Era Fascista

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A Fascist-period 20 Italian lire coin (1928), dated MCMXXVIII A.VI Italia, 20 lire di vittorio emanuele III, 1928.JPG
A Fascist-period 20 Italian lire coin (1928), dated MCMXXVIII A.VI
A sun dial in Cavalese, Trento, dated MCMXXXIX XVII E F Sonnenuhr auf der Ruckwand des Rathauses in Cavalese.jpg
A sun dial in Cavalese, Trento, dated MCMXXXIX XVII E F

The Era Fascista (English: 'Fascist Era') was a calendar era (year numbering) used in the Fascist-ruled Kingdom of Italy. The March on Rome, or more precisely the accession of Mussolini as prime minister on 29 October 1922, is day 1 of Anno I of the Era Fascista. The calendar was introduced in 1926 and became official in Anno V (1927). [1] Each year of the Era Fascista was an Anno Fascista, abbreviated A.F. [2] [3]

The Era Fascista calendar was inspired by the French Republican calendar. [4]

Era Fascista dates often consisted of the Gregorian date followed by the corresponding Era Fascista year in Roman numerals, as part of Fascist propaganda's appropriation of ancient Roman iconography. The Era Fascista year was sometimes written as "Anno XIX", "A. XIX", or marked "E.F." [5] The calendar was intended to replace the "bourgeois" Gregorian calendar in Italian public life to the extent that, in 1939, newspapers were forbidden to write about New Year's Day. [6]

A plaque with fasces on the Theatre of Marcellus, dated A. VII E.F. Teatro di Marcello, anno VII EF P1140343.jpg
A plaque with fasces on the Theatre of Marcellus, dated A. VII E.F.

The tenth anniversary of the March on Rome, Anno X, was called the Decennale (evoking the ancient Roman Decennalia ). The propaganda centerpiece of Anno X was the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution. [7]

The calendar was abandoned in most of Italy with the fall of the Fascist regime in 1943 (Anno XXI), but continued to be used in the rump Republic of Salò until the death of Mussolini in April 1945 (Anno XXIII). [8]

Many monuments in Italy still bear Era Fascista dates.

Related Research Articles

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A calendar era is the period of time elapsed since one epoch of a calendar and, if it exists, before the next one. For example, it is the year 2024 as per the Gregorian calendar, which numbers its years in the Western Christian era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alessandro Pavolini</span> Italian politician and writer (1903–1945)

Alessandro Pavolini was an Italian politician, journalist, and essayist. He was notable for his involvement in the Italian fascist government, during World War II, and also for his cruelty against the opponents of fascism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giuseppe Bottai</span> Italian journalist, university professor, and Fascist politician (1895–1959)

Giuseppe Bottai was an Italian journalist and member of the National Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Renzo De Felice</span> Italian historian (1929–1996)

Renzo De Felice was an Italian historian, who specialized in the Fascist era, writing, among other works, a 6000-page biography of Mussolini. He argued that Mussolini was a revolutionary modernizer in domestic issues but a pragmatist in foreign policy who continued the Realpolitik policies of Italy from 1861 to 1922. Historian of Italy Philip Morgan has called De Felice's biography of Mussolini "a very controversial, influential and at the same time problematic re-reading of Mussolini and Fascism" and rejected the contention that his work rose above politics to "scientific objectivity", as claimed by the author and his defenders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fascism and ideology</span>

The history of fascist ideology is long and it draws on many sources. Fascists took inspiration from sources as ancient as the Spartans for their focus on racial purity and their emphasis on rule by an élite minority. Researchers have also seen links between fascism and the ideals of Plato, though there are key differences between the two. Italian Fascism, in particular, styled itself as the ideological successor to Rome, particularly the Roman Empire. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's view on the absolute authority of the state also strongly influenced fascist thinking. The 1789 French Revolution was a major influence insofar as the Nazis saw themselves as fighting back against many of the ideas which it brought to prominence, especially liberalism, liberal democracy and racial equality, whereas on the other hand, fascism drew heavily on the revolutionary ideal of nationalism. The prejudice of a "high and noble" Aryan culture as opposed to a "parasitic" Semitic culture was core to Nazi racial views, while other early forms of fascism concerned themselves with non-racialized conceptions of their respective nations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Italian fascism</span> Fascist ideology as developed in Italy

Italian fascism, also classical fascism and Fascism, is the original fascist ideology, which Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini developed in Italy. The ideology of Italian Fascism is associated with a series of political parties led by Mussolini: the National Fascist Party (PNF), which governed the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, and the Republican Fascist Party (PFR), which governed the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. Italian fascism also is associated with the post–war Italian Social Movement (MSI) and later Italian neo-fascist political organisations.

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Fascist architecture encompasses various stylistic trends in architecture developed by architects of fascist states, primarily in the early 20th century. Fascist architectural styles gained popularity in the late 1920s with the rise of modernism along with the ultranationalism associated with fascist governments in western Europe. Fascist styles often resemble that of ancient Rome, but can extend to modern aesthetics as well. Fascist-era buildings are frequently constructed with particular concern given to symmetry; simplicity; and monumental size, especially for public buildings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals</span> Italian political manifesto advocating fascism

The "Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals", by the actualist philosopher Giovanni Gentile in 1925, formally established the political and ideologic foundations of Italian Fascism. It justifies the political violence of the Blackshirt paramilitaries of the National Fascist Party, in the revolutionary realisation of Italian Fascism as the authoritarian and totalitarian rėgime of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy as Il Duce, from 1922 to 1943.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Fascist Party</span> Italian fascist political party founded by Benito Mussolini

The National Fascist Party was a political party in Italy, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of Italian fascism and as a reorganisation of the previous Italian Fasces of Combat. The party ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 when Fascists took power with the March on Rome until the fall of the Fascist regime in 1943, when Mussolini was deposed by the Grand Council of Fascism. The National Fascist Party was succeeded by the Republican Fascist Party in the territories under the control of the Italian Social Republic, and it was ultimately dissolved at the end of World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fascism in Europe</span>

Fascist movements in Europe were the set of various fascist ideologies which were practiced by governments and political organizations in Europe during the 20th century. Fascism was born in Italy following World War I, and other fascist movements, influenced by Italian Fascism, subsequently emerged across Europe. Among the political doctrines which are identified as ideological origins of fascism in Europe are the combining of a traditional national unity and revolutionary anti-democratic rhetoric which was espoused by the integral nationalist Charles Maurras and the revolutionary syndicalist Georges Sorel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution</span> 1932–1934 propaganda event in Fascist Italy

The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution was an art exhibition held in Rome at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni from 1932 to 1934. It was opened by Benito Mussolini on 28 October 1932 and was the longest-lasting exhibition ever mounted by the Fascist regime. Nearly four million people attended the exhibition in its two years. Intended to commemorate the revolutionaries who had taken part in the rise to power of Italian fascism, the Exhibition was supposed to be, in Mussolini's own words, "an offering of faith which the old comrades hand down to the new ones so that, enlightened by our martyrs and heroes, they may continue the heavy task."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Italian racial laws</span> Race laws promulgated in Fascist Italy (1938–1944)

The Italian racial laws, otherwise referred to as the Racial Laws, were a series of laws promulgated by the government of Benito Mussolini in Fascist Italy from 1938 to 1944 in order to enforce racial discrimination and segregation in the Kingdom of Italy. The main victims of the Racial Laws were Italian Jews and the African inhabitants of the Italian Empire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stadio dei Marmi</span> Building in Rome

The Stadio dei Marmi is one of four stadiums in the colossal sports complex the Foro Italico, initially named Foro Mussolini. The other stadiums are the Stadio Olimpico, the Stadio del tennis Romano, and the Stadio Olimpico del Nuoto. It was designed in the 1920s as a complement to the annexed Fascist Academy of Physical Education, to be used by its students for training. The Stadio dei Marmi first opened in 1932, on the 10th anniversary of the March on Rome, near the Roman neighborhood Monte Mario, by the architect Enrico Del Debbio under the Fascist ruler Benito Mussolini. The Stadio dei Marmi is encircled by sixty, 4-meter tall classical statues of athletes made from Carrara marble. The stadium was built to celebrate Fascist accomplishments and the Gioventú del Littorio, the youth movement of the National Fascist Party of Italy. In its twenty-year reign, the Fascist regime used sports to introduce and instill new fascist traditions, ideals, customs, and values, with the goal of forming citizen warriors. The Stadio dei Marmi was used to host some of the field hockey preliminaries for the 1960 Summer Olympics and also hosted the opening ceremony for the 2009 World Aquatics Championships.

Propaganda in Fascist Italy was used by the National Fascist Party in the years leading up to and during Benito Mussolini's leadership of the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 to 1943, and was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power and the implementation of Fascist policies.

This is a list of words, terms, concepts, and slogans in the Italian language and Latin language which were specifically used in Fascist Italian monarchy and Italian Social Republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ines Donati</span>

Ines Donati was a political activist and a supporter of the first wave of Italy's Fascist movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">School of Fascist Mysticism</span> Political movement

The Sandro Italico Mussolini School of Fascist Mysticism was established in Milan, Italy in 1930 by Niccolò Giani. Its primary goal was to train the future leaders of Italy's National Fascist Party. The school curriculum promoted Fascist mysticism based on the philosophy of Fideism, the belief that faith and reason were incompatible; Fascist mythology was to be accepted as a "metareality". In 1932, Mussolini described Fascism as "a religious concept of life", saying that Fascists formed a "spiritual community".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Balbo Monument</span> Stone column in Chicago, United States of America

The Balbo Monument consists of a column that is approximately 2,000 years old dating from between 117 and 38 BC and a contemporary stone base. It was taken from an ancient port town outside of Rome by Benito Mussolini and given to the city of Chicago in 1933 to honor the trans-Atlantic flight led by Italo Balbo to the Century of Progress Worlds Fair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fascist Italy</span> Period of Italian history (1922–1943)

Fascist Italy is a term which is used to describe the Kingdom of Italy when it was governed by the National Fascist Party from 1922 to 1943 with Benito Mussolini as prime minister and dictator. The Italian Fascists imposed totalitarian rule and crushed political opposition, while simultaneously promoting economic modernization, traditional social values and a rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church.

References

  1. Edgardo Baldi, Aldo Cerchiari, Enciclopedia moderna italiana , p. 1306
  2. Adriano Cappelli, Cronologia, cronografia e calendario perpetuo, Hoepli, 1998, p. 131
  3. Matthew Kneale, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings, Simon and Schuster, 2018, p. 296
  4. Philip V. Cannistraro, "Mussolini's cultural revolution: fascist or nationalist?" in Roger Griffin, Matthew Feldman, eds., Fascism: Fascism and Culture in Fascism: Critical Concept in Political Science3:194, ISBN   041529018X
  5. Catherine E. Paul, Fascist Directive: Ezra Pound and Italian Cultural Nationalism, 2016, ISBN   9781942954057, p. 114
  6. Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy, 2000, ISBN   0520226771, p. 105
  7. B. Painter, Mussolini's Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City, ISBN   1403976910, 2016, p. 26
  8. Paolo Monelli, Mussolini: An Intimate Life, 1953, p. 288