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I present to you the final chapter of fascism.




The Grand Council of Fascism and the cabinet formed an interim government which abolished many of the restrictions and limitations imposed by the fascist state. In the meantime, these events had their effects on the other authoritarian regimes on the Mediterranean, who underwent what became known as the Revolutions of 1978-’79. Iran notably escaped that fate since the Shah’s cancer diagnosis in 1972 forced him to take a more hands-off approach, allowing the country to grow into constitutional monarchy. Soviet propaganda cackled triumphantly about the fall of fascism as it had been “predicted” by Marxist-Leninist teachings, not realizing that they’d been given a preview of what would happen to them. In the meantime, parliamentary elections were held in Italy where the “Partito Nazionale Fascista,” which was allowed to run, got competition from the “Partito Socialista Italiano,” the “Democrazia Cristiania” which was a centrist Catholic catch-all party, and the “Partito Comunista Italiano”.

The PNF still held a large sway, particular over the generation of people that had experienced the heyday of fascism in the 1950s and early 60s. A major boost to the PNF was that Romano Mussolini, son of the Duce, was among the candidates running for a seat in parliament. He was not the party leader, though he played a big role in the propaganda campaign preceding the elections (during which the PNF, as the ruling party, had the advantage that they could still use state-owned media). He used his status as the son of Benito Mussolini, who was still held in high regard, as well as his popularity as a jazz musician to get votes (he had in fact only entered politics in the 1970s when he witnessed his father’s legacy of revolutionism wither away). The leader of the PNF was the 65 year-old and second generation fascist (meaning he had not participated on the March on Rome, but had partaken in WW II) Giorgio Almirante, former Governor-General of Libya. After a promising start in the fascist party’s ranks in the mid/late 1930s, WW II rolled around and he enlisted voluntarily, after which the now 32 year-old Almirante retired from the military in 1946 with the rank of Major. In 1951 he became mayor of his hometown, the spa town of Salsomaggiore Terme, and later chose for a career in the booming “Fourth Shore,” i.e. Libya.

Anyway, the Fascist Party got 22% of the popular vote, but the DC got 30%, the PSI got 25% and the PCI got 11% (the rest of the vote was taken by liberals and single issue parties; colonial parties did not participate in Italy, but competed for their own colonial councils in Tripoli, Asmara and Mogadishu respectively). After months of difficult negotiations, the Christian Democrats and the PSI formed a governing coalition in January 1980, and the governing fascist party overnight became an opposition party for the first time in almost sixty years, ending the one-party state.

Regime change didn’t mean that Italy’s foreign policy saw dramatic change. The San Remo Pact was held together by three things: 1) friendly ties between its members weren’t fundamentally affected by democratization since Italian dominance was never experienced as an occupation, quite unlike Soviet domination of the Warsaw Pact. 2) Anti-communism remained a core element of the foreign policies of these countries, and Italy provided a convenient nuclear umbrella (though Spain continued the nuclear programme initiated by the Francoist regime and finally tested a device in the Spanish Sahara in 1982). 3) These countries had a vested interest in maintaining their shielded, protectionist Mediterranean economic zone rather than joining the European Community and embracing its free trade philosophy.

One major conflict of the 1980s was the Soviet-Afghan War. From the early 1970s Fascist Italy had begun supporting the regime of Mohammed Daoud Khan, which had applied for membership of the San Remo Pact in 1975 and became an observer state. His pseudo-fascist regime saw major improvements to living standards, particularly during the Helmand Valley Project in southern Afghanistan, and tentative steps were taken to the emancipation of women. In April 1978, however, the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan supported by the army staged a coup for fear of being eliminated by Daoud Khan’s regime. Khan, his wife Princess Zamina Begum and some of their children fled the country, but many members of Khan’s family were killed in the revolution. With a thirst for vengeance Khan returned in 1979 and organized armed resistance in southern, Pashtun dominated, Afghanistan. Though he didn’t really want to, he reconciled with his cousin King Zahir Shah under Italian and Iranian pressure. Zahir Shah formed a government-in-exile in Rome and Khan was put in charge of its military component, comprised of elements of the Afghan Army loyal to Khan combined with moderate Islamist groups who engaged the communist regime in a guerrilla (Pakistan, following the logic that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” supported the same groups that Italy and Iran did).

Support from the San Remo Pact, and in particular from Italy and Iran, remained unaffected by the Revolutions of 1978-’79. Italy (together with the USA) helped supply the resistance with weapons and ammunition such the brand-new Beretta M9 pistol and Italian license produced versions of the Stinger missile. The result was that the Soviet Army was getting drained more and more and eventually withdrew in 1991, although the communist regime continued to fight another three years (besides that, there was the distraction posed by Solidarity in Poland, which had provoked a Soviet invasion in 1981 and precipitated a persistent guerrilla against the Soviet occupation). By 1994 Daoud Khan had died of natural causes, but King Zahir Shah was still alive and with overwhelming popular support regained his throne.

Campaigns like this aimed at the rollback of communism had major effects. In 1991 the last of the neo-Stalinist leaders, Lazar Kaganovich, died aged 97. By then the USSR was a poor, underdeveloped country with a bloated military-industrial complex and it was thoroughly disliked by its own people, who were desperate for change. When a conservative pawn Grigoriy Romanov was put forward as Kaganovich’s successor, massive peaceful protests erupted in Moscow and spread across the country. The events were eerily similar to what had happened in 1978 in Italy and then a mutiny erupted in garrisons in Poland, which still under de facto Soviet occupation and ruled by puppets. Romanov withdrew troops from the Warsaw Pact states to suppress dissent at home, but that was a mistake. Neither the soldiers nor the politburo had the stomach for it, so in 1992 he was deposed by the same politburo that had put him in charge. In the meantime, the Revolutions of 1992 ended the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union was reformed by its new leader Gorbachev into a much looser federation and semi-free elections were held in 1993 on local and regional levels. The New Union Treaty reformed the country into the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics (which coincidentally also abbreviated to USSR). The impoverished Eastern European countries became new democracies overnight, thereby vindicating among other things the fascist legacy of virulent anti-communism.

In the meantime, the democracy that emerged in Italy from 1980 struggled to renew Italian society, and in hindsight their difficulties were unsurprising. Fascism had had nearly six decades time to pervade all layers of society and during that time it had influenced the way of thinking of entire generations. There were still plenty of people around who had consciously experienced the golden years of fascism in the 1930s, which were renewed in the 1950s and early 1960s. Mussolini was still viewed positively and not even the new government dared to touch him, unlike his successors who were blamed for all the failings of Fascist Italy. One historian said that “Mussolini was fascism and fascism was Mussolini. It was what he wanted it to be, which is why it began to falter after his death. He merely left his successors guidelines rather than the ‘how to’ of fascism they would have liked.”

In the meantime, Italian democracy provided greater freedom than had ever been known under fascism, leaving room for experimentation. Later than in other Western countries women became serious participants in the economy and in politics, gaining both the passive and the active vote from 1978. Liberalizations went further. Behaviour deemed sexually deviant under fascism, such as homosexuality, prostitution and pornography was decriminalized overnight, though not outright legalized due to objections from the Christian Democrats. Milan received the doubtful honour of being named the “capital of Europorn” because the government was apprehensive when it came to enforcing already lax censorship laws. By 1984 they had already lost two lawsuits in which the judiciary called government bans on two pornographic films a violation of the freedom of expression, and leftwing media slandered them as “fascist” to boot. Veronica Lario, born Miriam Raffealla Bartolini, harassed by the fascist authorities in the 1970s for being a sex-positive feminist, became a major name in the porn industry in the 1980s, beginning her career in 1982 aged 26. She put active starring on the backburner and turned more to directing and producing in the early 1990s; the final productions in which she starred as a pornographic actress were produced in 1999.

Liberty and equality were valued greatly, but the democratic government struggled with the economic recession of the 1980s, unable to rely on oil money to mitigate it since oil prices were low. Economic liberalization increased in Italy as much as it did in the rest of the developed world and manufacturing industry relocated to Thailand, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan and China. The economies of Japan and West Germany were the most notable in the West that continued to enjoy strong economic growth. The Italian economy didn’t shrink in the 1980s, but average annual growth was less than 0.7%, which was even less than the average normal growth of the Western world, which was about 1.5-2%. Growth in the 1980s paled in comparison to “Il Glorioso Venti,” the roughly twenty year period starting in 1947 that saw exceptional economic growth (on average 7% a year, and growth up to 10% in the early and mid 1950s), which largely coincided with Mussolini’s tenure. Even the somewhat slower 1970s saw the Italian people maintain their standard of living, subsidized by the high oil prices of those years.

In the 1980s the government decided to sharply cut interest rates to stimulate growth, deciding that inflation was a secondary concern. It was the standard macroeconomic prescription, but it instead caused stagflation and unemployment instead. The first democratic government of Italy fell in 1982 because the Christian Democrats wanted to privatize many state-owned companies as part of austerity measures meant to curb inflation. Ever since the 1930s the IRI, the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale, had controlled ~ 17% of the economy through government-linked companies. Their socialist coalition partners disagreed because it would undoubtedly produce unemployment and instead wanted to use the IRI to rescue, restructure and finance banks and companies that threatened to go bankrupt to prevent a credit crunch (it was ironic that they looked to the IRI since it was a remnant of fascism). Halfway through its four year term the coalition imploded and new elections were issued, something that became a recurring theme. The PSI replaced the DC as the largest party and formed a coalition with the PCI and pushed through its programme, which curbed unemployment and momentarily spared purchasing power but it increased inflation. This precipitated a wage-price spiral, which was not improved by austerity measures from a DC led government after that party regained power in 1983.

In March 1983 Umberto II died at age 78, coincidentally the same age his father had reached. His successor, the then 46 year-old King Victor Emmanuel IV, was faced by an unprecedented economic crisis, but he lacked the moral authority and air of incorruptibility of his parents, who had been devout Catholics (and had markedly improved relations between the otherwise anticlerical house of Savoy and the Vatican). The Queen Mother, Marie José of Belgium, remained celibate and never married again and died of lung cancer in 2001 at age 94. Her son, however, continued a longstanding affair. In 1963, then Crown Prince Victor Emmanuel had become engaged to Infanta Margarita of Spain (who was two years his junior) and they married in 1964. They had a crown prince named Victor Emmanuel born in 1965, two other sons named Umberto and Giovanni born in 1967 and 1974 respectively, as well as two daughters named Yolanda and Elena born in 1970 and 1976. But it was an arranged marriage and Victor Emmanuel stuck with it for appearances only, quite like the loveless marriage of his parents, albeit for public relations and not out of religious piety.

He continued his relationship, dating back to 1960, with water ski champion Marina Ricolfi Doria, who became a regular visitor of the Quirinal Palace. By the early 1980s, without heavy fascist censorship clamping down on the press, his adultery became a public secret. That didn’t kill his mediocre popularity, but in 1988 the press discovered a carefully guarded secret: in 1965 he had fathered an illegitimate son named Gianni. The issue tore his family apart since in public he denied that Gianni was his son, upon which the indignant young man demanded recognition and a paternity test. Unlike in other countries, members of the royal family were not immune thanks to a series of Duces eroding the position of the royals. Gianni Ricolfi Doria refused financial compensation and after four years of litigation the court demanded a DNA test, but the King gave notice of appeal, which would have led to more trials. His cousin Uberto, who had racked up serious debts with bad investments, agreed to a DNA test for money and got rich from interviews. The result proved Gianni had been telling the truth all along and it completely discredited his father who abdicated in 1990 (which enabled him to divorce Margarita and finally marry his long-time mistress). His son was left with the burden of being King at age 25, becoming King Victor Emmanuel V. He improved the image of the House of Savoy and remains King of Italy until the present day, while his father has withdrawn from public life.

The ineffectuality of the democratic governments of the 1980s as well as the issues of the royal house opened the door for third generation fascists, which is to say fascists who had made their careers post-war. Among them was a certain Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi had been born in September 1936 in Milan, where he was raised by a middle class family and experienced the German occupation. After the war he went to a state run secondary school and in October 1954 the 18 year-old Berlusconi was drafted into the army for the compulsory two year stint, and he became a cello player and singer in a military band. Apart from basic training, life in the Regio Esercito proved fairly easy on the young Silvio and he decided to stay and see Italy’s overseas provinces while attending the military academy in Tripoli. In 1956, Berlusconi, now a sergeant major in command of his own platoon, saw action in the Suez Conflict and got shot in the left shoulder leading an assault on an entrenched Egyptian position, for which he received a medal. Afterwards he used his time mostly to get involved in the petroleum industry, gambling by spending his savings on Agip stocks, a gamble that paid off. By the time the 24 year-old Berlusconi retired from the army in 1960 with the rank of captain, commanding an infantry battalion, he had amassed a large amount of capital for someone his age.

After buying his way into the public service broadcaster RAI, owned by the Ministry of Communications, he became a propaganda-broadcasting TV/radio personality and moderately successful singer in the mid and late 1960s (recording three albums with a few top 40 hits on them). Using a combination of personal charm, competence and bribes he continued his meteoric rise and became Minister of Communications in 1972, a post he held until the end of the regime in 1980. In 1977 he also became Minister of Foreign Affairs since the aging Grandi was too tired to combine this function with the office of Prime Minister. Once considered promising, his political career was abruptly ended when the fascist regime was voted out of power in 1979 and finally handed over power in 1980 to the newly formed coalition. He used his personal wealth, his connections, his fame and his charm to climb up the ranks of the fascist party. He used his wealth to finance the PNF during its years in opposition and became its new face, replacing the gerontocracy of 60, 70 and 80 year-olds leading it until then.

In 1989, the now 53 year-old Berlusconi officially became the new party leader and his party continued the trend that had begun in the mid 1980s: increasing popularity. The latent popularity of fascism was demonstrated perfectly when broadcaster RAI organized a poll titled “the greatest Italian who has ever lived.” Benito Mussolini was voted the third greatest Italian who ever lived, behind Camillo Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi who held first and second place respectively. Capitalizing on this result, using propaganda Berlusconi kept reminding people of the golden years of fascism under Mussolini. In 1991 the PNF became the largest party in parliament and the young, inexperienced King appointed Berlusconi to the position of Prime Minister, ending 12 years in the opposition. He initiated wage and price controls to curb inflation; these policies weren’t very popular but they worked. Secondly, he used the IRI to help save and restructure ailing businesses and issued a stimulus package to the economy worth 120 billion dollars. Under his rule Italy entered a new period of economic growth in the 1990s, although it must be said that oil prices rose again in this period. Economists pointed this out, but it was ignored by the fascist propaganda machine and, with communism discredited, democratized Italian Fascism became the strongest alternative to neo-liberalism, which fascists considered “a socioeconomic and political disease.” Its dirigist economic policies gained traction in second and third world countries once again, while Western social-democratic parties adopted them too (though vehemently denied being inspired by fascism).

The 1990s saw 2-3% annual economic growth, which was high compared to the Western world (though nowhere near the heights of “Il Glorioso Venti”). Otherwise the decade remained uneventful. Then, on July 29th 2000, Mussolini’s birthday, Italy saw a terrorist attack on the subway in Rome with sarin nerve gas during the morning commute, killing hundreds of people. Berlusconi declared martial law and ruled by decree, reforming the OVRA to find the culprits by any means necessary. He also announced that Italy would retaliate to any use of weapons of mass destruction against it in kind. It legitimized fascist rule even further and it caused the people to accept stricter censorship laws and diminished privacy rights. Italy entered strong cooperation with the United States led by Clinton in his third term. America had also seen an attack for its continued support to Italy. The OVRA rapidly tracked down the suspects and took them to secret prisons on the islands of Ponza and Ventotene, which had been used as prisons for political opponents by Mussolini for decades. The OVRA interpreted “by any means necessary” as the right to use torture, which they did, and they learnt the radical Islamic Al-Qaeda group led by billionaire Osama Bin-Laden was behind it. He hated Italy for its continued rule over large numbers of Muslim Arabs and he despised American support for Israel.

An ultimatum was delivered to the government of Sudan that demanded: 1) the extradition of Osama Bin-Laden and known associates, 2) American and Italian inspections of military bases, training facilities and command facilities, 3) the closure of property owned by Al-Qaeda or Bin-Laden and 4) the arrest of all known members of this organization. The Sudanese government rejected these demands and instead proposed to bring Bin-Laden before a Sudanese court, a proposal rejected because in an Islamic country such a court would undoubtedly be biased in favour of the defendant.

US Navy ships appeared in the Red Sea and started pelting Sudan, the country which hosted Osama Bin-Laden, with cruise missiles while Italian guided missile battleships Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, Impero and Roma did the same, also using their 15 inch guns to pummel coastal defences and naval facilities. Italian tanks stationed in Eritrea spearheaded a land based offensive toward the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. Another spearhead advanced along the coast to ensure Bin-Laden didn’t escape by sea to his home country of Saudi Arabia. The Regia Aeronautica and the US Air Force made sure that an escape by air was impossible by taking air superiority. Berlusconi helped in that regard by making true on his words that a WMD attack on Italy would see a response in kind. Controversially, he deployed a 5 kiloton tactical nuclear warhead against Wadi Seidna Air Base, 22 kilometres away from Khartoum and Sudan’s most important air force base. The Italo-American military victory and the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir, who was shipped to The Hague and sentenced to life in prison, boosted Berlusconi’s popularity. Osama Bin-Laden, who was caught on the run, let himself get killed in a gun fight rather than surrender, and afterwards his organization in Sudan crumbled as the OVRA started to operate there.

Other Muslim countries were subsequently terrified of getting into Italy’s hair, more so since Italy had proven willing to use tactical nuclear weapons. Among them was Tunisia which crushed groups sympathizing with the cause of Islamic extremism. Tunisia, which continued to harbour an Italian community of 125.000, had always been wary of its neighbour. They tiptoed around Italian interests in their country and in terms of foreign policy had Finlandized themselves because the last thing they wanted was to provoke an Italian invasion. Saudi Arabia responded similarly, fearing the Shah’s Iran, which had the fifth strongest army in the world, would team up with Italy to expand its influence in the Persian Gulf and Middle East at the Saudis’ expense.

The new “Duce’s” popularity reached its zenith in the early 2000s. After four consecutive terms in office, between 1991 and 2007, however, Berlusconi was caught in a major corruption and infidelity scandal that severely damaged the PNF and saw fascism return to the opposition. Subsequently, the question is to what degree fascism, momentarily in power again as a junior coalition party, will define the 21st century. Fascist imagery, sometimes as simple as streets and piazzas named after Mussolini, remain ubiquitous and hundreds of thousands of tourists and supporters flock to his mausoleum in Predappio every year. Though the fascist dictatorship ended in 1980, its influence stretched much further and the twentieth century was indeed the fascist century. Mussolini had changed an entire nation and his legacy continues to affect Italy and the world. Whether the 21st will also be a fascist century remains to be seen.