What The Rise Of Fascism In 1930s Italy Can Teach Us Today

Speaker 1: 00:00 There's an old saying about those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. That prompted Cal state San Marcos history. Professor Kimber Quinney, to look back to the rise of fascism in Italy, because she saw some troubling parallels, KPBS arts, and culture reporter Beth Armando speaks with Quinny about the lessons we can learn from history. Speaker 2: 00:23 Kimberly, you teach history at Cal state San Marcos. And tell me a little bit about your field of study. Before we go into an article that you have written recently. Speaker 3: 00:33 Uh, I am assistant professor of history at Cal state San Marcos, and my field is the history of us foreign relations. So I'm very interested in the ways in which the United States relates to the rest of the world. I teach about the history of the presidency as well. So I count myself as a political historian, but my focus is us Italian relations. That's my doctoral research. And I'm particularly interested in the ways in which Italians resisted fascism, so the resistance movement, but also I listened very carefully to the voices of Italian refugees who were forced to flee fascism. Many of whom came to the United States and, and wrote a lot about the Italian fascist experience. So, so that's my background Speaker 2: 01:11 Found an article on the internet that you had written in 2016 and it was titled Donald Trump is no Mussolini, but liberal democracy could still be in danger. And that really intrigued me. So, first of all, what prompted you to write that article? Speaker 3: 01:25 Let me just point out first and foremost, and as an a story and I, I'm hesitant to use the word fascism to describe contemporary politics either globally or in the United States. And that's because in my mind, uh, fascism originated in Italy in a specific place in a specific time, 1922. And what became Mussolini's version of fascism was very different to Hitler's version of Nazi-ism. And, and in my mind to the dictatorial regimes that we're seeing in the 21st century. So I want to be really Frank about that part of it, the scholars that I look at and that I quote in the article, uh, max Schooley and Jatana Silva, meany warned Americans, to be aware of the potential threat of fascism and the conditions that give rise to it. And that sort of more systemic perspective I think is relevant. But I also, as I point out in the article, I also want to learn from history and from the Italian case in particular. And there are some trends in Italy, in the 1920s that gave rise to fascism that resonate. And that's, that's what I focus on in the article. Speaker 2: 02:27 And now we are four years later. And I'm just wondering how you feel right now, having written that article and kind of referencing history. And what do you see that maybe we need to be kind of looking at? Speaker 3: 02:41 Sadly, I think the conditions that the Italians, uh, at the time, the 1930s warned about are, are similar to those that we're experiencing, uh, in 2020. And in particular, one of the messages that the refugee scholars brought with regard the Italian experience was that, uh, fascism thrives in chaos, fascism thrives in conflict. Speaker 2: 03:07 So one of the refugees that you studied or whose work came up is Max's Scully. And he had a really interesting quote, I thought about what he described as the fascist technique. And I wonder if you can elaborate on that Speaker 3: 03:21 The school, he was a Jewish Italian refugee, and he describes this technique of intentionally and strategically creating constant social unrest, endless political insecurity. And he describes it as quote, the cost of politics. What he suggests is that the fascist regime was very, uh, focused in its efforts to break down a sense of national community. And the result was a panicked individuals feeling harassed, feeling burdened by the divisions between and among them. And ultimately according to a schooly Italians were reduced to being in conflict. And as a consequence, the cost of politics, as he describes, it reached an unendurable level and ultimately Italians were ready to accept what, what a scoldy called, the quote, fascist peace, Italian fascism was not caused by a coup or a revolution. And it wasn't quite reactionary in any regard whatsoever. In fact, it really came into being through bureaucracy through, through democratic legislation that existed in the state in Italy. And so it was implemented through democratic structures. And in fact, the fascist state leveraged laws and took advantage of democracy in Italy in order to push forward a very illiberal undemocratic regime. Can you Speaker 2: 04:47 Talk a little bit about the role that the press played in all this and in the lead up to fascism in Italy, Speaker 3: 04:53 Uh, Mussolini was a journalist. So what's interesting about Muslim's background is that he was very clever and well well-versed at using the Preston to his advantage, and that's not coincidentally, I think in the way in which he managed to do that, authoritarian regimes thrive on falsehoods and conspiracy theories. And we witnessed this in the Italian case. So not only was the pressed censored, and of course the fascist regime worked very hard to get certain messages out to the Italian people, but it was also skewed. It was also exaggerated. It was also manipulated to create again, as a Scully would, would call it the cost or the burden of, of politics that were multiplied by the messages that the Italian fascist regime put out to the Italian people. And so, again, it's, it's the ways in which, uh, fascism in Italy attempted to break down democracy, uh, hollow it out from the inside, out using democratic regimes and legislation, and not in an illegal way, but finding ways to eliminate democracy piece by piece. And the press was a tool for doing that. Speaker 2: 06:06 The things that, uh, Sculley also addressed was this notion of that democracy is something that needs to be protected and people need to understand kind of how it works in order to keep it going. It seems Speaker 3: 06:18 So obvious that really the necessity to protect and strengthen democracy against fascism. And that seems so straight forward, but it's another way of looking at the problem. And so what a school that came to the United States, he wrote a lot to warn Americans about the potential vulnerability of even American democracy to fascist tendencies. He toured in the 1930s with Dorothy Thompson around the nation, talking about this very phenomenon that the most formidable enemy to fascism, according to a scolding and others was in fact, a strong democracy. And so he spent a lot of time and effort in his writing public writing to remind Americans that we needed to learn more about democracy and what makes it work in order to fight potential threats such as fascism. So Speaker 2: 07:06 What would be a key point looking back at Italy in the 1930s, that you would want to point out to people and say like, Hey, this is something maybe you want to think about now, Speaker 3: 07:17 Fascism in Italy, uh, did not occur in an international vacuum. We need reminding of this, that there was a global environment. The conditions that gave rise to Italian fascism were not limited to the state. Fascism had a direct relationship to political economic and social conditions. And those were insecurities, economic crises, deep seated divisions politically after the first world war. And so for me, when I remind my students as an historian, I want to remind them that historical conditions can help us appreciate the environment that was created than these conditions that converged to put democracy at risk. And so if we can look not only at strengthening our democratic institutions and voting, but really take a hard look at some of the conditions that are existing globally, that are giving rise to an erosion of, uh, of these democratic principles Speaker 1: 08:12 That was Beth haka, Mondo speaking with Cal state San Marcos history, professor Kimber Quinny. You can hear them talk about Italian films that look to the rise of fascism on Beth cinema junkie podcast.