Leisure Time and Mass Culture Under Fascism

The chapter deals with the organization of consensus through leisure, sports, cultural information, and questions the existence of a purely fascist culture and arts. Physical and recreational activities were one of the Italian totalitarian regime’s most effective tools for creating a fascist popular culture, attracting the masses, and creating a sense of community and national identity structured around symbols, myths, rituals, and places. The regime leveraged the will, discipline, and effort that sports require as an effective part of building a totalitarian society. Principally, it sought to take control of the physical activities of young people, wresting them from its opponents by creating sports associations that operated in the industrial world: the Opera nazionale dopolavoro (OND) and the National Olympic Committee. The fascist regime made Italy one of the first modern nations to use sport as a tool of political propaganda and whose athletes were the most popular ambassadors abroad. It was soccer that gradually took over the hearts of Italians and secured them victories abroad. Soccer is a team game, and it corresponded well to the Fascist spirit. In the country, the sporting year revolved around three major events: the soccer championship, the Giro, and the Mille Miglia. If the soccer scoreboard tested Italians in their parochial faith, the Giro bicycle and automobile race aroused their national pride. Italy enjoyed a period of sporting success in many disciplines and competitions between 1928 and 1935. Beginning in 1936, except perhaps for soccer, there was an apparent decline in this success. This was primarily due to the rapid emergence of Nazi Germany, which overshadowed the victories and initiatives of Fascist Italy, and also due to the crisis in international relations as Europe rapidly slid towards war, which inevitably affected the organization of sports competitions. Over the years the OND expanded its original offerings in sports and recreation to include a myriad of social outlets, including educational programming on popular culture and vocational training; promotion of public readings and arts, such as drama, music, folklore, and cinema. The OND was the institution that worked best on a family and corporate scale. Following the nazi example, fascism created a minister for press and propaganda, expanding its functions into other areas of education, culture, and entertainment and mobilizing the service of triumphal propaganda. At that time the slogan “cinematography is the strongest weapon” guided the propaganda. Cinema was not the only art form that fascism leveraged for its purposes. The regime's ambition was to create a “mass theater,” where masses, however, were not to be protagonists but spectators. If there was at least an attempt at innovation in playwriting, the level of creativity in music was much more disappointing. Fascism was the fruit of heterogeneous cultures, an initial reference for various literary, artistic, and philosophical currents. Together, they sought a political anchor for ideas they had forcefully expressed, imagining a possible relationship between intellectuals and politics and between culture and masses.