Fascism Was a Violent Counterrevolution
A century since the March on Rome, it is important to remember the horrors of Benito Mussolini’s regime. Fascism was morally repugnant — but also a movement based on violent counterrevolution.
Stefanie Prezioso is associate professor at Lausanne University and author of numerous works on European anti-fascism.
A century since the March on Rome, it is important to remember the horrors of Benito Mussolini’s regime. Fascism was morally repugnant — but also a movement based on violent counterrevolution.
This day in 1936, Italian socialist Carlo Rosselli made his famous Radio Barcelona appeal for anti-fascists to join the struggle “today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy.” He was murdered by fascists the following year, but Rosselli’s vision of a free and just society lives on.
Born to a Jewish family in the Russian Empire in 1909, the brilliant intellectual Leone Ginzburg was deeply shaped by the October Revolution and the class struggles in postwar Turin. His short life, ending in an Italian jail in 1944, was devoted to the struggle against fascism and for socialism.
Today, Italians commemorate the partisans’ victory over Fascism. But in recent years, a right-wing campaign has tried to equate the actions of the Fascists who started the war with the resistance fighters who helped end it.
Italy’s left is struggling to present an alternative in an election where abstention is expected to hit record levels.
A new party formed ahead of this weekend’s Italian election is looking to overcome a decade of failure by the country’s left.
Remembering the Action Party, one of Italy’s biggest anti-fascist partisan movements.