Fascism as seen by the Christian Democrats in the years of the republic of parties (1945–1994)

Abstract

The Christian Democratic interpretation of the fascist regime drew on the analyses conducted in the 1920s which identified the statism-racism-warmongering nexus as the defining trait of fascist movements. With the outbreak of the Cold War, Italian fascism disappeared as a political phenomenon, but with Aldo Moro became a historical example of a system that was enemy of individual freedom but also responsible for policies that went against the interests of working people. In Moro’s view, the birth of the Republic had opened up a new path that still had to be perfected but certainly was in antithesis to the fascist one. The parties of the anti-fascist coalition had contributed to this new path and were called upon to complete it in a “progressive” manner. This perspective carried on until the period of “national solidarity”, but after Moro’s assassination, the cultural and political framework in the 1980s became increasingly critical of the cornerstones of post-1945 anti-fascism.