«Garibaldian fascism» and antifascist garibaldinism. The camicia rossa among the two wars

di Eva Cecchinato
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 32 (2009), p. 113

The essay analyzes the recoveries of the garibaldian tradition in the period among the two world wars. The levels are manifold: the political dimension and the generational aspects, the family genealogies of the garibaldinism and the imaginary genealogies, sometimes interwoven and contrasted. Particular attention has been therefore reserved to the pages of “Camicia rossa”, in which take form the perspectives and the claims of the “garibaldian fascism”, but some contrasts also manifest themselves among the public use of the history promoted by the regime and the position of Ezio Garibaldi. On the long period the antifascist declination of the garibaldian tradition has in the French context its ground of fundamental development. The diplomatic relationships between Italy and France constitute the background to the dynamics in which the refugees try to create or to preserve a social and political role. The political emigration doesn’t give up at all valorizing the patrimony of the Risorgimento in antifascist key. In the environment and on the pages of “Giustizia e Libertà” the dispute on the Risorgimento is faced in more systematic way. The recoveries of the garibaldian tradition – fascists and antifascists – concern a fundamental historical knot: the inheritance of the Great War and the choice of the Italian volunteers of the 1914. Recovering a constitutive and native aspect of the camicia rossa, the stories of the garibaldinism in this phase have therefore an international dimension and they are subscribed in a triangular perimeter that has Italy, France and Spain as vertexes.