Abstract
Considering a number of recent works on the ideology and culture of
Fascism, the article explores how the concept of utopia, as formulated
by different thinkers, can prove useful in attempting to unlock some
of the mechanisms through which Fascism sought to manipulate the
imagination and the aspirations of Italians. It focuses on the written
accounts of writers and journalists who reported on the supposed
achievements of the regime both in Italy and in the newly established
colonies. It examines the cult of Rome, which was increasingly to
become the symbolic language of Fascism, and explores how, in the
writings of one journalist after another, the regime was represented as
having recovered the powerful utopia of the ancient past. The article
then looks at the kind of rhetoric that surrounded some of the most
important building projects that took place in Italy in the 1930s. It
suggests that the creation of a blueprint for an ideal society was central
to this rhetoric and that the notion of the arrival in an earthly paradise
was to form the master narrative for most representations of Mus-
solini’s newly acquired African territories. The article then looks at
some of the competing versions of utopia that were presented, albeit
subliminally, in the official media of the time. It examines some of the
dystopian images of the United States that were manufactured on the
eve of the Second World War. It concludes by pointing to the violence
and intolerance imbedded within the utopian project of Italian Fascism.
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