Interpretations of Garibaldi in Fascist culture: a contested legacy

Facing the controversial memory of the Risorgimento, Fascism was compelled to measure itself against Garibaldi, the nation’s most celebrated and popular hero. The result was an exaltation of the alleged continuity between Redshirts and Blackshirts, marked by an emphasis on patriotic voluntarism that removed Garibaldi’s adherence to the principles of liberty and democracy from his legacy. In the national discourse developed in the press and school textbooks, Garibaldi was harnessed to the ideological needs of the regime and held up as the embodiment of the Italian people’s heroic militarism. However, as this article shows, the eclectic nature of Fascist culture left room for more radical interpretations that did not fit the image of Garibaldi as a ‘disciplined revolutionary’. Particularly among left-wing and younger Fascists, Garibaldi became the precursor of the corporatist revolution, an icon of populism melding values of social transformation, moral intransigence and patriotic selfabnegation. This emphasis on the hero’s radical legacy was to reappear glaringly between 1943 and 1945, when the civil war between Fascists and partisans also became a battle over the symbols and memories of the Risorgimento.