Fascism and Its Discontents: The 1968 Student Revolt and the Contested

Memory of the Italian and German Past

Written by Stuart HilwigPresented by Edward Crowther

Student Revolts rock industrialized world For Italian and West German youth the

generational conflict of ’68 ended the silence of their parents’ generation regarding the fascist past

Nicola Tranfaglia, “Fascism did not end until 1968.”

1968 as Caesura

Students◦ “Post-liberation

resistance fighters”◦Fight remaining

vestiges of fascism◦Make up for parents’

failures to resist fascism

◦ Supporters of the New Left, university, and high school students

Opponents of the Students◦ Fused Cold War present

with fascist past: claim that students are a new brand of “left-wing fascists”

◦Claimed that students are rich, bored kids

◦Conservative press and politicians

Opposing Memories

Interviews conducted in 1997 (Turin, Italy) and 1998 (Berlin, Germany)

Newspaper articles Proceedings of the Bundestag and Camera dei

Deputati

Sources

Liberation and great expectations Postwar stains of Nazism and Fascism remain in

West Germany and Italy German Left destroyed by Third Reich Italian Communist Party acquiesces to Christian

Democrat dominance in government Cold War and US Marshall Plan aid helps cement

Christian Democrats’ political control in both nations

1945: a “Zero Hour?”

End of “collective amnesia”◦ In the home:

Mom / Dad, what did you do during the war?—generational conflict and contested memories

◦ In the universities: The German Sonderweg and Fischer’s Griff nach der

Weltmacht Professors and the Anti-Fascist Resistance: Guido Quazza,

Norberto Bobbio “Existential Resistance to Fascism”

The 1960s: Youth Awakens

In West Germany◦ Authoritarian professors ≈ Universities unchanged since

the Third Reich◦ Formation of the Grand Coalition ≈ No left-wing

opposition◦ Proposed Emergency Laws ≈ Enabling Act used by Hitler◦ Springer Press ≈ pro-Nazi Hugenberg Press

In Italy◦ Professori=Baroni ≈ Universities unchanged since 19th

century ◦ Italian Socialists join with Christian Democrats in 1962 ≈

Communists only opposition◦ Existence of neo-Fascist party, Italian Social Movement

(MSI)

A fascist resurrection? The Student Perspective

US War in Vietnam, the Cause Célèbre for Student Revolt in the late 1960s◦ For each nation’s youth, rejection of US invasion of

Vietnam was mediated through historic memories

For Italian Students, US War in Vietnam ≈ Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia

For German Students, US War in Vietnam ≈ Nazi destruction of Europe and Allied bombing of their homeland◦ “For years I’d had nightmares about the terrible

bombing of Dresden at the end of the Second World War. I could see the houses burning still. And that’s why I identified with the Vietnamese—the campaign against the war was a kind of working through my personal history…” Karin Kerner, member SDS

The Global 1968 as Local

The Variability of Memory: A Pictorial Demonstration

Caption: “Student demonstrators give Roman salutes in Piazza Solferino (Turin)”

Left-wing fascists?? Buried in article: “left-

wing activists give Roman salutes to right-wing students”

A Serious Threat or Pranksters?

The cornuto salute (“horns of the bull,” top-left)

La Stampa, March 3, 1968, p. 2.

The Students as Germany’s ‘New Jews’: The case of the Springer Press

Die Welt, March 16, 1968. Der Stürmer, May 1938

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer defend student actions and attack the right-wing press

Guido Quazza and Rossana Rossanda connect students with La Resistenza and cheer their continued resistance to postwar residues of Fascism

In Defense of the Students

Jürgen Habermas: student tactics are a form of “Linksfaschismus” (1967)

Pier Paolo Pasolini mocks left-wing students after protests at Univ. of Rome:◦ “You have the faces of spoiled children.◦Good blood doesn’t lie.◦You have the same bad eye.◦You are scared, uncertain, desperate◦ (very good!) but you also know how to be◦bullies, blackmailers, and sure of yourselves;◦petit-bourgeois prerogatives, friends.◦When yesterday at Valle Giulia you fought ◦with policemen,◦ I sympathized with the policemen!◦Because policemen are children of the poor…”

Louise K. Barnett, ed., Heretical Empiricism, trans. Ben Lawton (Indiana University Press, 1988), 150.

Critics of the Student Movement

Minister of the Interior, Paolo Emilio Taviani, “the police [in Rome] defended the liberty of the democratic state…the weakness and uncertainty of the forces of order were one of the causes of the sunset of democracy and the advent of fascism”

Interior Minister Paul Lücke, “The citizens must know that democracy is neither weak nor in anarchy, and that we need no brown protectors to protect us from the terror of the Left.”

A fascist resurrection? The Politicians’ Perspective

An indignant ex-Partisan◦ “I do not, in fact, believe that there is a big difference

between the March on Rome and the occupation of the University. The weapons remain the same: intimidation and contempt for democratic laws.”

Serena Nozzoli, student at State Univ. of Milan◦ “I had already seen terrorism in 1968. …the feet on the

professor’s desk, bringing up Che Guevara as a topic for the economics exam, with this insolent pretense, this arrogance provided by numbers… things slightly reminiscent of Mussolini’s thugs that however, all seemed like revolutionary demonstrations, while I saw in them a type of violence… taking advantage of the mob to do things they wouldn’t have done themselves…”

A fascist resurrection? The Public Debate

1. Students reawaken debate about the Fascist past◦An unfinished dialogue◦Historikerstreit of the 1980s◦Dario Biocca (former activist) questions the Resistance

legacy—Ignazio Silone as Fascist informant

Conclusions: 1968 “Das Jahr, das alles verändert hat“

2. Fascism is in the eye of the beholder (German version)

Conclusions: 1968 “Das Jahr, das alles verändert hat“

Left-wing fascist? Neo-Nazi?

or

2. Fascism is in the eye of the beholder (Italian version)◦Who are the fascists?

Conclusions: 1968 “Das Jahr, das alles verändert hat“

Marxist Studenti? or Roman Poliziotti?

3. Old memories and new debates◦ 1920s-1930s: “Fascism vs. Democracy”◦ 1960s-1970s: “Authoritarianism vs. New Left”◦ For Italian and West German youth, to reject the fascist

past meant also to reject the Cold War present—ex. opposition to Vietnam War

◦ Creation of a Third Way? Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik Italian students’ veneration of industrial workers’ anti-Fascist

past helped rouse a slumbering labor movement for the Hot Autumn in 1969 (General Strike)

Conclusions: 1968 “Das Jahr, das alles verändert hat“