Between 1926 and 1943, the Fascist regime arrested thousands of Italians and deported them to island internment colonies and small villages in southern Italy. Ordinary Violence in Mussolini's Italy analyses this system of political confinement and, more broadly, its effects on Italian society, revealing the centrality of political violence to Fascist rule. In doing so, the book shatters the widely accepted view that the Mussolini regime ruled without a system of mass repression. The Fascist state ruled Italy violently, projecting its coercive power deeply and diffusely into society through confinement, imprisonment, low-level physical assaults, economic deprivations, intimidation, discrimination and other quotidian forms of coercion. Moreover, by promoting denunciatory practices, the regime cemented the loyalties of 'upstanding' citizens while suppressing opponents, dissenters and social outsiders. Fascist repression was thus more intense and ideological than previously thought and even shared some important similarities with Nazi and Soviet terror.
Author(s): Michael R. Ebner
Edition: 1
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 288
Cover
Ordinary Violence in Mussolini’s Italy
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Tables and Figures
Acknowledgments
Common Abbreviations in Text and Notes
Introduction: The Fascist Archipelago
The Era of Extraordinary Violence
Mussolini's Italy
Violence and Nation Building
1: Squad Violence
Squadrismo (1920–1922)
Turning Away from Liberal Italy (1922–1925)
Toward the Fascist State (1925–1926)
Party-State Violence
2: Institutions of Fascist Violence
Institutions of Political Punishment
Ordinary Criminal Justice
Party and Militia
3: Breaking the Anti-Fascists, 1926–1934
The Communist Party
Breaking Subversive Communities
Impossible Resistance
Broken Families
4: The Archipelago
To the Islands
Lipari
Ponza
Ventotene and Le Tremiti
Routine Violence
Expansion and Exile
5: The Politics of Pardons
Pardons as Propaganda
Political Pardons between Center and Periphery
Grounding Fascism in the Mezzogiorno
6: Everyday Political Crime
The Nationalization of Political Repression
Defending the Cult of the Duce
War, Empire, and the Axis
Autarky
Border Fascism
Disciplining the Mezzogiorno
Combating the Enemy of the New Fascist Man
Subversive Sects
Official Fascist Racism
Parallel War and the Failure of Fascism
7: Ordinary Fascist Violence
The Nationalization of Fascist Violence
The Private Sphere
The Patronizing State
8: The Politics of Everyday Life
Ordinary Italians, Dangerous Places
Subversive Women
The Power of the Powerless?
The Politics of Everyday Life
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
