Inter-War Italy: The Fascist Appeal and Socially Detrimental Effects in Ignazio Silone's Fontamara

Inter-war Italy: The Fascist Appeal and Socially Detrimental Effects in Ignazio Silone's Fontamara

There are people in the world who base their knowledge of the past on what they read in novels. As media influences peoples' perception of history, we must analyze how authors depict landmark events to understand why some people have perverted interpretations of the past. While some texts distort history, Ignazio Silone's Fontamara is a fictional tale of a village in southern Italy, but nonetheless provides an accurate description of the country's struggle with fascism in the 1930s. The hardships of Silone's cafoni open the reader's eyes to the depth of the liberal political crisis. Silone appropriately recounts the crisis of the liberal movement, as well as the social and economic consequences of weak governance as it contributed to a political power vacuum and fascist uprising. Political and economic institutions in Silone's narrative are ambiguous, illustrating the indeterminacy of fascist philosophical application. As fascist policies and the country's realities were not in line, Silone accurately describes a community of people (stuck in an exploitive system) who reject a despotic fascist society through revolution; Silone's cafoni revolted against the government because established policies and laws that "straddle the fence" were detrimental to the masses.

Before we can understand why fascism flourished, we must first understand why liberalism failed in Italy. One of the greatest weaknesses of the liberal system in Italy was that it depended on the charisma of political leaders. In Fontamara, the population was so uneducated politicians always had a unanimous vote because the people "could not have voted for anyone else even if they wanted to." The notion "there has never been any way out" shows how Italian life remained unchanged under "trasformismo" politics, as political power changed hands but governments essentially looked the same over time. Although trasformismo politics served its immediate purpose, it was no match for the revolutionary movements that sprouted throughout Italy after World War I (WWI); because liberal authorities were powerless against mass mobilization and the emergence of new political parties, democracy in Italy was doomed.

Silone depicts the effect of the liberal paralysis in Fontamara in the scene where the Contractor swindled the town's water supply. Although the villagers appealed to the authorities, they were unable to regain full access to the stream. Additionally, the podestÐ" 's hands were tied when agricultural laborers protested the wage cuts that were applied to old, unpaid debts. Due to the combination of economic devastation and the political power vacuum created after WWI, the trasformismo system could no longer provide adequate compensation for political loyalty. Furthermore, since cafoni traditionally elected their political representatives based on their utility to the community, more people started viewing the fascist "third way" as a way to mend their fractured society where the liberal regime proved impotent.

While Silone effectively communicates reasons why people turned their backs on traditional institutions, he is less descriptive of fascism's ability to expand into a mass movement; Silone only abstractly addresses fascism's appeal to a broad constituency. In Fontamara, Silone describes a society where the majority of the tax burden fell on the backs of the poor while banks gave loans to small business owners and farmers so they could invest their money, increase their wealth, and continue to take advantage of the peasants. The fascist movement gained momentum as it promised to benefit all classes by not dividing up the land and employing agricultural policies to favor farmers (i.e., the Fascist Agrarian Program). Fascists proclaimed latifondi were healthy for society because productive land benefits the nation and provides maximum income for its workers. As fascism's goal was to ally itself with small and large financial institutions while maintaining the popular support of poor agrarian farmers, economic practices described in Fontamara illustrate the fascist "third way" as the balance between traditional and revolutionary politics. On the other hand, as policy contradicted reality, Silone's cafoni saw uneven laws as the fascists' way of eliminating small-tenant farmers. The issue surrounding the "seizure" of the town's communal property (i.e., Fontamara's stream) is an example of the fascist "voluntary redistribution of land," as it was assumed the Contractor's ownership would benefit everyone through a more productive nation (even though it injured borderline communities). The fascists took an anti-capitalist position without eradicating the social hierarchies created by a liberal economic system, meaning the existing system was simply restructured with a new face. As fascism promised a "return to tradition," Italian society reverted back to an ancient patriarchal organization as fascist politics required everyone be subordinate to the head of government. In Fontamara, agricultural laws were passed to benefit latifondi, meaning "the whole profit of a year's sweatÐ'...[went to strangers] who had nothing to do with the land." Cafoni were forced to work for reduced wages, which resulted in decreased consumption as poverty levels rose, deepening Italy's inter-war social and economic crisis.

The Fascist Agrarian Program attracted ex-servicemen because it gave jobs to war veterans based on merit. However, because "merit" was subjective, emasculated war veterans regained their sense of integrity through employment, but cafoni lost-out in the end. In Fontamara, since the town's Fucino was given to ex-servicemen and "those with sufficient capital" (rather than those who knew how to cultivate the land), fascist policies ruined society by increasing poverty and contributing to a sense of hopelessness among the cafoni. The fascist party established the Opera Nazionale Combattenti to distribute war funds, but restrictions on benefits meant distribution of military funds did not always produce the intended outcome. For example, Marietta received a special military pension because of her importance as the widow of a war hero. Economic aid may have helped Marietta make ends meet each month, but it also deterred her from returning to her traditional role in the family. Marietta did not remarry because she would lose her aid, but her numerous pregnancies imply she continued "married" behavior. If fascism claimed to return to traditional society, the loss of economic assistance upon remarriage