IL FASCISMO DEI NAZIONALISTI. PROPAGANDA E RACCONTO DEL FASCISMO NELL’EUROPA DEGLI ANNI VENTI

The article analyses the role of Alfredo Rocco and other exponents of Italian nationalism in spreading and legitimising fascism abroad in the 1920s and early 1930s. In particular, it highlights how Rocco’s 1925 text The Doctrine of Fascism represented the first systematic theoretical exposition of fascism to gain wide international circulation, and how Rocco and other former nationalists were key figures in presenting fascism to conservative foreign elites, acting as cultural mediators between nationalism and fascism. This central role of nationalists in presenting fascism outside Italy lasted at least until 1932, when the publication of Mussolini’s The Doctrine of Fascism imposed a different version of the official interpretation of fascism.