Student ID: 510586

How did Futurism influence the rise of the Fascist movement?

In the last 25 years, nearly every major city in the western world has organised an exhibition on
Futurism. In universities, Futurism has become a standard subject in all disciplines that concern the
historical avant-garde and the profound changes caused by modernism in the twentieth-century culture.

Futurist art was associated with a radical transformation of the political and social spheres. It has
been seen as a means for filling the gap between art and life, aesthetic innovation and progress in the real
world. The Futurist project of innovation covered all aspect of human existence, and was considered a
total and permanent revolution.

It is not surprising that the Futurist theory on life, art and politics found its ultimate expression in
the explosive manifestations of Fascist politics and war. Many scholars have argued that nowadays it is
clear that the Futurist attempt to merge art and life generated the aestheticization of the political generally
and Fascist politics specifically.

This paper’s purpose is to illustrate how an artistic movement can influence a political party, and
use a world conflagration as a means of gaining a new national identity.

As Emilio Gentile argues, it is necessary to study the relationship between the modernist avant-
gardes and Fascism in order to understand the cultural roots of the fascist ideology. Fascism was born
from the myth of the New Italy, and it inherited elements that have been developed by the modernist
avant-gardes before the Great War.1

The connection between modernism and politics took place principally under the guidance of a
new radical nationalism that eventually created opportunities for different political orientations to arise.

The avant-garde cultural movements that were created in Italy at the beginning of the twentieth
century, such as Futurism and the groups that merged around the reviews Leonardo and La Voce, shared a
common note of political nationalism which manifested itself in what Emilio Gentile had called ‘the myth
of Italianism’. This can be translated as a conviction that Italy was destined to have a role as a great
protagonist and exercise a civilising mission in the life of the twentieth century. All these movements
believed in the necessity of a radical process of moral, cultural, and political regeneration that was meant
to give birth to a ‘new Italian’.2

According to Richard Jensen, the close relationship between Fascism and Futurism has led many
scholars to claim a great political influence for Marinetti’s movement. Benedeto Croce saw the
‘ideological origins’ of Fascism in Futurism.3

Essentially, art historians have dealt with the relation of Futurism to Fascism through two different
inter-related strategies. The first of these has been to ignore the issue through implicit assumptions about
the absolute separation of art and politics.

The second strategy has been to displace the significance of the political dimension of Futurism by
relegating it to a later, less aesthetically important phase of the movement. In a surprisingly brief account

1
Emilio Gentile, The struggle for modernity: nationalism, Futurism, and Fascism, New York: Praeger (2003), p. 28
2
Emilio Gentile, The struggle for modernity, p. 45
3
‘Futurism and Fascism - Richard Jensen looks at the impact of Marinetti and his disciples on Italian politics and the rise of
Mussolini’ in History Today, 45:11 (1995:Nov.) p. 34
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of the Futurists' relationship to Fascism, Perloff explicitly locates the movement's political affiliations and
activities to its post-1920 phase, when the movement was heading to its end.4

In the field of politics, modernity meant a crisis of traditional aristocracies, an epoch of new
masses and the rise of new elites, the predominance of collectivities over individuals, renovation of the
State, and political and economic expansion. The conquest of modernity meant assimilating those forms
that produced, as Marinetti wrote, ‘the complete renovation of human sensibility’ and a ‘massive
expansion of human sensation’5.

The myth of regenerative violence—through war or revolution—is part of the cultural heritage of
the modernist avant-garde. What sparked the interventionism of many young intellectuals was the
conviction that Italy, in order to reach the state of modern greatness, would have to pass through a bloody
experience of war and give its contribution to the creation of a new civilization. War, in the Futurist
conception, was ‘the great and sacred law of life’; it was the periodic ‘testing, bloody and necessary, of
the force of the people’.6 Though with different motivations, a positive conception of war in the life of the
nation was predominant throughout the new national culture. War was an integral part of the nationalist
vision of modernity.

The Futurists glorified Italy’s participation in the Great War as the necessary rite of collective
initiation into modernity, a violent acceleration of the process of modernization. ‘The war will develop
gymnastics, sport, and practical schools of agriculture, commerce, and industry. The war will reinvigorate
Italy, enrich its men of action, oblige her to stop living in the past amid ruins and a sweet climate, and to
force her to use her own national forces.’7

Marinetti and the Futurists proposed themselves as the guides of a cultural revolution that would
forge the modern Italian, liberating him from the cultural heritage of the past and the myth of tradition.
The idea that culture possessed a militant function, that it was intellectual activity that formed the modern
conscience of a new Italian, was common to the different movements of the time, not only to Futurism.

Long before the birth of Fascism, Futurism urged the necessity of overcoming the barriers
between culture and politics by means of a symbiosis between culture and life. This symbiosis was
designed to reawaken the intellectual and moral energies of the Italians, to give them with a new sense of
Italianness.8

In ‘The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism’, written in 1909, Marinetti upheld the glory of war,
‘the world's only hygiene’, as an announcement of the imminent crisis that would reveal the radical
foundation of a new social and aesthetic world order. Futurist art, Marinetti declared, would act as an
inflammable device, upholding the new values of speed, destruction, and violence necessary for a new
age of Italian national grandeur.

When war broke out the majority of the militants of the avant-garde became active supporters of
intervention. ‘Reality is moving with an accelerated rhythm. We have had the singular privilege of living
at the most tragic hour in the history of the world. Do we want to be . . . inert spectators of the great

4
Marjorie Perloff, The futurist moment: avant-garde, avant-guerre, and the language of rupture, Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press (1986), p. 78
5
F. T. Marinetti, ‘Contro Vienna e contro Berlino,’ in L’Italia Futurista (25 July 1916)
6
F. T. Marinetti, ‘Contro Vienna e contro Berlino,’ in L’Italia Futurista (25 July 1916), [1] and idem, ‘Distruzione della
sintassi,’ in TIF, p. 68
7
Boccioni, Opere complete, Foligno: Franco Campitelli (1927)
8
Emilio Gentile, The struggle for modernity, p. 46
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drama? Or do we want to be—in some way and in some sense— protagonists?’9 So wrote Mussolini in 18
October 1914, announcing his conversion to the cause of interventionism. His choice costed him his
expulsion from the Socialist party, but he was hailed by the cultural avant-gardes as the “new man” on the
Italian political scene.

Conscious of a glorious but distant past, a layer of Italian intellectuals dreamed of rediscovering
the splendours of imperial Rome. The only way to break out of this suffocating condition was through
war. War was not something to be afraid of or deplore, in the manner of feeble pacifists, but a glorious
adventure, a necessary condition for the material and spiritual rebirth of the Italian people. War was
something to be glorified in art.10

In 1915 Marinetti published a book with the title La Guerra - Sola Igiene del Mondo (“War - the
Sole Hygiene of the World”). Here we have the essence of imperialism - the notion that wars are a
necessary means whereby humanity overcomes stagnation and purifies itself through fire.

Some scholars, like Emmanuel Chapman, argue the fact that Marinetti’s idea regarding the
purification of the world through violence, the dehumanization of man into a mechanism is not an original
idea. Long before it broke into violent action, ‘this monstrous caricature’ was prepared by thinkers and
artists whose responsibility was ‘to keep alive the true image of man in the minds and feelings of men’.11

Conceived in terms simultaneously ‘natural’, as the eradication of depravity and disease in which
Italy has drowned herself in the last centuries, and the triumphant overcoming of nature through brute
force in the figure of the new Mechanical Beauty, Futurism defines itself in the language of Fascism:
hygiene, the cult of the irrational, and the spectacle of power.12

Marinetti and the Futurists took a strong position in favour of Italy entering the First World War
on the side of Britain and France. The basic assumption of Futurism was that participation in the war
signified an entry into the modern world. For the Futurists, the European War was more inspiring and
dramatic than the wars in Tripoli and in the Balkans. Participation in the European War was a test band, a
battleground in the great confrontation between Futurism and the past, and therefore Italy could not stand
aside.13

At the time of the outbreak of the First World War, Mussolini was representing the radical left,
favouring revolution. But his position was ambivalent and opportunistic. The possibilities offered by the
war fascinated him, and he expressed his enthusiasm in Futurist terms: ‘Perhaps this war, with the blood it
shed, is preparing the wheels for moving forward’. By December 1914, Mussolini left the socialist
ideology in order to publicly support the war, joining the interventionist group.

According to David Ohana, after a short time, Mussolini began to imitate the Futurist patriotism of
Marinetti. In April 1915, Mussolini and Marinetti appeared together in Milan in favour of Italy’s entry
into war. After trying to hold speeches about war and the necessity of violence, the two were arrested, the
imprisonment strengthening their relationship.14
9
Benito Mussolini. ‘Dalla neutralità assoluta alla neutralità attiva ed operante,’ in Il popolo d’Italia (18 October 1914), 1;
reprinted in OO, 1:402–03
10
Alan Woods, Italian Futurism and Fascism: How an artistic trend anticipated a counterrevolutionary tendency,
http://www.marxist.com/ArtAndLiterature-old/italian_Futurism_and_Fascism.html
11
Emmanuel Chapman, ‘Beauty and the War’ in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 2, No. 6 (Summer, 1942),
p. 64
12
Doug Blanchard, ‘"The Beautiful Ideas Which Kill," Futurism and Fascism’ in
http://counterlightsrantsandblather1.blogspot.com/2009/07/beautiful-ideas-which-kill-Futurism-and.html
13
David Ohana, The Futurist Syndrome, Sussex Academic Press (2010), p. 137
14
David Ohana, The Futurist Syndrome, p. 159
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In his controversial work, The Fascist Persuasion in Radical Politics, A. James Gregor went so far
as to attribute much of Mussolini’s success in seizing power to his adoption of ‘Futurist political style’,
which served as a ‘fundamental organising and mobilising instrument in the Fascist armarium’.15

Shapiro and Joll, among others, have noted the influence of Marinetti's innovations in
performance on the histrionic style adopted by Mussolini in his public speeches. Clough, similarly, has
emphasized the Futurist contribution to the preparation of the Tripolitan campaign and the direction of
public support for Italian collaboration with England and France against not only Austria, but the
‘Germanic threat’ as a whole.16

Thus, Futurism not only articulated a content similar to Fascist ideology - nationalism, militarism,
the cult of irrational violence and aestheticization of violence - but developed important forms in their
performances, notably the agitation of the masses and the spectacle, that formed the basis of later Party
methods for crowd provocation and control.

Anne Bowler disagrees with this theory when she states that the originary moment of Futurism
was critically related to the larger social and political crisis of Italy. From the beginning, Futurism found
its ideal embodiment in the values of a nationalist campaign of war and destruction that was to inaugurate
Italy's rise to world power, the violent annihilation of the past, and a complete aestheticization of politics
and everyday life.17

Mabel Berezin disagrees with Bowlers’ views and argues that ‘too often when speaking of the
fascist regime, social analysts take the regime's rhetoric at face value, and assume that all cultural projects
given the name of Fascism sprouted fully grown from the head of Mussolini.’18

The emphasis on technological development and the creation of a specifically modern culture
proved to be important points of congruence for Futurism and the political platforms of the Fascist
movement. The original and profoundly important contribution of Futurism to this ‘ideological stew’ 19
was its emphasis upon the desirability of technological development and rapid industrial transformation.
For it is this aspect, combined with nationalism and elitism, that helped Mussolini to build a bridge
between the traditional rural and commercial classes, the southern landowners, and the captains of
industry in the north, who abandoned their liberal political orientation by the end of the First World War
in order to join the Fascist Party. 20

Even though at first Mussolini took an attitude of benign neglect toward the movement, the
Futurists were the first to rally to his interventionist campaign, came to his help to establish Il Popolo
d’Italia, were ailed with him for interventionist agitation, and established armed squadrons as early as
1916.

By 1919, Marinetti was campaigning for a Fascist, Futurist revolution under the leadership of ‘a
proletariat of geniuses’ – that is an elite of artists and intellectuals. At this point, Mussolini openly
embraced the Futurists and their leader, Marinetti.

15
In Anne Bowler, ‘Politics as Art: Italian Futurism and Fascism’ in Theory and Society, Vol. 20, No. 6 (Dec., 1991), p. 780
16
See Emil Oestereicher, ‘Fascism and the Intellectuals’, p. 529; Theda Shapiro, Painters and Politics, New York: Elevier
(1976), p. 184; Rosa Clough, Futurism: The Story of a Modern Art Movement, New York: Philosophical Library (1961), p. 5-
23; James Joll, Three Intellectuals in Politics, New York: Pantheon Books (1960), pp. 165-177
17
In Anne Bowler, ‘Politics as Art’, p. 783
18
Mabel Berezin, ‘The Content of No Content: State and Theatre in Fascist Italy’ in Working Paper Series, Centre for
Research and Politics in Social Organization, Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), p. 103
19
Emil Oestereicher, ‘Intellectuals’, p. 519
20
Emil Oestereicher, ‘Intellectuals’, p. 521
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In public, Benito Mussolini seldom acknowledged his debts to the cultural movements that have
contributed to Fascism’s formation. In private, however, he was often quite explicit in issuing generous
certificates of recognition to the Futurist movement. Il duce spoke of his debts to Futurism: ‘I formally
declare that without Futurism there would never have been a fascist revolution.’21

Even apart from Mussolini’s statements it is difficult to deny the participation of the avant-garde
in the formation of fascist political culture. The principal exponents of Futurism were among the founding
fathers of the fascist movement and firmly followed to the totalitarian regime, actively collaborating in
the creation of its culture and the diffusion of its ideology.

Richard Jensen thinks otherwise. He argues that ‘notwithstanding the Futurists’ evident knack for
grabbing publicity and their taste for rambunctious activities’22, it is still difficult to believe they provided
the Fascists with a model for, not even every much assistance in, conquering political power.

The key to the revival of Fascism and its ultimate conquest of power was not Futurist style, but the
sudden emergence in 1920 of rural squadrismo, the Fascist paramilitary movement run by ex-officers that
attacked foreigners, leftists and labour groups of all kinds, and the Fascists’ forging of an alliance with
landowners, businessmen and other elements on the right. To these elements Futurism contributed almost
nothing.

The outbreak of the war was the climax of the Futurist movement and the beginning of its decline:
the challenge was met, and the original impetus disappeared. Marinetti, its leader and founder, became a
marginal figure in the new political movement led by Mussolini.

In the early 1920s, the Futurist stage of Fascism came to an end and debates started to appear. In
1923, Giuseppe Prezzolini denied that there was any ideal connection between Futurism and Fascism as it
had come to be in power, for Futurism was antitraditionalist, individualist, libertarian, antimoralist, and
anti-Catholic, while Fascism was classicist, hierarchic, authoritarian, moralist, and Catholic.

However, Benedetto Croce, writing in 1924, urged the opposite view: ‘To anyone with a sense of
historical connections, the ideal origins of Fascism are to be found in Futurism.’ And in support of his
claim the philosopher listed the Futurist matrices of Fascism: the cult of action, the disposition toward
violence, the intolerance of dissent, desire for the new, disdain for culture and tradition, and the
glorification of youth.23

In 1919, Marinetti appeared on the first slate of Fascist candidates and led the violent assault on
the offices of Avanti. And yet even here there is evidence that the relationship between Marinetti and the
Party was not without tension. The Futurist revolutionary spirit was replaced with a fascist establishment
that comprised with political necessities. Fascism became too conservative for Marinetti. When Mussolini
expressed the desire to attract Catholics on his side, Marinetti shouted at him that there was no room for
his presence in a ‘herd of seekers of the past’. This was just another stage of the breaking of the
relationship between the two. Mussolini, as a political figure, now wanted to distance himself from
Marinetti.24

In the end, the Futurist project to create a new social order through the sublation of art into politics
was destined to fail because of the movement's unwitting commitment to the specifically aesthetic
21
Benito Mussolini, ‘Bleriot,’ in Il Popolo (28 July 1909), X, reprinted in idem Edoardo e Duilio Susmel, eds., Opera omnia,
Firenze: La Fenice, (1951–1980)
22
‘Futurism and Fascism - Richard Jensen’, p. 35
23
Emilio Gentile, The struggle for modernity, p. 41
24
David Ohana, The Futurist Syndrome, p. 201
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imperatives of its program. In other words, critical conflicts between the Futurist movement and the
nascent Fascist regime derived from inherent discrepancies between the aesthetic and political dimensions
of the Futurist project, including the specific political goals outlined in Futurist manifestos that could not
find their systematic and sustained realization in actual works. For if Futurist aesthetic principles
articulated a language of nationalist violence and destruction explicitly congruent with the basis of Italian
Fascism's ascendance to power, it was precisely Futurism's aesthetic vision of politics that could not help
but be disappointed by the emergent regime's inevitable turn toward routinization and compromise.25

Anne Bowlers’ argument is that while the Futurist movement was explicitly political from its
inception, the Futurist project for the creation of an art that would give form to a new social order could
not in the end succeed because of the Futurists' inability to subsume their aesthetic vision under the
imperatives of a concrete political order.

Life, simply speaking, could never match up to the Futurist aesthetic ideal. For while Marinetti's
characteristically anarchistic antics proved eventually embarrassing from a political point of view, more
pertinent is the artist's disillusionment and ambivalence as the dictatorship turned to the practical needs of
political order, compromising, ultimately, the Futurist's orgiastic ideal of a truly Fascist society.

Theoretically speaking, Futurism upheld the corporativist ideal of the individual as a cog in the
larger wheel of the collectivity that lay at the core of Fascist ideology, yet the anarchistic impulses of
Marinetti proved problematic. In particular the conciliatory stand adopted by Mussolini in 1920 toward
the monarchy and Church conflicted with the Futurist's call for their wholesale destruction as the last
vestige and symbol of a romanticist, bourgeois world order.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. ‘Futurism and Fascism - Richard Jensen looks at the impact of Marinetti and his disciples on
Italian politics and the rise of Mussolini’ in History Today, 45:11 (1995:Nov.) p. 34-41

25
Anne Bowler, ‘Politics as Art’, p. 790
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2. Alan Woods, Italian Futurism and Fascism: How an artistic trend anticipated a
counterrevolutionary tendency, http://www.marxist.com/ArtAndLiterature-
old/italian_Futurism_and_Fascism.html

3. Anna Lawton, ‘Šeršenevic, Marinetti, and the "Chain of Images": From Futurism to Imaginism’ in
The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer, 1979), pp. 203-215

4. Anne Bowler, ‘Politics as Art: Italian Futurism and Fascism’ in Theory and Society, Vol. 20, No.
6 (Dec., 1991), pp. 763-794

5. Benito Mussolini, ‘Bleriot,’ in Il Popolo (28 July 1909), X, reprinted in idem Edoardo e Duilio
Susmel, eds., Opera omnia, Firenze: La Fenice, (1951–1980)

6. Benito Mussolini, ‘Latham.’ in Il Popolo (22 July 1909)

7. David Ohana, The Futurist Syndrome, Sussex Academic Press, 2010

8. Doug Blanchard, ‘"The Beautiful Ideas Which Kill," Futurism and Fascism’ in
http://counterlightsrantsandblather1.blogspot.com/2009/07/beautiful-ideas-which-kill-Futurism-
and.html

9. Emil Oestereicher, ‘Fascism and the Intellectuals: The Case of Italian Futurism’ in Social
Research 41. 3, (Autumn 1974)

10. Emilio Gentile, The struggle for modernity: nationalism, Futurism, and Fascism, New York:
Praeger (2003)

11. Emmanuel Chapman, ‘Beauty and the War’ in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol.
2, No. 6 (Summer, 1942), pp. 61-67

12. Enrico Corradini, ‘La guerra,’ in Il Regno, (25 February 1904)

13. F. T. Marinetti, ‘Contro Vienna e contro Berlino,’ in L’Italia Futurista (25 July 1916)

14. Giovanni Gentile, ‘La data sacra,’ in Il Resto del Carlino (24 May 1918)

15. Günter Berghaus, ‘New Research on Futurism and Its Relations with the Fascist Regime’ in
Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Jan., 2007), pp. 149-160

16. Günter Berghaus, Futurism and politics: between anarchist rebellion and fascist reaction, 1909-
1944, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1996

17. James Joll, Three Intellectuals in Politics, New York: Pantheon Books (1960)

18. Jori Finkel, ‘Marinetti: Oh, What a Futurist War’ in The New York Times, (August 27, 2006)

19. Mabel Berezin, ‘The Content of No Content: State and Theatre in Fascist Italy’ in Working Paper
Series, Centre for Research and Politics in Social Organization, Harvard University (Cambridge,
Mass., 1988)

20. Marjorie Perloff, The futurist moment: avant-garde, avant-guerre, and the language of rupture,
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press (1986)
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21. Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New. Art and the Century of Change, London: Thames &
Hudson, 1991, reprinted in 2005

22. Rosa Clough, Futurism: The Story of a Modern Art Movement, New York: Philosophical Library
(1961)

23. Scipio Slataper, ‘Ai giovani intelligenti d’Italia,’ in La Voce (26 August 1909)

24. Theda Shapiro, Painters and Politics, New York: Elevier (1976)

25. Umberto Boccioni, ‘Contro la vigliaccheria artistica italiana,’ in Lacerba (1 September 1913)

26. Umberto Boccioni, Opere complete, Foligno: Franco Campitelli (1927)