Marking one hundred years since the March on Rome and the rise of fascists to power, IES is proud to announce a zoom lecture by Roger Griffin, one of the greatest experts on the theory and history of fascism. On November 4th Professor Griffin will give a lecture entitled:
Prof. Roger Griffin
“Marciare e marcire”: a “dekatych” of the marches proliferating from 28 October 1922 in Rome
In this brief talk Roger Griffin offers ten snap-shots of the significance of the aborted assault of squadristi on the Italian state in the autumn of 1922: i) the (farcical) facticity of the actual events; ii) their immediate propagandist transformation into Fascism’s foundation myth of the conquest of power; iii) the affective and symbolic contribution of the socio-political myth of The March and its regenerative “Sorelian” force; iv) the modernist interpretation of the March as the enactment of the Futurists' dynamic concept of reality; v) the counterfactual reading of the establishment of the Fascist regime in January 1925 as the culmination of the March; vi) the transfiguration of the March into the inaugural event of the “Fascist Era” and its apotheosis in the 1932 Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista; vii) the mythic power exerted by the futural vision of an imminent “fascist era” on the rise of fascism and the anti-democratic and anti-communist radical right; viii) the impact of the mythicized march on Rome on the rise of Hitler; ix) the continuing resonance of the myth of the March today in the critical response to the rise of Giorgia Meloni and he Brothers of Italy; x) the contemporary decay of populist politics into various forms of illiberal democracy in histrionic displays of the militant nationalist spirit of the original Fascist “March” and subsequent “Rally”.
Roger David Griffin is professor emeritus at Oxford Brooks University and the author of The Nature of Fascism, A Fascist Century, Modernism and Fascism, International Fascism and many others.
Audience will be able to follow the lecture after registering at the following Zoom link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_3fQ0xtfhRXCUVZE4Un7_ug
