Italian fascism (Italian: fascismo italiano), also called classical fascism or simply fascism, is the original fascist ideology, which Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini developed in Italy. The ideology of Italian fascism is associated with a series of political parties led by Mussolini: the National Fascist Party (PNF), which governed the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, and the Republican Fascist Party (PFR), which governed the Italian Social Republic (RSI) from 1943 to 1945. Italian fascism is also associated with the post-World War II Italian Social Movement (MSI) and later Italian neo-fascist political organizations.
Italian fascism was initially a left-wing nationalist and anti-clerical movement, and originated from ideological combinations of ultra-nationalism and Italian nationalism, national syndicalism, revolutionary nationalism, and from the militarism of Italian irredentism to regain "lost overseas territories of Italy" deemed necessary to restore Italian nationalist pride. Italian fascists also claimed that modern Italy was an heiress to the imperial legacy of Ancient Rome, and that there existed historical proof which supported the creation of an Imperial Fascist Italy to provide spazio vitale ("vital space") for the Second Italo-Senussi War of Italian settler colonization en route to establishing hegemonic control of the terrestrial basin of the Mediterranean Sea.
Italian fascism promoted a corporatist economic system, whereby employer and employee syndicates were linked together in associations to collectively represent the nation's economic producers and work alongside the state to set national economic policy. This economic system intended to resolve class conflict through collaboration between the classes. Italian fascism opposed liberalism, especially classical liberalism, which fascist leaders denounced as "the debacle of individualism". Fascism was opposed to socialism because of the latter's frequent opposition to nationalism, but it was also opposed to the reactionary conservatism developed by Joseph de Maistre. It believed the success of Italian nationalism required respect for tradition and a clear sense of a shared past among the Italian people, alongside a commitment to a modernized Italy.
Originally, many Italian fascists were opposed to Nazism, as the fascist movement in Italy did not espouse Nordicism nor, initially, the antisemitism inherent in Nazi ideology; however, many fascists, in particular Mussolini himself, held openly racialist and racist ideas (specifically against black Africans, Italian Jews, Roma, Sinti, and Slavic peoples) that were enshrined into law as official policy over the course of fascist rule. As Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany grew politically closer in the latter half of the 1930s, Italian laws and policies became explicitly antisemitic due to pressure from Nazi Germany (although antisemitic laws were rarely enforced in Italy), including the promulgation of the Manifesto of Race and Italian racial laws in the Kingdom of Italy and all colonies of the Italian Empire. In addition, the Greek population of the Dodecanese and Northern Epirus, which were then under Italian occupation, were persecuted by the Italian fascists as well. When the Italian fascists were in power, they also persecuted some linguistic minorities and Protestant denominations in Italy.
The Italian term fascismo is derived from fascio, meaning "bundle of sticks", ultimately from the Latin word fasces. This was the name given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates. According to Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's own account, the Fasces of Revolutionary Action were founded in Italy in 1915. In 1919, Mussolini founded the Italian Fasces of Combat in Milan, which became the National Fascist Party two years later. The fascists came to associate the term with the ancient Roman fasces or fascio littorio, a bundle of rods tied around an axe, an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate, carried by his lictors. The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break.
Prior to 1914, the fasces symbol was widely employed by various political movements, often of a left-wing or liberal persuasion. For instance, according to the American political scientist and historian Robert Paxton: "Marianne, symbol of the French Republic, was often portrayed in the nineteenth century carrying the fasces to represent the force of Republican solidarity against her aristocratic and clerical enemies." The symbol often appeared as an architectural motif, for instance on the Sheldonian Theater at the University of Oxford and on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Italian fascism is based upon Italian nationalism and in particular, it seeks to complete what it considers the incomplete Italian nationalist project of Risorgimento ("Resurgence", 1815–1871) by incorporating the "unredeemed" Italian-inhabited territories scattered across the Balkans and Southern Europe that both Italian nationalists and fascists regarded as Italia irredenta ("unredeemed Italy") into the Kingdom of Italy after its unification under the House of Savoy (1861). The National Fascist Party (PNF: Partito Nazionale Fascista), founded in Milan by Benito Mussolini in 1921, declared that the party was to serve as "a revolutionary militia placed at the service of the nation. It follows a policy based on three principles: order, discipline, hierarchy".
It identifies modern Italy as the heir to the Roman Empire and Italy during the Renaissance and it promotes the cultural identity of Romanitas ("Romanness"). Italian fascism historically sought to forge a strong Italian Empire as a Third Rome, identifying ancient Rome as the First Rome and Renaissance-era Italy as the "Second Rome". Italian fascism has attempted to emulate ancient Rome in many ways, and in particular Mussolini had emulated a few Roman emperors, such as Julius Caesar as a model for Mussolini's rise to power and Augustus as a model for building the Italian Empire. Italian fascism has directly promoted colonialism and imperialism, expounded through the politico-philosophical essay and ideological manifesto The Doctrine of Fascism (La dottrina del fascismo, 1932), authored by the actualist Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile, ghostwritten by Gentile himself on behalf of Benito Mussolini and published in 1932: The Fascist state is a will to power and empire. The Roman tradition is here a powerful force. According to the Doctrine of Fascism, an empire is not only a territorial or military or mercantile concept, but a spiritual and moral one. One can think of an empire, that is, a nation, which directly or indirectly guides other nations, without the need to conquer a single square kilometre of territory.
Italian fascism emphasized the need for the restoration and continuity of the Italian nationalist Risorgimento ("Resurgence", 1815–1871) tradition developed by Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi that followed the unification of Italy under the House of Savoy (1861), that the fascists claimed had been left incomplete and abandoned in modern Italy due to the liberal-led governments of the Giolittian Era. In 1914, Italian nationalists began to campaign actively against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which still controlled some Italian-speaking "irredent lands" in the aftermath of the Third Italian War of Independence (1866), and Italian neutrality between the major European Powers after the outbreak of the Great War. After the end of World War I and during the Interwar period (1918–1939), the Fascist regime sought the incorporation of claimed "unredeemed" territories into the Kingdom of Italy and the Italian Empire.
To the east of Italy, the Italian fascists claimed that Dalmatia was a land of Italian culture, whose Italian population (Dalmatian Italians), including those of Italianized South Slavic descent, had been driven out of Dalmatia and into exile in Italy, and supported the return of Italians of Dalmatian heritage. Mussolini identified Dalmatia as having strong Italian cultural roots for centuries due to their heritage being linked to the Roman Empire and the Republic of Venice. The fascists especially focused their claims based on the Venetian cultural heritage of Dalmatia, claiming that Venetian rule had been beneficial for all Dalmatians and had been accepted by the Dalmatian population. In the aftermath of World War I, Italian fascists were outraged when the agreement between Italy and the Entente Allies to have Dalmatia join Italy made in the 1915 Treaty of London was revoked in 1919. The Fascist regime supported the annexation of Yugoslavia's region of Slovenia into Italy that already held a portion of the Slovene population, whereby Slovenia would become an Italian province, resulting in a quarter of Slovene ethnic territory and approximately 327,000 out of a total population of 1.3 million Slovenes being subjected to forced Italianization. The fascist regime imposed mandatory Italianization upon the German and South Slavic populations living within Italy's borders. The fascist regime abolished the teaching of minority German and Slavic languages in schools, German and Slavic language newspapers were shut down, and geographical and family names in areas of German or Slavic languages were to be Italianized forcibly. This resulted in significant violence against South Slavs deemed to be resisting the fascist policy of Italianization.