Critica fascista

Critica fascista

Categories	Cultural magazine Political magazine
Frequency	Biweekly
Founder	Giuseppe Bottai
Year founded	1923
Final issue — Number	1943 21
Country	Italy
Based in	Rome
Language	Italian
ISSN	1124-3090
OCLC number	436549849

Critica fascista was a biweekly cultural magazine which was founded and edited by Giuseppe Bottai in Rome. The magazine existed during the Fascist period in the country from 1923 to 1943. Over time it became one of the most significant publications of the time in Italy.

History

Profile

The magazine was founded on 15 June 1923 by the Futurist intellectual Giuseppe Bottai, to deepen and enrich the intellectual debate within the Fascist movement and to develop continuity and depth after the phase of the conquest of power, stimulating the formation of a new ruling class. The magazine's name alludes to the journal Critica Sociale. It was published on a biweekly basis and edited by Bottai during its lifetime. It adopted revisionism which had appeared as a new ideology of the Italian Fascism.

The periodical, which had Gherardo Casini as co-director, came out without interruption for twenty years, at first flanked (1924) by the magazine Spettatore italiano, also directed by Bottai but which lasted only twelve issues, and by Primato (from 1940 to 1943).

Between 1926 and 1927 Critica fascista published various articles on the definition and scope of the state art in an attempt to help Italian authorities in developing the related concepts. The magazine adopted an anti-capitalist stance. Its notable contributors included Ardengo Soffici, Mino Maccari, Gino Severini, Massimo Bontempelli, Cipriano Efisio Oppo, Curzio Malaparte, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Umberto Fracchia and Emilio Cecchi. In the early 1930s Bottai and other Fascist figures frequently published articles in the magazine about the need for the modernization in all aspects of Italian life.

Fascist revisionism

The magazine, which lasted twenty years, had an upward phase from 1923 to 1932 and a downward one in the following decade. It is characterised by addressing many issues in harshly polemical terms, such as the relationship between the state and the party and denouncing the violence exercised by the provincial Ras.

The article "Fascism and Country" by Massimo Rocca appeared in the first issue of 15 September 1923 with a debate on revisionism that was taken up in the article "Examination of Conscience" of 1 October 1923 and in "Statements on Revisionism" of 17 July 1924. In these articles it is made clear that revisionism is "not a question of cleansing or internal policing of the Party", but rather of order and ideas.

From 1927 to 1932 Critica fascista tackled the problem of the relationship between State and Church in view of the Concordat and that of the importance of the Labour Charter, which represented, in Bottai's own words, an outgrowth of the "Rights of Man" of the French Revolution. Methodologically, from 1927 Critica Fascista inaugurated 'the practice of soliciting the opinion of cultural operators regarding the models to be adopted in the process of renewing national identity', which 'contributed to the emergence of different conceptions of modernity, which competed for the right to represent the most authentic expression of Fascist regeneration by competing for recognition and legitimisation by the authorities'.

Alignment and cultural evolution

In the issue of 1 June 1928, in the editorial "A Regime of Youth", the controversy over the importance and function to be attributed to young people began, which was most strongly reflected in Bottai's article, "Young and Younger" of 1 January 1930, which was to spread throughout all the newspapers of the time:

On two occasions, in 1922 and 1924, the old and the elderly spilled over into the Party. Now, with honourable exceptions, they lived there not to think, but either without thinking or even with the firm intention of not thinking. Instead, young people come to the Party not only to think, but with the will to think all over again.

A group of journalists and writers who had already collaborated with 'Critica Fascista' found employment at the Ministry of National Education: Ugo D'Andrea, Agostino Nasto, Mario Sertoli, Tommaso Napolitano.

In 1933 Bottai, due to the hostility of the industrialists, was demoted from Minister of Corporations to Governor of Rome and Critica fascista began to decline and lose its critical-political bite.

In this second period, articles on modern humanism, interventions in favour of the artistic heritage and a balanced assessment of the Hermeticists, who were accused by Giuseppe Villaroel of being anti-fascists, took place in the journal.

In the column "Stoccate", the young Berto Ricci defended modern Italian art, which had been attacked from many sides, and supported the ideas of Bottai, who in the meantime had instituted the Bergamo Prize where Filippo de Pisis, Mario Mafai and Renato Guttuso had been awarded prizes, decidedly against any form of state art.

In the issue of 15 August 1939, the announcement of a new magazine appeared in Critica fascista under the name Primato, of a more cultural nature.

Critica fascista, flanked by the magazine Primato, continued to publish regular issues until 25 July 1943, the fall of the regime.

External links

• Critica fascista at Central National Library of Rome