Treason as the cause of the fall of fascism and the defeat of the war. 25 July and 8 September in neo-fascist rhetoric.
Carlo de Nuzzo, teaching assistant and phd student (Cevipof, Sciences Po Paris), carlo.denuzzociencespo.fr
“The coup d'état of 25 July confronted Italy with the greatest betrayal that history can remember: a sinister conspiracy between the king and certain generals, hierarchs and ministers who had benefited most from Fascism, struck the regime from behind, creating disorder and bewilderment in the country at the very distressing time when the enemy was setting foot in Italy”. Secretary of the Republican Fascist Party, Alessandro Pavolini.
25 July 1943, Gran Consiglio del Fascismo (Fascist Grand Council) voted against Benito Mussolini. His arrest the following day, at the end of his conversation with King Vittorio Emanuele III, exploded many of the contradictions of the Fascist regime. Those of an unfinished revolution; the strange Fascism/Monarchy diarchy; and then the final mockery: that of a dictatorship that imploded because of the vote of its own governing body.
If the treason of 25 July was traumatic especially for Fascism, that of 8 September 1943 was traumatic for the whole nation. The treason resulted in Mussolini's arrest, replacement by General Badoglio (already a lieutenant-general in the 1917 defeat at Caporetto), the King's abandonment of Rome, and the disbandment of the army due to the ambiguity of the armistice with the Anglo-Americans. To wash away the treason of 25 July, the Verona Process was set up, where fascism executed those who had voted against the Duce, including his son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano. And to repair the treason of the German ally on 8 September, the creation of the Italian Social Republic was emphatically claimed.
In the post-war period, the entire neo-fascist area consolidated a very precise rhetoric. Not only are the dates of 25 July, 8 September (and also the more popular 25 April, Liberation Day) considered by the extreme right (and others) as infamous and divisive dates, but they are the cause of the failure of national unity.
On the one hand, the role of the Resistance is diminished. There was no vast popular rebellion, or a mass insurrection, which brought down the hated tyrant. The military contribution of Resistenza to the defeat of fascism would have been completely negligible and in any case limited to the final stages of the war. Therefore, for the fascists and the neo-fascists, that of 25 July 1943 at Villa Savoia was a real treason, which with a coup d'état by King Vittorio Emanuele III, some military circles loyal to the crown and other civil and foreign forces, overthrew the legitimate fascist regime.
On the other hand, the treason of 25 July and 8 September is blamed for the birth of the Resistance, and thus for the nation's weakness. For the extreme right-wing this 'infamous mark' is at the root of all the afflictions and problems of democratic Italy founded on the Resistance: from the mafia phenomenon to widespread corruption, from the phenomenon of emigration to the lack of national sovereignty, etc.
Even today, for many representatives of the right (not necessarily only of the extreme right) 8 September is synonymous with treason and national shame. This paper aims to reconstruct the neo-fascist rhetoric of treason as the cause of the fall of fascism, the defeat of the war and as the origin of all the evils of democratic Italy as it was founded on the Resistance born of that treason.