dello Stato nazionale di massa, che aveva le sue basi nell’antigiolittismo e che trovò con il fascismo un concreto tentativo di attuazione nell’esperimento totalitario.

Fascism was one of the twentieth century's principal political forces, and one of the most violent and problematic. Brutal, repressive and in some cases totalitarian, the fascist and authoritarian regimes of the early twentieth century, in Europe and beyond, sought to create revolutionary new orders that crushed their opponents. A central component of such regimes' exertion of control was criminal law, a focal point and key instrument of State punitive and repressive power. This collection brings together a range of original essays by international experts in the field to explore questions of criminal law under Italian Fascism and other similar regimes, including Franco's Spain, Vargas's Brazil and interwar Romania and Japan. Addressing issues of substantive criminal law, criminology and ideology, the form and function of criminal justice institutions, and the role and perception of criminal law in processes of transition, the collection casts new light on fascism's criminal legal history and related questions of theoretical interpretation and historiography. At the heart of the collection is the problematic issue of continuity and similarity among fascist systems and preceding, contemporaneous and subsequent legal orders, an issue that goes to the heart of fascist regimes' historical identity and the complex relationship between them and the legal orders constructed in their aftermath. The collection thus makes an innovative contribution both to the comparative understanding of fascism, and to critical engagement with the foundations and modalities of criminal law across systems.