Mario Isnenghi: “La parabola del ‘Conte Rosso’, fascista in malafede”

Whilst the mainstream public has become an expert on fascism thanks to Scurati’s saga, Professor Mario Isnenghi offers a concise essay on the emblematic case of an intellectual who changed sides right up to the very end: the ‘Red Count’ Guido Piovene, an aristocrat from Vicenza, a famous journalist, writer, winner of the 1970 Strega Prize, a childhood friend of Eugenio Colorni, later a close associate of Indro Montanelli and co-founder of Il Giornale after having worn the black shirt and been a communist in ’56. A shameless Zelig, because unlike others, he admitted to having pretended to be a fascist with utter bad faith. Isnenghi, doyen of Italian historians and honorary president of Iveser (the Venetian Institute for the History of the Resistance and Contemporary Society), has dedicated the book “Non essere un porco. Guido Piovene e le code di paglia” to him, published by Ronzani.

Like countless other intellectuals, in the decades following the fall of fascism he was tormented by his attempts to come to terms with those events, but he did not succeed. In 1962, a year before that novel was published, he had staged a sort of auto-da-fé in the preface to a collection of articles entitled "La coda di paglia", in which he claimed to have embraced Fascism with the utmost bad faith. Not like the ‘stupid enthusiasts’ who had genuinely believed in it.

A refutation of the personal and collective self-justifications expressed by Zangrandi in “Il lungo viaggio attraverso il fascismo”: the former fascists claimed generational good faith, whilst those who had been left-wing fascists claimed they had attempted to steer the regime back towards its original radicalism and had only discovered they were communists or socialists after these attempts had failed. Piovene, however, had never deluded himself: he had only pretended to be a fascist in order to become a journalist. His theorisation of bad faith naturally sets him apart from all those who viewed their own past as a mistake.

Some more mediocre individuals joined because they ‘had a family to support’, but let’s not trivialise the matter. Fascism was not the result of a sudden invasion by barbarians. That ‘fascio’ brought together many different strands: some looked to the historical right, others to the Risorgimento, and others still to the ideal of a new national – rather than internationalist – revolution, which would unite all social classes to create an Italy that would restore Rome’s two-thousand-year-old primacy. It may raise a smile today, but the myth of the glorious past did not originate with fascism; it was already present in the nineteenth century. And whether we like it or not, it was generally accepted that the construction of this new civilisation was based on attitudes of mutual responsibility, controlled from above. The great moments of soul-searching would take place between 1943 and 1945.

He was in Rome and joined Bandiera Rossa, an organisation that brought together Stalinists, Trotskyists and former fascists. Dozens of its activists ended up at the Fosse Ardeatine. Piovene then asked to join the Italian Communist Party (PCI), but Mario Alicata refused, and he also failed in an attempt to join the Socialist Party (PSIUP). His second attempt to join the Communists came in 1956, when many were leaving the party following the events in Hungary.

Consistency was certainly not his guiding principle, nor would it have taken him very far. Those born between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lived through three distinct eras in Italy: the liberal, the fascist and the republican. Their lives were complex, and the collective history of the country was even more so. We can form a judgement more on the basis of their actual behaviour than on their innermost personal beliefs.

On reflection, I recall that in football stadiums they used to call the referee a ‘fascist’ if he awarded or denied a penalty; later they called him a ‘cuckold’, which is a politically neutral insult. Who knows what they say today – I do not attend matches. Throughout our long post-war period, and right up until the late 1990s, historiography had distanced itself from political debate and mutual partisanship. Then politics regained the upper hand and the language became heated, so that this past world—which the younger generations might have viewed in the same way one views Giolittian Italy—was partly taken away from historians in their relationship with the public. It is as if the dualism of the majority system were also applied to the way we think about history, but when politics infiltrates it, it forces us into simplistic choices: either this side or that.

It would be difficult to whisper in a discussion where others are shouting and where indignation abounds. We agree: ‘Facit indignatio versum’, but it cannot become a constant feature of our language.

We need a lexical revolution, but unfortunately it’s unlikely that change will come from the grassroots.