Abstract

SPINDOLA ZAGO, Octavio. We’ve Forged Italy, Now We Have to Forge Italians: The Transnational Educational Mechanisms of Italy’s Fascist Regime, 1922-1945. Hist. mex. [online]. 2020, vol.69, n.3, pp.1189-1246.  Epub Sep 09, 2020. ISSN 2448-6531.  https://doi.org/10.24201/hm.v69i3.4021.

In the autumn of 1922, the fascist movement’s squadristi, led by Benito Mussolini and the quadrumvirs, marched on Rome in order to demand an end to the parliamentary paralysis that had cost Italy so much during the Great War. Upon taking power, the new regime launched its most ambitious plan: an anthropological revolution in order to forge the new man. To this end, it led the economy down the path of corporatism, established a one-party state and redesigned educational policy. This last undertaking was initially the responsibility of Giovanni Gentile, the architect of the 1923 education reform. During what Felice has referred to as the “Time of Consensus,” he was replaced by Giuseppe Bottai, an ideologue of corporatism, who worked to consolidate the educational system, promulgating the Carta della Scuola in 1939.

Current debates on Italian fascism as a global phenomenon and as an exporter of cultural subjectivities and political experiences (which were received in a fashion that involved negotiations of their meaning and implementation) seek to situate the capacity of the fascist state to put its geopolitical project into action. In the historiography, there is currently a consensus that Italian fascists had neither the economic means nor the capacity for diplomatic penetration of their Nazi counterparts. Nevertheless, this article involves a case study demonstrating the fascist commitment to forging Italians, no matter where they lived. A variety of mechanisms were employed for this purpose, from ambassadors to informal diplomats or independent actors who were seduced by Rome, as was the case with the Salesian Congregation in the Chipilo colony.

Keywords : Transnational Fascism; Salesian Congregation; Education System; Actualist Philosophy; Chipilo.