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Plebiscites in Fascist Italy: National Unity

and the Importance of the Appearance of

Unity

Paul Corner

At first sight at least, the use of the plebiscite—or the
plebiscitary election
, as it was called—in fascist Italy in March 1929 and then again in March 1934

is one of the more paradoxical aspects of the regime. Particularly the 1929

plebiscite, which came only four years after the effective establishment of

the regime, is remarkable, in the sense that a movement that had devoted

so much of its time during the 1920s to killing, beating and imprisoning its

opponents should have had the courage to give the Italians the opportunity

to express their opinion on how it operated. However, the 1929 plebiscite

was hardly an act of courage (as we shall see, the risks were very few).

Rather, it has to be seen as an expression of the fascist attitude to politics

in general and also as an example of the relation between this attitude and

the formation of a popular consensus for fascism. Viewed in this way, the

use of the plebiscite appears less a shallow tactical operation of the type

seen in the phony elections of certain other dictatorial regimes and more

an expression of the fascist conception of the relationship that should

exist between the state and the individual.

The Fascist Approach to Elections

At the time of its foundation in early 1919, and for many months after, the

Italian fascist movement liked to define itself as the “anti-party” and often

declared itself not only “anti-parliamentary” but also, and even, “anti-poli-

tical”. These definitions (made largely to
avoid
any conventional definition) reflected the fascist movement’s refusal to recognize itself as a component

part of the political structure of liberal Italy. As fascist violence was soon to show, this refusal implied a disposition to reject the political methods of

liberal Italy and to develop a new logic of justification for its actions and

activities.

174

P A U L C O R N E R

The rejection of traditional “politics” (in later years, fascist leaders

would admonish argumentative subordinates with the disgusted rejoinder,

“Please, no politics here!”) had its origins in certain minority intellectual

movements of the first decade of the century but became more general-

ized as a result of the immediate experience of the First World War in

Italy. During the conflict, and particularly following the rout of the Italian

armies at Caporetto in November 1917, political polarization within Italy

had reached unprecedented levels, with hysterical nationalists accusing the

neutralist socialist movement of having responsibility for the defeat. On

the right, the lesson drawn from this particular crisis was that political

division within Italy threatened the very integrity of the recently-formed

Italian state and that such division should be eliminated if Italy were to

realize its ambition of becoming a great European power. These views

were confirmed by the events of 1919 and 1920, when polarization around

the question of the utility of the sacrifices of the war reached new levels

and when those socialists who rejected the “national” values of the war

and who seemed to scorn any kind of patriotic sentiment were about to

gain political power. For the fascists, therefore, “politics” became synony-

mous with division and national weakness; national unity required the

elimination of division and, thus, logically, the elimination of the limited

democratic politics of liberal Italy.

Fascist attitudes towards
elections
were dictated by this reasoning. For the fascists, elections were the ultimate expression of factionalism and political

fragmentation; discussion of political
alternatives
and the opportunity that elections provided for the expression of individual
choice
simply opened the door to division and invited the kind of national disintegration that had

seemed so close in 1917. The violence of the fascist action squads was no

more than a reflection of the fascist intolerance of discussion or argument;

by defeating the political adversary through violent means, they also closed

the road to any discussion of political alternatives. Fascist logic dictated

that national unity—the pre-condition of national greatness—was to be

imposed rather than agreed.

This emphasis upon enforced unity (which the liberal Giovanni Amen-

dola would acutely term “totalitarian” in 1923) necessarily implied a revised

interpretation of the relationship between the state and the individual.

Repression of all forms of dissent signified that the traditionally public

sphere of politics—that occupied by the debate and discussion emanating

from civil society—had been destroyed. With its insistence on the defense

P L E B I S C I T E S I N F A S C I S T I T A L Y

175

and elevation of the “virtues” of the First World War infantryman, the

fascist movement argued instead for discipline and simple obedience

(spontaneous or otherwise) as the true characteristics of political behavior.

Individual initiative and personal sentiment had no place in this vision,

except in so far as they served the purpose of the nation. It was no accident

that the fascist slogan painted on a thousand walls was “Believe, obey, fight”,

and not “Think, debate, discuss”. The organic state invoked by Mussolini’s

phrase “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state” left little

room for the promotion of political alternatives or individual initiatives; the individual was to become a part of the state and nothing more.

Fascist practice regarding elections reflected this anti-pluralist thinking,

which, obviously, was not unique to fascism. Even in the 1924 elections,

which were still, formally, free elections, the risks of a genuine expression