Miss Moriarty,the Adventuress and the Crime Queen: The Rise of the Modern Female Criminal in Britain, 1918–1939

This article demonstrates the reconceptualisation of female criminality in interwar British popular culture. It argues that in fiction and the popular press, the period signalled the rise of the strategic female career criminal who challenged traditional gendered patterns of law-breaking, appropriated wider notions of fashionable modernity and transgressed social and geographic boundaries as poorer women embraced new opportunities for masquerade and used crime for upward social mobility. The article shows that the modern female criminal reflected broader shifts and changes in opportunities and roles for women, suggesting that she functions as a prism through which to explore wider debates and anxieties around femininity, 1918–1939.     

Importing fascism: reappraising the British fascisti, 1923–1926

This article re-evaluates the ideology and significance of Britain’s first self-proclaimed fascist party, the British Fascisti (BF) between 1923 and 1926. It challenges the dominant scholarly perception of BF ideology as a virulent form of conservatism or ‘Conservatism with Knobs On’ by demonstrating that they represent a hybrid movement consisting of both domestic conservative and continental fascist ideas. Thus, the chief purpose of this article is to demonstrate the dynamics of what scholars refer to as ‘fascistisation’ – the adoption and re-contextualisation of fascist features by non-fascist political movements and regimes. The BF’s ideology represents an, at times, contradictory attempt to replicate the Italian Fascist movement and repackage it for a British audience – they were a ‘fascistized’ right-wing pressure group seeking a new, authoritarian state. Abstract notions of the ‘success’ of Mussolini’s fascist experiment in stemming a Bolshevik revolution and his achievements in bringing order and a new sense of patriotism were re-adapted to the British context. These ideas were manacled to British conservative ideas of Christianity, anti-Socialism and imperialism typically associated with Edwardian Die Hards. Ultimately, the BF’s ideology will be proved to be far more complex than scholars have been prepared to acknowledge during a period in which fascism was ill-defined.     

Italian neopatriotism: Debating national identity in the 1990s

This article discusses some of the distinguishing features of the debate over national identity that took place in Italy in the 1990s. Reacting against the threats of the Lega Nord and in response to the new ideological and political landscape of the post-Cold War order, a number of Italian intellectuals rediscovered the value of patriotism. Searching for the origins of the Italians' allegedly weak sense of national identity, some questioned the Resistance and the party system that originated from it. While this historical revisionism has been the object of well-deserved criticism, there is another type of thematization of identity which has received less attention: it deploys the old notion of an 'Italian character', which appears frequently in the press and the media. The article shows that this discourse, too, is a way of articulating patriotism, and then reflects on the meaning that this reconfiguration of ideologies and identities acquires in the new context, both domestic and international.     

The church and Catholicism in contemporary Italy

Abstract

The constitutions of modern States may be seen somehow as a form of civil religion that is to be revered and that binds all people of a nation both ethically and legally. Reflecting on the constitutional architecture of a State means going deeper into the structure of societies, laws and mentalities. One of the foremost experts of the history of the Italian constitution and himself an interpreter of the fundamental Law of Italy, in this lecture Judge Sabino Cassese discusses the forms of constitutionalism adopted in Italy from the nineteenth-century Statuto Albertino down to contemporary debate on the ‘updating’ of the Italian constitution.     

Italian Jews and their ‘political’ reactions to the fascist regime’s anti-Semitic campaign*

ABSTRACT

The article intends to emphasize the political redefinition of Italian Jews in reaction to the fascist aggression and its different answers ‘organized’. Since 1934 there arose strong divisions within Italian Judaism: the real issue of contention, however, did not reside in the attitude towards fascism, but in the judgement on Zionism and postponed a long-standing dynamics. A group of Jews, called ‘bandieristi’ from a magazine called La Nostra Bandiera, on the basis of a ‘fascist’ programme and anti-Zionism, tried to replace the official establishment of the Jewish representatives, the Union Community of Italian Jewish, as a reference to the fascist authorities. The Union was accused by the ‘bandieristi’ of being complicit with international Jewry and Zionism. The confrontation with fascism exasperated the Italian Judaism internal contradictions, putting in long-term dynamic light that preceded fascism and survived the early post-war years.     

Technology and geographical imaginations: representing aviation in 1930s Italy

This paper examines the geographical imaginations associated with aviation in fascist Italy, focusing on the representation of flight on the one hand, and on the other hand the role of propaganda flights organized by the regime in the 1930s. The representation and use of aviation in interwar Italy is explored in light of the concept of technological legitimation, based on an understanding of technological practice as a political and ideological instrument. Aviation, as one of the new subjects of artistic representations of the modern era, was grasped by avant-garde and modern movements in the early twentieth century. In turn, representations of aviation were used by Mussolini's regime, which considered it a key to national development and modernization, materially as well as in the representational sphere. Propaganda flights in 1930s Italy were organized by the Ministry of Aeronautics and local aero clubs, and were an expression of the politicized use of aviation, both in terms of representations of technology and the aviator, and the exploitation of flight's public potential for the construction of fascist spectacle.     

Politics,culture, and class in the French revolution

Internationally renowned as a novelist, Ignazio Silone also played an important role in the political history of the twentieth century, including the rise and fall of international communism, the struggle against fascism in Europe, the consolidation of the post-World War II order, and the Cold War. Through a series of remarkable biographical twists, Silone became a model for generations of intellectuals—a rare synthesis of engagement and independence, politics and morality. The first Silone ‘case’ followed a series of stunning revelations concerning his services to the fascist police as a leading figure of international communism. This article examines a second Silone ‘case’, dealing with a later period when his international reputation as an intellectual was formed. While cultivating a public image of genuine and hard-won independence after his break with communism, Silone secretly collaborated with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. My examination of this less well-known episode contributes to a more complete understanding of this significant figure, while also addressing a series of broader questions. These include the ethical responsibilities of public intellectuals, the relationship between political principle and action, and the historical record of certain forms of nominally democratic opposition to totalitarianism.     

Byron to D'Annunzio: from liberalism to fascism in national poetry, 1815–1920

ABSTRACT. From Byron's death at Missolonghi in 1824 to D'Annunzio's capture of Fiume for Italy in 1919, the nationalism of universal liberalism and independence struggles changed, in literature as in politics, to cruel dictatorial fascism. Byron was followed by a series of idealistic fighter‐poets and poet‐martyrs for national freedom, but international tensions culminating in World War I exposed fully the intolerant, brutal side of nationalism. D'Annunzio, like Byron, both a major poet and charismatic war leader, was a key figure in transforming nineteenth‐century democratic nationalism into twentieth‐century dictatorial fascism. The poet's ‘lyrical dictatorship’ at Fiume (1919–20) inspired Mussolini's seizure of power in 1922, with far‐reaching political consequences. The poet became the dangerous example of a Nietzschean Übermensch, above common morality, predatory and morally irresponsible. This article shows how the meaning of nationalism was partly determined and transformed by poets, illustrating their role as ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’.     

Italian Fascism and the Portuguese Estado Novo: international claims and national resistance

ABSTRACT

Taking into consideration the transnational dimension of Fascism that had its epicentre in Italy ? as Mussolini’s purpose of “marching throughout the streets of Europe and the World” plainly illustrates ? this article explores the connections between the Italian Fascist regime and the Portuguese Estado Novo during the interwar period. From the moment Fascism became attractive for Portuguese intellectuals, state officers, and politicians, until it became a colonial threat to the Portuguese empire, the cultural diplomacy apparatuses of the two countries will be analysed from a balanced, bi-lateral perspective, encompassing actors, transferences, and resistances.