La guerra civile del fascismo

The Fascist Civil War
The aim of this paper is to show how the category of civil war could be used to study Italian fascism. The essay begins by concentrating on the fascist movement organisers’ squads foundation since early 1919 and the use of World War symbology. The party’s enemies were, among others, socialists and the members of the Catholic party. Nevertheless, the concept of an «internal enemy», allowed the fascists to fight their political opponents with the insinuation that they represented a danger to the whole Nation. Thus, the period of «squadrismo» (1920-22) could be considered a civil war not only for the high levels of political violence, but also where this historical period’s long-lasting legacy is concerned. The last paragraph purposely focuses on Civil War memory, which represents a characterizing issue of the regime’s self-consciousness until the late 1930s. The aftermath of these facts turned out to be the instrument of an ideological chasm between the fascist nation’s plan on one side and its estranged (antifascists as well as non fascists) on the other.