Interpretations of Fascism as a Political Religion in Post-Fascist Italy (1943-1948)

In the last two decades considerable work has been devoted to Italian Fascism considered as a form of political religion. Yet the debate about the religious nature of Italian fascism after the fall of the regime is almost completely neglected. After July 1943 anti-Fascist public discourse aimed at promoting the so-called ‘antifascist paradigm’. This reassuring narrative, which depicted fascism as a regime that had failed its goal to fascistize the Italian people, was supposed to allow the country to start a new democratic life, but produced a substantial misunderstanding of the actual nature of Mussolini’s regime. Opposing this trend, some Catholic and ex-fascist intellectuals affirmed a counter-narrative of the recent past. They described fascism as a contemporary, religious-based totalitarian regime, and attributed to these features its appeal to Italian society. The opinions expressed by these intellectuals openly recalled those of Italian anti-fascists as well as Christian and lay intellectuals all over Europe who, starting from the mid-1930s, had acknowledged the religious nature of contemporary totalitarianism. From this point of view, they became part of a wider school of thought which sought to understand the phenomenon of the sacralization of politics. Intentionally disregarded and misunderstood by their contemporaries, these intellectuals nonetheless left a valuable patrimony of knowledge which, subsequently brought to light, has represented the basis for the elaboration of more advanced interpretations of the twentiethcentury totalitarian experience.