As a descendant of Jewish refugees who fled the continent for the UK to escape the Shoah, I am often struck by how people have taken Never Again to mean “I don’t need to worry about this because it could never happen here” and not “we are all — me personally, my parents, my children, my spouse, my friends and family — capable of being appalling versions of ourselves and behaving just like the ordinary Germans who ran the camps; and we had better face that fact straight on if we want to avoid that fate”. I guess it’s just easier to kid ourselves about this.
I agree and that's exactlywhat I felt. I think the UK (and i would guess the US is even worse) have a slighlty black and white approach becuase they never even had to deal with occupation and collaboration, as well as not having a home-grown dictatorship. That's what I take from that comment from the Holocaust expert (who worked in the States but is of European descendence). Saying 'they acted that way because they were evil' doesn't explain why people acted the way they did. You have the extreme cases like the Eichmann trial and the banality of evil, and then you have so many people lower down the chain. But, as I'm sure you know, it's not an easy conversation to have. Thank you for your comment and your insight.
Firstly, I have to admit that I am a Brit and a Brit with no known Italian ancestry, in modern times at least. However, I am also a Brit who has studied modern European history, who speaks fluent Italian, who attended university in Italy and who wrote two theses on fascism (with a small 'f'), one on Pétainism and one on the early years of Mussolini's Italy.
From this background, I am wondering if you, or your British side, have fallen into the usual British trap of only calling it fascism when it is practised by foreigners.
Leaving aside the race riots of 1919 and the 1930s (and post war, too), British history is replete with actions of the type we would today label as fascist or fascistic - from the response to Irish Nationalism, the Boer War, the Llanelli railway riots, gas attacks on Iraq (planned even if not carried out), Amritsar, the General Strike, the Bengal famine, blatant racism, suppression of the Mau-Mau, and ebullient praise for “the Roman genius” of Mussolini, “the greatest lawgiver among living men”.
Perhaps we are too quick to dismiss British Fascism are the rantings of a minority in the UK simply because to analyse the history of far-right thought in the country because to do so would mean that we have to look too closely at some of our long-held and treasured national myths.
But is it time now to start killing some of our sacred cows?
Hi Stephan, thank you for your comment. I would never argue that the UK has no historical sins to answer for (few former great powers don't), but fascism was first and foremost a dictatorship which erased democracy WITHIN Italy and suppressed and punished internal dissent. The UK has never been a dictatorship. Again, I'm not defending every action of the British government but I don't think we can say the the UK was fascist at any point, as the removal of all democratic rights is at the core of fascism.
I am with you only so far. The UK was frequently a dictatorship, which erased democratic and traditional rights, just not in England, as any Irishman, Highland Scot or Welsh-speaker, Australian Aborigine, native Canadian, Kikuyu, Bengali or Zulu would tell you
I read your family story about your grand father with interest. I am Belgian. However, there is Italian blood line from my maternal grandmother (Palermo). My family immigrated in the Belgium Congo in 1954. For me, as a child it appears to be a paradise. However, sadly nothing stay the same for long. Independence came in 1960 and war started, killing, pillaging,etc..
I was sent to boarding school in Belgium at the tender age of 10. Far from my others seven siblings to a very strict Catholics boarding school.
I felt lonely for a while. However, i realised quickly that I had to "get on with it" as Brit would say. I did and became an "Independent minded person" that I am today. Life teach you to adapt or die. After some years in Belgium Institute my parents recalled for my return in Africa. Eventually they evacuated to another town with all of us including my paternel grand mother (altogether eleven of us).
Peace did not last long in Africa. The latest place was Rhodesia now called Zimbabwe. On and off my parents lost three times their homes. One of the good things to happened to me, is when I met my future husband. A Scottish man. Because of war, my fiance decided to go back to UK so I went with him. It was a cultural shock. From now on no more French speaking. I had to learn English and Scottish dialect fast as I went to live in a beautiful hamlet in Scotland with my future in laws. After few months, we decided to go in England as my fiancé had a sibling there. Years went by, I went to University, got a Post degree in Management Studies, worked for Local authorities, started my own Consultancy Limited company. After retirement I volunteer to be "An co-opted Independent Member for the Northamptonshire police, fire and crime panel for eight years. I resigned in February 2024 because of corruption and I was not prepared to remain silent. What I have seen in UK since those three little girls in Southport were murdered is very frightening. However, it appears to be caused by a very small group of people being directed by outside interest to undermine the British ways of life. I agree completely with your analysis of fascism because my spouse confirms that the British have no idea of the true meaning of fascism as they have never experienced it. Whereas in Europe we have. The last invasion that Britain had was in 1066. Everyone remembered that date even today!
A very close friend of mine is Dutch. One of her grandfathers was very kind, gentle, friendly. Liked by everyone. One was difficult, abrasive, isolated from his community and borderline abusive to his closest family. The nice one was a passive collaborator with the Nazi occupiers- he didn‘t do anything *terrible* but he turned a blind eye and benefited from the occupation (job etc). The terrible grandfather is in the list of righteous among the nations. He was an asshole, and he saved lives…..
I think the like between good and evil is super blurred. And none of us really know where we would be. I like to think I would do one thing but what is that meant my child’s safety was threatened if I stood up? It’s so complicated.
I think 'turning a blind eye' sums up the sins of many Europeans at that time. What an amazing story. I guess so many people would also never have got over the trauma or guilt - or both. Who knows what the 'terrible' grandfather had seen, and his coping mechanisms.... A whole generation was traumatised in a way I don't think we (westerners who have known decades of relative peace) can fully comprehend.
Where to start, after the article and film I am left feeling quiet, saddened and thoughtful.
I am not surprised by the far right rioting in the UK. There has been a drip drip drip of hatred and blame towards immigrants for years from Nigel Farage and the then Tory Government. The BNP and Tommy Robinson.......Theresa May sending vans saying go home if you are here illegally through parts of London. I was an immigrant in the UK at the time. As a white Australian I know I wasn't the target audience but it still hurt me inside, I had made Britian my home and had contributed to my community but I felt the sting of discrimination and the knowledge that where would this end, would they eventually come for me.
I worked in Outdoor Advertising for a while and my two white male superiors would go on hate filled rants about immigrants. I got to a point where I couldn't stand listening to their ranting any longer for my sake and for the sake of other immigrants who had come to Britain. Of course their resposne was we don't mean you, you have a right to be here, (British mother), we mean illegals. As your film shows it is the standard but false response when one challenges these attitudes. I also put in a complaint about racism at the same company about my immediate superior, our mutual boss said what racism. In my innocence I was shocked by that response. I had sat there for months hearing someone using a derogatory tone of voice and making derogatory assumptions about a particular ethnic group and again I couldn't sit there listening to it any longer. The person I complained about was upset and didn't understand the problem......I had to explain about tone of voice, assumptions, etc. the upside was he confided in someone else who then felt able to call out the racism that was happening.
Your film also reminds me of seeing holocaust memorials in France. Something we don't see in the UK and very confronting emotionally. Being in Vence to visit the chapel built by Matisse and walking into town each day and seeing a little grouping of stones that was clearly meaningful. They were broken headstones with the details of the two deportations to death camps that took place and the names of the people sent to die. I cried then and the memory still brings tears to my eyes.
I spent a lot of time in and around Berlin in the early 90s, the Eastern areas outside of Berlin still had the concrete roads built by Hitler and you could spot the Nazi architecture in Berlin. I felt like the ghosts of the past were talking to me through the built environment. I also visited Berlin when it was still divided, I felt like West Berlin was like an open prison with slightly mad inhabitants and I had trouble getting out of East Berlin because I had a different haircut to the one in my passport. A very small taste of the fear used in repressive societies.
I fear for the future, the more money that is sucked out of the general economy and hoarded by the wealthy, the more that people are displaced by war and famine, the more that people are under educated, the more that people are told look over at those people who are different they are the problem...the more I hear the echoes of history crashing into our current world.
To finish, that is a very painful family history for you to carry. I am ashamed of why my mothers parents emigrated to Australia. My Grandfather was an Ophthalmologist and was against the NHS.
HI Susan, thank you for your thoughtful comment and for sharing your experience. The "oh but we don't mean you" mainly to white immigrants is very common and no less painful for it. Also, Brexit still meant millions of EU citizens (mainly white for a variety of reasons, probably around 85%) had to reapply for the very right to live in the country. If we're going to look for a silver lining (hey, i'm desperate here) I'd say that the recent riots brought to the surface something that many in the UK chose to ignore. Facing up to it can only be a good thing. As you say we don't have Holocaust memorials in the UK in the same way as in continental Europe for obvious reasons, but the Imperial War Museum had a very interesting and powerful WW2 exhibition not that long ago. If it's still there it's definitely worth seeing.
Yes, unfortunately Anglos generally, including many/most in the media, have virtually no idea at all about Italian fascism until 1945. At the same time, the words "fascist"/"fascism", as applied to any non-Italian phenomenon, long ago shed much meaning: as long ago as 1944 Mr E. Blair (George Orwell) said that the terms had become so meaningless that calling someone a "fascist" seemed to mean little more than saying you thought they were a bully.
I'd go as far as to say that the terms should be spelt differently (in English) to distinguish them, and since that strange man Mussolini, along with assorted ideological fathers (nessune madri, fortunatamente) of the movement such as Gentile, invented the term, rather inventively and deliberately harking back to cultural practices of Ancient Rome, I think the non-Italian terms should henceforth be spelt "fasshist" and "fasshism".
The low-foreheaded provincial UK rioters of the other day are really more trivial as a phenomenon than the media seems to be claiming, which isn't to say that immigration can be dismissed as a poltical concern in the UK, far from it. But really, comparing those "fasshists" to the elaborately constructed, although laughable, ideology underpinning Italian fascism of Il Duce is like comparing ... il gesso con il formaggio (per esempio).
You're absolutely right, I almost added a line or two about how the term 'fascism' when used in English is a generic term whereas in Italian it's obviously anchored in the two decades of Mussolini's rule. Then that leads to a discussion about what makes fascism distinct from other dictatorships, if anything does.....and I felt it would lead to another post! But thank you for pointing it out. Il gesso con il formaggio made me laugh!
It is not clear from your comments here how many Italians supported Mussolini, or at least overtly went along with fascism, before Mussolini came to power. Often, once a regime such as this is in power, many will go along to get along, without necessarily believing sincerely in the regime's ideology. Perhaps your film addresses this.
Hi David. The film is 48 minutes long and as you know the topic is vast do I don't get into this particular aspect in too much detail. But the end of WW1 was crucial to support for Mussolini, especially among men who had come back from the front. Italians felt aggrieved with the peace settlements post WW1 and felt they hadn't got their due (called vittoria mutilata in italian - the mutilated victory) so there was huge resentment towards the government, and also fear of rising communism, in light of events in Russia. Mussolini capitalised on all of this and, through violence, silenced (and also had murdered, in the case of socialist and anti-fascist politician Giacomo Matteotti) many within the opposition. So there was definitely support for Mussolini before he took complete power in 1925.
My grandfather for example had been a fighter pilot il WW1 and that definitely had an impact on his decision to join Mussolini.
Barbara, I absolutely LOVE your perspective on things. Your documentary was fascinating to me. I’m a Yank, and among other things you’ve taught me, had no idea Mussolini was in power for almost 20 years BEFORE the war.
But I’d like to hear your thoughts on something. To me, the recent right wing riots reminded me of the protests the right wing launched in the US after Obama was elected: the “Tea Party”, who protested deficit spending and our federal debt; the anti-abortionists, wanting to ban abortions; the anti-immigrationists;…. You didn’t hear a SOUND out of these folks while Bush was president. It’s like they waited for Obama to get elected. Granted, the protests here weren’t riots, but you had to wonder where all these people had been for the previous 8 years.
I know immigration has been a huge issue in the UK for a long time, creating an opportunity for the likes of Farage, et al., to foment Brexit. However, I don’t believe these riots would’ve happened if the Tories had retained power. The timing is almost like the rioters had waited under a rock, and the election of Starmer had them looking for the tiniest spark. What do you think?
Hi Lou, thanks for the comment. I'll put my hands up and say that I wasn't in the UK while these riots happened, so while I obviously followed events, I wasn't as connected as I would have been had I been on air. My sense is the two weren't really connected. The spark was the horrific killing in Southport. The question I'd ask an expert is whether the Far Right has felt emboldened by the anti-immigration Reform UK party doing well, and the impact (well-documented) of social media. But I'll be honest, those are the areas I'd explore in an interview rather than passing judgement on them. What's for sure is the Kier Starmer has had one heck of a baptism of fire!
My mother was a Fascist, more precisely the Secretary of the women's chapter in her place (a suburb of Pisa). She joined for opportunistic reasons (to keep her family in the system) and dealt mainly with social events. In 1943 she did not join the Repubblica di Salo', was denounced as antifascist by an anonymus, likely a man she had rejected; the Repubblichino official who received the letter shredded it and told my mother to be careful. My father was a member of the Partito Popolare di Sturzo, but married the "wrong" girl (the daughter of a prominent Fascist family - not my mother, this was his first marrige), and when applied for a job in the Naval Academy the Carabinieri got a very negative reference letter from the local Fascist authorities. The officer who received the letter threw it into the bin, said that he never received anything and my father got the job - thankfully, the Armed Forces never required an oeth of allegiance to the regime, only to the King. My parents were both lucky - many others weren't. So, I agree with you - Fascism was less extreme than Nazism, but still arbitrary - dictatorships always are.
Wow what a story! Thank you for sharing. Another thing that I think always bears highlighting to a non-italian readership is the huge difference that coming from areas that were occupied by the Nazis caused. For example Sardinia never fell under Nazi occupation (and fascist collaboration) after 1943. Speaking personally, my grandfather's story would have been much harder to tell if that had been the case.Presumably he would have been asked to hand over the Jews that had been identified by the 1938 census. The South of Italy lived its own horrors, but the areas North of Rome that bore the brunt of Nazi Fascism bear very different scars. I've met very few Brits or Americans (apart from historians of course) who have any idea about that, and to me it's a key difference.
My mother was in Tuscany, and remained there throughout. In September 1943 my father was in Venice with the Naval Academy. The officers and cadets succeeded in hijacking a freighter and sailed down to the South; he remained in Brindisi until the end of the war. As I said, they were lucky. I also met another Fascist - a "fascista della prima ora", as was said at the time: my mother's family doctor. He was really a nationalist and had no particular understanding of the economic and social side (bth somewhat theoretical) of fascism. And I also had some conversation with a neo-Fascist - too young to have lived in the Ventennio: an entrepreneur who liked the social/economic doctrine of the early Fascism.
Looking back, I think that I benefited from the dfferences between my parents: age (fifteen years), class (middle and working), profession (artist and mathematician), politics (right and left); I was always exposed to more than one side of any matter. Plus, they were older than me - 43 and 58 years respectively. This gave them perspective. So, yes, I was lucky too.
Dear Barbara, I think I should apologize for making such comment to you. You were not the right person to address it, and I understand that you are telling something about your family story, and not talking about Fascism in general.
But, on the other hand, try to understand me: I hear every single day comment about it. In last European elections Marin Le Pen in France won the majority of the votes; thus Mr Macron dissolved the Assembly and called for new elections. Le Pen was winner again, and soon, Macron started to talk about "cordone sanitario" against Fascism and asked all opposition forces, including Communist, to join against the the far right. In Austria and Nederland where the majority of voters voted for the right, everybody (outside these countries) was worried about the results. Same thing in Hungary. Finally, I read in the Spanish paper "El Pais" (14th Aug., page 7) a headline stating: "VENEZUELA ESTUDIA CREAR UNA COMISION CONTRA EL FASCISMO....". Can you. imagine, Nicolas Maduro is afraid of Fascism!
Anyway, I wish a good time in Carloforte (my mother was born in the neighboring S.Antioco)
Gianni, I really try to use this space on Substack to have discussions like the one we had, so there is absolutely no need to apologise. I hear what you're saying about sometimes the word fascism being used too loosely. To some, anyone who disagrees with them is a fascist. But on a more serious note, I do think that it was the Extreme Right/Fascism/Nazism that left the scar on Western Europe. Interesting that you mentioned Spain, which of course was ruled by Franco for decades.
As the child of German parents born in Berlin in 1931 and 1932, I get where you're coming from. They were too young to be participants in anything nasty and of course too young to have voted or agitated for/against the Nazis before 1933, unlike my grandparents. According to my mother, her father was vocally against the National Socialists until he was taken away by the authorities and didn't come home for 3 days. He never spoke to her or her siblings about what happened during that interval, but they observed that he stopped speaking against the Party afterwards. Would I persist in the good fight if I were in his shoes? I'd like to think that I would, but who knows? I wonder how many people today would be able or willing to tolerate a few hours of mistreatment, never mind a few days, before agreeing to adjust their principles.
I totally agree with you. My father was born in 1929, so of course blameless of anything his own father did, but I do often wonder about generational trauma, and how my dad, who was 16 at the end of WW2 so definitely old enough to understand some things, had been affected by it all. To my eternal regret, I never asked him about it. Whether he would actually have shared his thoughts is another matter.
I didn't need to ask. When she was past 80, my mother suddenly opened up about the more distressing aspects of her childhood. I'm glad that I know about them, I guess, but it took a metaphorical minute to assimilate the information. To your point about generational trauma, I've realized since her revelations that the information explains a lot about how she moved through the world and how she raised me.
I bet it did. I hope it brought your mother some relief to share her memories. My father never did. Some things I can guess but I'll never really know.
I honestly think that racism was present from the very beginning in fascism and the enemies were not only political but also people living in other countries, slaughtered and considered as sub-human animals. Italian fascism has never been better than German Nazism, even before their alliance.
Yes but the racism which is at the core of colonialism is not exclusive to Fascism. The idea that people of different races were 'inferior' was also present in British, French, Belgian etc colonialism. All racism is abhorrant, but I think it's important to identify the difference between the one that was aimed at people abroad who looked different (used as an excuse so that those people could be dominated and exploited), and the one aimed at fellow nationals who looked the same (I'm using some shorthand here, but most Jewish people in Italy would not stand out physically. I know it's an akward way of looking at things but I think it's an important point ) such as antisemitism. The title of this post is what my *British* friends don't understand about Fascism, so in this case I think most British readers would see antisemitism, and not colonial racism, as a core part of fascism/nazism.
Thank you for a wonderful, insightful article. As a dual IT/US citizen [California-raised, Florence & Rome-adopted as of 1981), I can attest to the truth of all you outline. My last visit to the US in summer 2023 was punctuated by horrified questions about the Meloni government - yes, always worth answering, but the historical & cultural ignorance re fascism/nazism take time to clarify - while MAGA behavior was seen as something different, certainly not “fascist”, of the, yes, right-wing but “it can’t happen here” ilk. True, Project 2025 was known to very few; I’d say only those of us who keep an eye on the Heritage Foundation & such.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat has always been a valuable corrective resource (and is now on Substack.)
For those interested in these insidious, capillary issues faced by many Italian-American families, I recommend the podcast Pack One Bag, the story of the Italian-Jewish Modigliani family.
the most worrying aspect is that we have not been able to develop any kind of vaccine. The narrative power of fascism is still a source where the political right takes energy. It is hard to be proud of this country, art and landscapes aside, and pride in being Italian is often taken as a germ of fascism. The Italian political left will not say, "I am proud to be Italian," it always says, "I am proud not to be fascist." And fascism keeps on flowing, as Palahniuk wrote, "When you don't have something to fight for, you settle for something to fight against," and Italian politics was reborn in the postwar period with its grand ambitious projects of rebirth only to die again. The Togliatti armistice was a maneuver of law that "pardoned" many Fascists, but failing to process that painful page of history causes its return in minimal doses. Constantly. A damnation.
As a descendant of Jewish refugees who fled the continent for the UK to escape the Shoah, I am often struck by how people have taken Never Again to mean “I don’t need to worry about this because it could never happen here” and not “we are all — me personally, my parents, my children, my spouse, my friends and family — capable of being appalling versions of ourselves and behaving just like the ordinary Germans who ran the camps; and we had better face that fact straight on if we want to avoid that fate”. I guess it’s just easier to kid ourselves about this.
I agree and that's exactlywhat I felt. I think the UK (and i would guess the US is even worse) have a slighlty black and white approach becuase they never even had to deal with occupation and collaboration, as well as not having a home-grown dictatorship. That's what I take from that comment from the Holocaust expert (who worked in the States but is of European descendence). Saying 'they acted that way because they were evil' doesn't explain why people acted the way they did. You have the extreme cases like the Eichmann trial and the banality of evil, and then you have so many people lower down the chain. But, as I'm sure you know, it's not an easy conversation to have. Thank you for your comment and your insight.
Firstly, I have to admit that I am a Brit and a Brit with no known Italian ancestry, in modern times at least. However, I am also a Brit who has studied modern European history, who speaks fluent Italian, who attended university in Italy and who wrote two theses on fascism (with a small 'f'), one on Pétainism and one on the early years of Mussolini's Italy.
From this background, I am wondering if you, or your British side, have fallen into the usual British trap of only calling it fascism when it is practised by foreigners.
Leaving aside the race riots of 1919 and the 1930s (and post war, too), British history is replete with actions of the type we would today label as fascist or fascistic - from the response to Irish Nationalism, the Boer War, the Llanelli railway riots, gas attacks on Iraq (planned even if not carried out), Amritsar, the General Strike, the Bengal famine, blatant racism, suppression of the Mau-Mau, and ebullient praise for “the Roman genius” of Mussolini, “the greatest lawgiver among living men”.
Perhaps we are too quick to dismiss British Fascism are the rantings of a minority in the UK simply because to analyse the history of far-right thought in the country because to do so would mean that we have to look too closely at some of our long-held and treasured national myths.
But is it time now to start killing some of our sacred cows?
Hi Stephan, thank you for your comment. I would never argue that the UK has no historical sins to answer for (few former great powers don't), but fascism was first and foremost a dictatorship which erased democracy WITHIN Italy and suppressed and punished internal dissent. The UK has never been a dictatorship. Again, I'm not defending every action of the British government but I don't think we can say the the UK was fascist at any point, as the removal of all democratic rights is at the core of fascism.
I am with you only so far. The UK was frequently a dictatorship, which erased democratic and traditional rights, just not in England, as any Irishman, Highland Scot or Welsh-speaker, Australian Aborigine, native Canadian, Kikuyu, Bengali or Zulu would tell you
Fasshistssssss.
Grow up
Yeah, fasshistssssss.
Which rather proves my point
Dear Barbara,
I read your family story about your grand father with interest. I am Belgian. However, there is Italian blood line from my maternal grandmother (Palermo). My family immigrated in the Belgium Congo in 1954. For me, as a child it appears to be a paradise. However, sadly nothing stay the same for long. Independence came in 1960 and war started, killing, pillaging,etc..
I was sent to boarding school in Belgium at the tender age of 10. Far from my others seven siblings to a very strict Catholics boarding school.
I felt lonely for a while. However, i realised quickly that I had to "get on with it" as Brit would say. I did and became an "Independent minded person" that I am today. Life teach you to adapt or die. After some years in Belgium Institute my parents recalled for my return in Africa. Eventually they evacuated to another town with all of us including my paternel grand mother (altogether eleven of us).
Peace did not last long in Africa. The latest place was Rhodesia now called Zimbabwe. On and off my parents lost three times their homes. One of the good things to happened to me, is when I met my future husband. A Scottish man. Because of war, my fiance decided to go back to UK so I went with him. It was a cultural shock. From now on no more French speaking. I had to learn English and Scottish dialect fast as I went to live in a beautiful hamlet in Scotland with my future in laws. After few months, we decided to go in England as my fiancé had a sibling there. Years went by, I went to University, got a Post degree in Management Studies, worked for Local authorities, started my own Consultancy Limited company. After retirement I volunteer to be "An co-opted Independent Member for the Northamptonshire police, fire and crime panel for eight years. I resigned in February 2024 because of corruption and I was not prepared to remain silent. What I have seen in UK since those three little girls in Southport were murdered is very frightening. However, it appears to be caused by a very small group of people being directed by outside interest to undermine the British ways of life. I agree completely with your analysis of fascism because my spouse confirms that the British have no idea of the true meaning of fascism as they have never experienced it. Whereas in Europe we have. The last invasion that Britain had was in 1066. Everyone remembered that date even today!
A very close friend of mine is Dutch. One of her grandfathers was very kind, gentle, friendly. Liked by everyone. One was difficult, abrasive, isolated from his community and borderline abusive to his closest family. The nice one was a passive collaborator with the Nazi occupiers- he didn‘t do anything *terrible* but he turned a blind eye and benefited from the occupation (job etc). The terrible grandfather is in the list of righteous among the nations. He was an asshole, and he saved lives…..
I think the like between good and evil is super blurred. And none of us really know where we would be. I like to think I would do one thing but what is that meant my child’s safety was threatened if I stood up? It’s so complicated.
I think 'turning a blind eye' sums up the sins of many Europeans at that time. What an amazing story. I guess so many people would also never have got over the trauma or guilt - or both. Who knows what the 'terrible' grandfather had seen, and his coping mechanisms.... A whole generation was traumatised in a way I don't think we (westerners who have known decades of relative peace) can fully comprehend.
Where to start, after the article and film I am left feeling quiet, saddened and thoughtful.
I am not surprised by the far right rioting in the UK. There has been a drip drip drip of hatred and blame towards immigrants for years from Nigel Farage and the then Tory Government. The BNP and Tommy Robinson.......Theresa May sending vans saying go home if you are here illegally through parts of London. I was an immigrant in the UK at the time. As a white Australian I know I wasn't the target audience but it still hurt me inside, I had made Britian my home and had contributed to my community but I felt the sting of discrimination and the knowledge that where would this end, would they eventually come for me.
I worked in Outdoor Advertising for a while and my two white male superiors would go on hate filled rants about immigrants. I got to a point where I couldn't stand listening to their ranting any longer for my sake and for the sake of other immigrants who had come to Britain. Of course their resposne was we don't mean you, you have a right to be here, (British mother), we mean illegals. As your film shows it is the standard but false response when one challenges these attitudes. I also put in a complaint about racism at the same company about my immediate superior, our mutual boss said what racism. In my innocence I was shocked by that response. I had sat there for months hearing someone using a derogatory tone of voice and making derogatory assumptions about a particular ethnic group and again I couldn't sit there listening to it any longer. The person I complained about was upset and didn't understand the problem......I had to explain about tone of voice, assumptions, etc. the upside was he confided in someone else who then felt able to call out the racism that was happening.
Your film also reminds me of seeing holocaust memorials in France. Something we don't see in the UK and very confronting emotionally. Being in Vence to visit the chapel built by Matisse and walking into town each day and seeing a little grouping of stones that was clearly meaningful. They were broken headstones with the details of the two deportations to death camps that took place and the names of the people sent to die. I cried then and the memory still brings tears to my eyes.
I spent a lot of time in and around Berlin in the early 90s, the Eastern areas outside of Berlin still had the concrete roads built by Hitler and you could spot the Nazi architecture in Berlin. I felt like the ghosts of the past were talking to me through the built environment. I also visited Berlin when it was still divided, I felt like West Berlin was like an open prison with slightly mad inhabitants and I had trouble getting out of East Berlin because I had a different haircut to the one in my passport. A very small taste of the fear used in repressive societies.
I fear for the future, the more money that is sucked out of the general economy and hoarded by the wealthy, the more that people are displaced by war and famine, the more that people are under educated, the more that people are told look over at those people who are different they are the problem...the more I hear the echoes of history crashing into our current world.
To finish, that is a very painful family history for you to carry. I am ashamed of why my mothers parents emigrated to Australia. My Grandfather was an Ophthalmologist and was against the NHS.
HI Susan, thank you for your thoughtful comment and for sharing your experience. The "oh but we don't mean you" mainly to white immigrants is very common and no less painful for it. Also, Brexit still meant millions of EU citizens (mainly white for a variety of reasons, probably around 85%) had to reapply for the very right to live in the country. If we're going to look for a silver lining (hey, i'm desperate here) I'd say that the recent riots brought to the surface something that many in the UK chose to ignore. Facing up to it can only be a good thing. As you say we don't have Holocaust memorials in the UK in the same way as in continental Europe for obvious reasons, but the Imperial War Museum had a very interesting and powerful WW2 exhibition not that long ago. If it's still there it's definitely worth seeing.
Yes, unfortunately Anglos generally, including many/most in the media, have virtually no idea at all about Italian fascism until 1945. At the same time, the words "fascist"/"fascism", as applied to any non-Italian phenomenon, long ago shed much meaning: as long ago as 1944 Mr E. Blair (George Orwell) said that the terms had become so meaningless that calling someone a "fascist" seemed to mean little more than saying you thought they were a bully.
I'd go as far as to say that the terms should be spelt differently (in English) to distinguish them, and since that strange man Mussolini, along with assorted ideological fathers (nessune madri, fortunatamente) of the movement such as Gentile, invented the term, rather inventively and deliberately harking back to cultural practices of Ancient Rome, I think the non-Italian terms should henceforth be spelt "fasshist" and "fasshism".
The low-foreheaded provincial UK rioters of the other day are really more trivial as a phenomenon than the media seems to be claiming, which isn't to say that immigration can be dismissed as a poltical concern in the UK, far from it. But really, comparing those "fasshists" to the elaborately constructed, although laughable, ideology underpinning Italian fascism of Il Duce is like comparing ... il gesso con il formaggio (per esempio).
You're absolutely right, I almost added a line or two about how the term 'fascism' when used in English is a generic term whereas in Italian it's obviously anchored in the two decades of Mussolini's rule. Then that leads to a discussion about what makes fascism distinct from other dictatorships, if anything does.....and I felt it would lead to another post! But thank you for pointing it out. Il gesso con il formaggio made me laugh!
It is not clear from your comments here how many Italians supported Mussolini, or at least overtly went along with fascism, before Mussolini came to power. Often, once a regime such as this is in power, many will go along to get along, without necessarily believing sincerely in the regime's ideology. Perhaps your film addresses this.
Hi David. The film is 48 minutes long and as you know the topic is vast do I don't get into this particular aspect in too much detail. But the end of WW1 was crucial to support for Mussolini, especially among men who had come back from the front. Italians felt aggrieved with the peace settlements post WW1 and felt they hadn't got their due (called vittoria mutilata in italian - the mutilated victory) so there was huge resentment towards the government, and also fear of rising communism, in light of events in Russia. Mussolini capitalised on all of this and, through violence, silenced (and also had murdered, in the case of socialist and anti-fascist politician Giacomo Matteotti) many within the opposition. So there was definitely support for Mussolini before he took complete power in 1925.
My grandfather for example had been a fighter pilot il WW1 and that definitely had an impact on his decision to join Mussolini.
Barbara, I absolutely LOVE your perspective on things. Your documentary was fascinating to me. I’m a Yank, and among other things you’ve taught me, had no idea Mussolini was in power for almost 20 years BEFORE the war.
But I’d like to hear your thoughts on something. To me, the recent right wing riots reminded me of the protests the right wing launched in the US after Obama was elected: the “Tea Party”, who protested deficit spending and our federal debt; the anti-abortionists, wanting to ban abortions; the anti-immigrationists;…. You didn’t hear a SOUND out of these folks while Bush was president. It’s like they waited for Obama to get elected. Granted, the protests here weren’t riots, but you had to wonder where all these people had been for the previous 8 years.
I know immigration has been a huge issue in the UK for a long time, creating an opportunity for the likes of Farage, et al., to foment Brexit. However, I don’t believe these riots would’ve happened if the Tories had retained power. The timing is almost like the rioters had waited under a rock, and the election of Starmer had them looking for the tiniest spark. What do you think?
Hi Lou, thanks for the comment. I'll put my hands up and say that I wasn't in the UK while these riots happened, so while I obviously followed events, I wasn't as connected as I would have been had I been on air. My sense is the two weren't really connected. The spark was the horrific killing in Southport. The question I'd ask an expert is whether the Far Right has felt emboldened by the anti-immigration Reform UK party doing well, and the impact (well-documented) of social media. But I'll be honest, those are the areas I'd explore in an interview rather than passing judgement on them. What's for sure is the Kier Starmer has had one heck of a baptism of fire!
My mother was a Fascist, more precisely the Secretary of the women's chapter in her place (a suburb of Pisa). She joined for opportunistic reasons (to keep her family in the system) and dealt mainly with social events. In 1943 she did not join the Repubblica di Salo', was denounced as antifascist by an anonymus, likely a man she had rejected; the Repubblichino official who received the letter shredded it and told my mother to be careful. My father was a member of the Partito Popolare di Sturzo, but married the "wrong" girl (the daughter of a prominent Fascist family - not my mother, this was his first marrige), and when applied for a job in the Naval Academy the Carabinieri got a very negative reference letter from the local Fascist authorities. The officer who received the letter threw it into the bin, said that he never received anything and my father got the job - thankfully, the Armed Forces never required an oeth of allegiance to the regime, only to the King. My parents were both lucky - many others weren't. So, I agree with you - Fascism was less extreme than Nazism, but still arbitrary - dictatorships always are.
Wow what a story! Thank you for sharing. Another thing that I think always bears highlighting to a non-italian readership is the huge difference that coming from areas that were occupied by the Nazis caused. For example Sardinia never fell under Nazi occupation (and fascist collaboration) after 1943. Speaking personally, my grandfather's story would have been much harder to tell if that had been the case.Presumably he would have been asked to hand over the Jews that had been identified by the 1938 census. The South of Italy lived its own horrors, but the areas North of Rome that bore the brunt of Nazi Fascism bear very different scars. I've met very few Brits or Americans (apart from historians of course) who have any idea about that, and to me it's a key difference.
My mother was in Tuscany, and remained there throughout. In September 1943 my father was in Venice with the Naval Academy. The officers and cadets succeeded in hijacking a freighter and sailed down to the South; he remained in Brindisi until the end of the war. As I said, they were lucky. I also met another Fascist - a "fascista della prima ora", as was said at the time: my mother's family doctor. He was really a nationalist and had no particular understanding of the economic and social side (bth somewhat theoretical) of fascism. And I also had some conversation with a neo-Fascist - too young to have lived in the Ventennio: an entrepreneur who liked the social/economic doctrine of the early Fascism.
Looking back, I think that I benefited from the dfferences between my parents: age (fifteen years), class (middle and working), profession (artist and mathematician), politics (right and left); I was always exposed to more than one side of any matter. Plus, they were older than me - 43 and 58 years respectively. This gave them perspective. So, yes, I was lucky too.
What an extraordinary story, vividly told
Thank you John. I started working on this project (film, then book) back in 2019 and it keeps on getting more relevant, unfortunately.....
Dear Barbara, I think I should apologize for making such comment to you. You were not the right person to address it, and I understand that you are telling something about your family story, and not talking about Fascism in general.
But, on the other hand, try to understand me: I hear every single day comment about it. In last European elections Marin Le Pen in France won the majority of the votes; thus Mr Macron dissolved the Assembly and called for new elections. Le Pen was winner again, and soon, Macron started to talk about "cordone sanitario" against Fascism and asked all opposition forces, including Communist, to join against the the far right. In Austria and Nederland where the majority of voters voted for the right, everybody (outside these countries) was worried about the results. Same thing in Hungary. Finally, I read in the Spanish paper "El Pais" (14th Aug., page 7) a headline stating: "VENEZUELA ESTUDIA CREAR UNA COMISION CONTRA EL FASCISMO....". Can you. imagine, Nicolas Maduro is afraid of Fascism!
Anyway, I wish a good time in Carloforte (my mother was born in the neighboring S.Antioco)
Gianni, I really try to use this space on Substack to have discussions like the one we had, so there is absolutely no need to apologise. I hear what you're saying about sometimes the word fascism being used too loosely. To some, anyone who disagrees with them is a fascist. But on a more serious note, I do think that it was the Extreme Right/Fascism/Nazism that left the scar on Western Europe. Interesting that you mentioned Spain, which of course was ruled by Franco for decades.
As the child of German parents born in Berlin in 1931 and 1932, I get where you're coming from. They were too young to be participants in anything nasty and of course too young to have voted or agitated for/against the Nazis before 1933, unlike my grandparents. According to my mother, her father was vocally against the National Socialists until he was taken away by the authorities and didn't come home for 3 days. He never spoke to her or her siblings about what happened during that interval, but they observed that he stopped speaking against the Party afterwards. Would I persist in the good fight if I were in his shoes? I'd like to think that I would, but who knows? I wonder how many people today would be able or willing to tolerate a few hours of mistreatment, never mind a few days, before agreeing to adjust their principles.
I totally agree with you. My father was born in 1929, so of course blameless of anything his own father did, but I do often wonder about generational trauma, and how my dad, who was 16 at the end of WW2 so definitely old enough to understand some things, had been affected by it all. To my eternal regret, I never asked him about it. Whether he would actually have shared his thoughts is another matter.
I didn't need to ask. When she was past 80, my mother suddenly opened up about the more distressing aspects of her childhood. I'm glad that I know about them, I guess, but it took a metaphorical minute to assimilate the information. To your point about generational trauma, I've realized since her revelations that the information explains a lot about how she moved through the world and how she raised me.
I bet it did. I hope it brought your mother some relief to share her memories. My father never did. Some things I can guess but I'll never really know.
❤️ (since 2007)
Good evening Barbara and thank you for your article. I'm Italian, 53 years old.
I just wish to add a small note. You wrote:
Racism was present in Italian fascism in the form of hyper-nationalism, but the initial enemies and scapegoats were mainly political
Please consider this:
Breve storia del colonialismo italiano: https://www.ilpost.it/2020/06/28/colonie-italia-impero-montanelli/.
I honestly think that racism was present from the very beginning in fascism and the enemies were not only political but also people living in other countries, slaughtered and considered as sub-human animals. Italian fascism has never been better than German Nazism, even before their alliance.
(I apologize if my rough English)
Best regards
Jacopo
Yes but the racism which is at the core of colonialism is not exclusive to Fascism. The idea that people of different races were 'inferior' was also present in British, French, Belgian etc colonialism. All racism is abhorrant, but I think it's important to identify the difference between the one that was aimed at people abroad who looked different (used as an excuse so that those people could be dominated and exploited), and the one aimed at fellow nationals who looked the same (I'm using some shorthand here, but most Jewish people in Italy would not stand out physically. I know it's an akward way of looking at things but I think it's an important point ) such as antisemitism. The title of this post is what my *British* friends don't understand about Fascism, so in this case I think most British readers would see antisemitism, and not colonial racism, as a core part of fascism/nazism.
Thank you for a wonderful, insightful article. As a dual IT/US citizen [California-raised, Florence & Rome-adopted as of 1981), I can attest to the truth of all you outline. My last visit to the US in summer 2023 was punctuated by horrified questions about the Meloni government - yes, always worth answering, but the historical & cultural ignorance re fascism/nazism take time to clarify - while MAGA behavior was seen as something different, certainly not “fascist”, of the, yes, right-wing but “it can’t happen here” ilk. True, Project 2025 was known to very few; I’d say only those of us who keep an eye on the Heritage Foundation & such.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat has always been a valuable corrective resource (and is now on Substack.)
For those interested in these insidious, capillary issues faced by many Italian-American families, I recommend the podcast Pack One Bag, the story of the Italian-Jewish Modigliani family.
Dear Barbara,
the most worrying aspect is that we have not been able to develop any kind of vaccine. The narrative power of fascism is still a source where the political right takes energy. It is hard to be proud of this country, art and landscapes aside, and pride in being Italian is often taken as a germ of fascism. The Italian political left will not say, "I am proud to be Italian," it always says, "I am proud not to be fascist." And fascism keeps on flowing, as Palahniuk wrote, "When you don't have something to fight for, you settle for something to fight against," and Italian politics was reborn in the postwar period with its grand ambitious projects of rebirth only to die again. The Togliatti armistice was a maneuver of law that "pardoned" many Fascists, but failing to process that painful page of history causes its return in minimal doses. Constantly. A damnation.
Thank you for your testimony.
Joseph
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)