Fascist Educational Policy from 1922 to 1943: A Contribution to the Current Debate on Political Religions

Abstract

This article contributes to the current debate on political religions presenting a case study: fascist educational policy from 1922 to 1943. The article is organized into four different parts: after a discussion of the major and most recent approaches to the concept of political religion, the second part examines some aspects of the educational policies of the 1920s; and in the third the main educational policies of the 1930s and the early 1940s, Giovanni Gentile’s role and Giuseppe Bottai’s contribution. Believing that fascism’s scholastic policies were determined by a political religion, based on the stated identity of politics and culture, the last part proposes an approach to the study of political religions and, more broadly, of the culture of totalitarian regimes.