During the 20th century, Italy experienced some regrettable political developments. It was the first European nation after World War I in which a mass militia-party of revolutionary nationalism achieved power and abolished parliamentary democracy with the goal of building a totalitarian state. It was also the first in Europe to institutionalize the sacralization of politics and to celebrate officially the cult of the leader as a demi-God. These achievements were not accidents. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Italian nationalist movements, from the national radicalism of La Voce to futurist nationalism and fascism, fostered one of the strongest waves of European right-wing radicalism.The confrontation between nationalism and modernity is one of the main keys to understanding to the permutations of Italian radical nationalism from modernist avant-gardes up to the fascist regime. This book analyzes the ideological undercurrents and cultural myths that unite all these movements. Looking at Italian nationalism from its risorgimento roots to the neo-fascist heritage, Gentile considers the relationship between myth and organization in the making of the fascist state, the role of the party, the liturgy of mass politics in Italy, the fascist organizations abroad, and the attitude of fascist culture toward the United States.

The Struggle for Modernity: Nationalism, Futurism, and Fascism (Italian and Italian American Studies)

History

Gentile, Emilio

Europe

Praeger

La Grande Italia: The Rise and Fall of the Myth of the Nation in the Twentieth Century (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

La Grande Italia traces the history of the myth of the nation in Italy along the curve of its rise and fall throughout the twentieth century. Starting with the festivities for the fiftieth anniversary of the unification of Italy in 1911 and ending with the centennial celebrations of 1961, Emilio Gentile describes a dense sequence of events: from victorious Italian participation in World War I through the rise and triumph of Fascism to Italy’s transition to a republic.    Gentile’s definition of “Italians” encompasses the whole range of political, cultural, and social actors: Liberals and Catholics, Monarchists and Republicans, Fascists and Socialists. La Grande Italia presents a sweeping study of the development of Italian national identity in all its incarnations throughout the twentieth century. This important contribution to the study of modern Italian nationalism and the ambition to achieve a “great Italy” between the unification of Italy and the advent of the Italian Republic will appeal to anyone interested in modern European history, Fascism, and nationalism.Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for Regional General Interests, selected by the Public Library Association

University of Wisconsin Press

La Grande Italia traces the history of the myth of the nation in Italy along the curve of its rise and fall throughout the twentieth century. Starting with the festivities for the fiftieth anniversary of the unification of Italy in 1911 and ending with the centennial celebrations of 1961, Emilio Gentile describes a dense sequence of events: from victorious Italian participation in World War I through the rise and triumph of Fascism to Italy’s transition to a republic. Gentile’s definition of “Italians” encompasses the whole range of political, cultural, and social actors: Liberals and Catholics, Monarchists and Republicans, Fascists and Socialists. La Grande Italia presents a sweeping study of the development of Italian national identity in all its incarnations throughout the twentieth century. This important contribution to the study of modern Italian nationalism and the ambition to achieve a “great Italy” between the unification of Italy and the advent of the Italian Republic will appeal to anyone interested in modern European history, Fascism, and nationalism. Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for Regional General Interests, selected by the Public Library Association

Business & Money

Economics

In 1933, George L. Mosse fled Berlin and settled in the United States, where he went on to become a renowned historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Through rigorous and innovative scholarship, Mosse uncovered the forces that spurred antisemitism, racism, nationalism, and populism. His transformative work was propelled by a desire to know his own persecutors and has been vital to generations of scholars seeking to understand the cultural and intellectual origins and mechanisms of Nazism. This translation makes Emilio Gentile's groundbreaking study of Mosse's life and work available to English language readers. A leading authority on fascism, totalitarianism, and Mosse's legacy, Gentile draws on a wealth of published and unpublished material, including letters, interviews, lecture plans, and marginalia from Mosse's personal library. Gentile details how the senior scholar eschewed polemics and employed rigorous academic standards to better understand fascism and the "catastrophe of the modern man"--how masculinity transformed into a destructive ideology. As long as wars are waged over political beliefs in popular culture, Mosse's theories of totalitarianism will remain as relevant as ever.

Fascination with the Persecutor: George L. Mosse and the Catastrophe of Modern Man (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

In God's Democracy, Emilio Gentile argues that the presidency of George W. Bush sought to alter the way religion functions in American political life. Prior to the events of 9/11, the national government operated under a civil religious regime that placed a sacred umbrella over the entire country and its leading political figures. American civil religion was not only an inclusive faith, but one that provided ample room for citizens with different politics and different world views. But in the wake of 9/11, President Bush used religion to differentiate Americans on partisan lines. Relying heavily on his evangelical Christian base, he attempted to substitute for the inclusivism of the traditional American civil religion an exclusivist political religion in which Democrats were portrayed as hostile to religious values and incapable of dealing with the country's foreign enemies. This book provides the historical context for this attempted transformation, and shows in a detailed way how the Bush administration pursued it. Gentile concludes by posing the question of whether this radical shift in the way Americans understand themselves religiously will prove permanent.
Unlike other works that strive to show how religion has generally come to be treated in American politics, this new book looks more squarely at the Bush Administration and its attempt to shut out Democrats from the political process by invoking religious language and ideals. He goes on to consider the political exclusivism and whether or not it will persist beyond Bush's tenure.

God's Democracy: American Religion after September 11 (Religion, Politics, and Public Life Under the auspices of the Leonard E. Greenb)

Americas

Fascism was the first and prime instance of a modern political religion. Rereading signs, symbols, cults, and myths, Italy's leading scholar of Fascism offers a new history of Italian nationalism as a civic religion, albeit in its extreme form, and of Italian Fascism as a vital catalyst for contemporary mass politics. Emilio Gentile decodes Italy culturally, going beyond political and social dimensions that explain Italy's Fascist past in terms of class, or the cynicism of its leaders, or modernizing and expansionist ambitions. 
 By looking back at the Risorgimento's civic and moral renewal of the Italians as a free people educated in the faith and worship of a "national religion," at the jarring countereffects of the secularized nation-state not trusting mass political mobilization, and at Fascism's retrieval of history from Rome, the French Revolution, and Romanticism, Gentile reconstructs the cultural configurations of a sacred politics. He shows how Mussolini used the concept of propaganda as a project in civic pedagogy, and how the Fascists thus cultivated a new consciousness that filled the void left by the decline of traditional religion. Fascism mobilized the masses through spectacle and public ceremony in an effort to conquer and shape the mentality and customs of a still emerging nation.

The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy

Harvard University Press

Emilio Gentile, an internationally renowned authority on fascism and totalitarianism, argues that politics over the past two centuries has often taken on the features of religion, claiming as its own the prerogative of defining the fundamental purpose and meaning of human life. Secular political entities such as the nation, the state, race, class, and the party became the focus of myths, rituals, and commandments and gradually became objects of faith, loyalty, and reverence.
 Gentile examines this "sacralization of politics," as he defines it, both historically and theoretically, seeking to identify the different ways in which political regimes as diverse as fascism, communism, and liberal democracy have ultimately depended, like religions, on faith, myths, rites, and symbols.
 Gentile maintains that the sacralization of politics as a modern phenomenon is distinct from the politicization of religion that has arisen from militant religious fundamentalism. Sacralized politics may be democratic, in the form of a civil religion, or it may be totalitarian, in the form of a political religion. Using this conceptual distinction, and moving from America to Europe, and from Africa to Asia, Gentile presents a unique comparative history of civil and political religions from the American and French Revolutions, through nationalism and socialism, democracy and totalitarianism, fascism and communism, up to the present day. It is also a fascinating book for understanding the sacralization of politics after 9/11.

Politics as Religion

World

Princeton University Press

The masterwork by Gentile fills a broad gap in the understanding of the origins of a major political movement of the 20th Century: fascism. This is the first detailed and definitive study of the development and initial success of fascism as it originated in Italy right after the First World War. the author traces each major influence and gives us a complete understanding of the birth of the doctrine that changed the face of Europe and found imitators of Mussolini around the world for decades.

The Origins of Fascist Ideology 1918-1925

ENIGMA BOOKS +

Qu Est Ce Que Le Fascisme (Folio Histoire) (French Edition)

Gallimard Education

La voie italienne au totalitarisme: Le Parti et l'Etat sous le régime fasciste

DU ROCHER

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gentile, Emilio. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gentile, Emilio

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gentile, Emilio. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Struggle for Modernity: Nationalism, Futurism, and Fascism (Italian and Italian American Studies)

La Grande Italia: The Rise and Fall of the Myth of the Nation in the Twentieth Century (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

La Grande Italia: The Rise and Fall of the Myth of the Nation in the Twentieth Century (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

Fascination with the Persecutor: George L. Mosse and the Catastrophe of Modern Man (George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas)

God's Democracy: American Religion after September 11 (Religion, Politics, and Public Life Under the auspices of the Leonard E. Greenb)

The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy

Politics as Religion

The Origins of Fascist Ideology 1918-1925

Qu Est Ce Que Le Fascisme (Folio Histoire) (French Edition)

La voie italienne au totalitarisme: Le Parti et l'Etat sous le régime fasciste