Per necessità famigliare: Hypocrisy and Corruption in Fascist Italy

Abstract

Recent literature has made great play of an alleged Fascist cultural revolution, extending its influence deep into the subjectivities of the citizens of Fascist Italy. In his article, Bosworth doubts the completeness of this intrusion of an alleged totalitarianism. Reviewing material from Mussolini’s personal office, Bosworth traces the way in which the Fascist leadership and, most notably, Mussolini himself, remained impervious to Fascist idealism. In instance after instance, leading Fascists expressed the worlds of patronage and clientship, localism and the family, hypocrisy and corruption, rather more evidently than they did Fascist ideals about a fully ordered and disciplined society of ‘new’ men and women. In other words, the evidence which Bosworth assembles appears to demonstrate that many of the familiar structures of Italian life continued despite the Fascist ‘revolution’. Certainly in the longue duree, and perhaps also in the short, Italian Fascism failed more than it succeeded.