Elitism, Fascism and the crisis of democracy in interwar Italian political debate

Abstract

The objective of this research is to investigate the Italian political debate about the so-called "crisis of parliamentary democracy" in the inter-war period, highlighting the translation that the fascists made of liberal-elitist thought. In this process of appropriation and re-elaboration of the lexicon and elitist theory by the fascists, there is a translation of a language of science that had the idea of prudence as a nodal point, into a language of politics that was organized around the idea of will. The investigation will reconstruct the fascist debates on the subject in four important periodicals: Gerarchia, directed by Benito Mussolini himself; Educazione Fascista/Civiltà Fascista, edited by Giovanni Gentile; Critica Fascista, by Giuseppe Bottai; and Politica, founded by Francesco Coppola and Alfredo Rocco. (AU)