Title

Gaetano Salvemini: Antifascism In Thought And Action

Keywords

Antifascism; Communism; Exiles; Fascism; Revisionism; Rosselli; Salvemini

Abstract

Decades of historical revisionism of fascism and exploitation by the Italian press and politicians have distorted the careers of a generation of exiled Italian antifascists and devalued their work. One feature of the distortion has been to tie these democratic political activists uncritically to the communist armed Resistance and thus to dismiss the exiles after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the demise of the Italian Communist Party, and the depreciation of the founding myth of the Republic 'born of the Resistance'. The exiles themselves are partly responsible for contributing to this misunderstanding by failing to clarify their differences with Stalinism, particularly as Carlo Rosselli moved the Paris-based antifascist organization Giustizia e Libertà to the left in the mid-1930s. Gaetano Salvemini's opposition to Rosselli's repositioning of Giustizia e Libertà illustrates merely one dimension of the diversity within the antifascist movement, and Salvemini's American career provides a useful case within the broader context of the exile experience. The exiles debated the nature of fascism, ideal strategies for defeating the regime - including their relationship with communists - and the shape of postfascist Italy. In their attempt to understand the fascist phenomenon, Salvemini and Rosselli developed the initial strains of non-Marxist, antifascist historiography, which eventually won an important place in postwar culture until recently displaced by waves of revisionism. And while opposing all forms of authoritarianism, Salvemini articulated fundamental premises of democratic antifascism that helped shape the republican constitution. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.

Publication Date

1-1-2010

Publication Title

Journal of Modern Italian Studies

Volume

15

Issue

5

Number of Pages

657-677

Document Type

Review

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1080/1354571X.2010.523535

Socpus ID

78650193521 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/78650193521

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