The circulation of a «fascist literature» in the italian democracy

The case studies of Graziani’s «I defended the Fatherland» and Bottai’s «Twenty years and one day»

Abstract

In an article published in The Wiener Library Bulletin in 1951, the historian and former partisan Giorgio Vaccarino broached the subject of the “fascist literature” circulating in Italy. Three years later, the anti-fascist literary scholar Giuseppe Tramarollo revisited the question in La Voce Repubblicana, declaring the dissemination of texts with a clear fascist matrix to be a threat to Italian democracy. This essay seeks to shed light on this circulation, which has long been underestimated by historiography and was downplayed by the post-1945 fascist milieu, which sought to portray itself as being excluded from the political arena.

Without wishing to overstate the importance of fascist literature in the post-war period, this article aims to describe its characteristics while also highlighting the tolerance of the authorities and the complicity of the publishing market, which, by ignoring political or moral considerations, offered a platform to many fascist personalities.