Re: When civil wars endfpbarbieriNovember 17 2024, 16:58:13 UTC
But at the end of the day, Fascism was not properly eradicated. There was barely any effort. A few thousand hardliners left for Argentina, and the rest of the veterans of the puppet Fascist regime of 1943-45, and millions of party members from the previous twenty years, just settled down under the new democratic government. After Togliatti's amnesty, most of those who had served Mussolini went on to work for the Republic. Some of them did well, others were scum. There even was a small legacy Fascist party, tolerated for the sake of civil peace, from which eventually Giorgia Meloni's party sprang up.
The worst case was in science, because it could so easily have been redressed. It was not a matter of people who had been in the job for decades, but of a recent wave of opportunist nobodies who could have been turfed out to everyone’s positive advantage. In 1938, the nazi-imitation Race Laws devastated Italian science, sending dozens of the finest Italian scientists into exile or ruin. These men were replaced by careerist nobodies one of whom showed in public that he was not even able to consult encyclopedia entries in his supposed specialist subject. The blow to Italian science was devastating, but it only really became irreparable when nobody, after 1945, though of getting these men out of their undeserved places. The result is that science was one area where the remarkable and long-lasting burst of profitable creativity experienced by post-war Italy did not happen. Italian Nobel prizewinning scientists after the war can be counted on the fingers of one hand, with fingers left over, and all of them worked in foreign, usually American, universities. Italy remained a scientific Third World, and the scientific ignorance among the Italian public is scary. The fact is that, in other areas of learning (history and archaeology, for instance) the people who had been Fascist were, at least, highly competent, not infrequently world-class; but the scientists appointees of 1938 were none of these things.
Other areas in which Fascist personnel remained in service include the police, with the results you can imagine. When Alessandro Pertini, then Speaker of the House of Deputies, former partisan chief and future President, visited Milan in 1969 in the aftermath of a horrible terrorist outrage, he refused to shake the hand of the local chief of police, whom he recognized as the man who had tortured him during the war.
Equally important, in my view, is the number of people with fascist roots who have had significant, and even major, careers in the arts. Fascism certainly did not exclude talent, and a good few of the best post-war artists in many fields from children’s comics to classic theatre - including Nobel Prizewinner Dario Fo - had Fascist backgrounds. The Fascist doctrine and period are all but universally condemned, but these men could not help but take a certain set of attitudes to their work which tended to make for recognizable Fascist views and forms of behaviour, from the machismo devil-may-care of Vasco Rossi’s Vita Spericolata to the authoritarian and communitarian undertones of some really beautiful children’s comics stories (the Reginella stories in Topolino,, for instance)
Re: When civil wars endmax_sinisterNovember 19 2024, 23:23:09 UTC
That's all a very interesting topic, but is this here the right place to talk about it? Inverarity is a very good fanfic writer, but not the man who has the power to repair what's broken in Italy.
And I'm saying that as someone who isn't a fan of "comrade" Stalin either. (In some alt-historical text I'm working on, I have one character comment: "People tawking about how great Stalin was 'defending his country' just don't get it. He wasn't! The first days after Barbarossa started, he sat around uselessly in his Dacha, crying like a lovesick finicchio 'How could Adolf hurt me like that!' And when he finally got around leading a war as he was supposed to: His fans don't get that they have to wonder what anyone else in his position would have done. Do they believe that any other leader of Russia but Stalin would have dropped over and surrendered the moment the first Wehrmacht soldier crossed the border?")
Re: When civil wars endext_6259248November 20 2024, 06:32:35 UTC
I am a historian. I have hundreds of sources, plus the stuff I know from my own experience; I am 62 and I lived most of my life in Italy. I met people who served under Mussolini, people who knew the bastard, and people who were still faithful to his memory and thought that was a honourable thing.
As for the purpose of these comments, it was just to show how what Inverarity imagined for his wizarding America really does reflect what happens, time and again, in actual history. I saw it happen among white South Africans in 1994, and among Russians three years earlier. But my country is what I know best, of course.
The worst case was in science, because it could so easily have been redressed. It was not a matter of people who had been in the job for decades, but of a recent wave of opportunist nobodies who could have been turfed out to everyone’s positive advantage. In 1938, the nazi-imitation Race Laws devastated Italian science, sending dozens of the finest Italian scientists into exile or ruin. These men were replaced by careerist nobodies one of whom showed in public that he was not even able to consult encyclopedia entries in his supposed specialist subject. The blow to Italian science was devastating, but it only really became irreparable when nobody, after 1945, though of getting these men out of their undeserved places. The result is that science was one area where the remarkable and long-lasting burst of profitable creativity experienced by post-war Italy did not happen. Italian Nobel prizewinning scientists after the war can be counted on the fingers of one hand, with fingers left over, and all of them worked in foreign, usually American, universities. Italy remained a scientific Third World, and the scientific ignorance among the Italian public is scary. The fact is that, in other areas of learning (history and archaeology, for instance) the people who had been Fascist were, at least, highly competent, not infrequently world-class; but the scientists appointees of 1938 were none of these things.
Other areas in which Fascist personnel remained in service include the police, with the results you can imagine. When Alessandro Pertini, then Speaker of the House of Deputies, former partisan chief and future President, visited Milan in 1969 in the aftermath of a horrible terrorist outrage, he refused to shake the hand of the local chief of police, whom he recognized as the man who had tortured him during the war.
Equally important, in my view, is the number of people with fascist roots who have had significant, and even major, careers in the arts. Fascism certainly did not exclude talent, and a good few of the best post-war artists in many fields from children’s comics to classic theatre - including Nobel Prizewinner Dario Fo - had Fascist backgrounds. The Fascist doctrine and period are all but universally condemned, but these men could not help but take a certain set of attitudes to their work which tended to make for recognizable Fascist views and forms of behaviour, from the machismo devil-may-care of Vasco Rossi’s Vita Spericolata to the authoritarian and communitarian undertones of some really beautiful children’s comics stories (the Reginella stories in Topolino,, for instance)
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And I'm saying that as someone who isn't a fan of "comrade" Stalin either. (In some alt-historical text I'm working on, I have one character comment: "People tawking about how great Stalin was 'defending his country' just don't get it. He wasn't! The first days after Barbarossa started, he sat around uselessly in his Dacha, crying like a lovesick finicchio 'How could Adolf hurt me like that!' And when he finally got around leading a war as he was supposed to: His fans don't get that they have to wonder what anyone else in his position would have done. Do they believe that any other leader of Russia but Stalin would have dropped over and surrendered the moment the first Wehrmacht soldier crossed the border?")
Back to your text: Which sources are you using?
Reply
As for the purpose of these comments, it was just to show how what Inverarity imagined for his wizarding America really does reflect what happens, time and again, in actual history. I saw it happen among white South Africans in 1994, and among Russians three years earlier. But my country is what I know best, of course.
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