Dear Croce, have you read the Fascist manifesto to foreign intellectuals? ... today, I have met several people who feel that, following the publication of the Fascists' document, we have the right to speak and the duty to respond. What is your opinion? Would you be willing to sign such a document, or even write it yourself?
Croce replied a day later, saying that he would be more than willing to, but that the document ought to be short, "so as not to alienate the common folk."
The manifesto was published by the liberal newspaper Il Mondo and by the Catholic newspaper Il Popolo[2] on 1 May 1925, which was Workers' Day, symbolically responding to the publication of the Fascist manifesto on the Natale di Roma, the founding of Rome (celebrated on 21 April). The Fascist press claimed that the Crocian manifesto was "more authoritarian" than its Fascist counterpart.[3]
Il Mondo published three lists of prominent signatories of the manifesto, first on 1 May and then longer lists on 10 May and 22 May. Among the supporters were:
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, historian, and politician, who wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, historiography and aesthetics. In most regards, Croce was a liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire, free trade, and had considerable influence on other Italian intellectuals, including both Marxist Antonio Gramsci and Italian Fascist Giovanni Gentile.
Piero Gobetti was an Italian journalist, intellectual and radical liberal and anti-fascist. He was an exceptionally active campaigner and critic in the crisis years in Italy after the First World War and into the early years of Fascist rule.
The Italian Liberal Party was a liberal and conservative political party in Italy.
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.
Giovanni Amendola was an Italian journalist, professor and politician, noted as an opponent of Italian Fascism.
The Aventine Secession was the withdrawal of the parliament opposition, mainly comprising the Italian Socialist Party, Italian Liberal Party, Italian People's Party and Italian Communist Party, from the Italian Chamber of Deputies in 1924–25, following the murder of the deputy Giacomo Matteotti by fascists on June 10, 1924.
Giorgio Levi Della Vida was an Italian Jewish linguist whose expertise lay in Hebrew, Arabic, and other Semitic languages, as well as on the history and culture of the Near East.
Il Popolo d'Italia was an Italian newspaper published from 15 November 1914 until 24 July 1943. It was founded by Benito Mussolini as a pro-war newspaper during World War I, and it later became the main newspaper of the Fascist movement in Italy after the war. It published editions every day with the exception of Mondays.
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.
Corrado Alvaro was an Italian journalist and writer of novels, short stories, screenplays and plays. He often used the verismo style to describe the hopeless poverty in his native Calabria. His first success was Gente in Aspromonte, which examined the exploitation of rural peasants by greedy landowners in Calabria, and is considered by many critics to be his masterpiece.
Guido De Ruggiero was an historian of philosophy, university professor, and Italian politician.
Events from the year 1892 in Italy.
Sansepolcrismo is a term used to refer to the movement led by Benito Mussolini that preceded Fascism. The Sansepolcrismo takes its name from the rally organized by Mussolini at Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan on March 23, 1919, where he proclaimed the principles of Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, and then published them in Il Popolo d'Italia, on June 6, 1919, the newspaper he co-founded in November 1914 after leaving Avanti!
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".
Fascist mysticism was a current of political and religious thought in Fascist Italy, based on Fideism, a belief that faith existed without reason, and that Fascism should be based on a mythology and spiritual mysticism. A School of Fascist Mysticism was founded in Milan on April 10, 1930 and active until 1943, and its main objective was the training of future Fascist leaders, indoctrinated in the study of various Fascist intellectuals who tried to abandon the purely political to create a spiritual understanding of Fascism. Fascist mysticism in Italy developed through the work of Niccolò Giani with the decisive support of Arnaldo Mussolini.
Il Mondo was an Italian afternoon political newspaper with headquarters in Rome. Founded in 1922, it was one of the last independent newspapers to be suppressed by the Fascist Regime in October 1926.
Panfilo Gentile was an Italian journalist, writer and politician.
Niccolò Giani was an Italian Fascist philosopher and journalist who was the founder of Fascist mysticism.
Giulio Alessio was professor of Finance and, after 1920, Political economy at the University of Padua for more than fifty years. He was not yet thirty when he produced his two volume study of the evolution of the Italian taxation system between 1861 and approximately 1900. It was one of several works that he wrote which became mainstream texts during and beyond the first half of the twentieth century. He also entered national politics, serving between 1897 and 1924 as a deputy. As political parties developed in Italy, he became a member of the Radical Party. He accepted several ministerial appointments in centre-left governments between 1920 and the coming to power in 1922 of Benito Mussolini, whose tactics and policies he excoriated.
The National Union was an anti-fascist political party founded by Giovanni Amendola in the aftermath of the Matteotti murder and the Aventinian secession.
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