"Am I not the precursor of all that is good about Fascism?"
- D'Annunzio to Mussolini, in 1932The city of Fiume under Gabriele D'Annunzio embodied Eco's concept of ur-fascism. Born in its own womb, it died in labor emptying out its political afterbirth.
On 12 September 1919, D'Annunzio led thousands of Italian soldiers and nationalists into an irredentist seizure of the city of Fiume (modern day Rijeka, Croatia). D'Annunzio's aim was to reunite Fiume with Italy. Italy did not acknowledge the takeover, however, and for over a year, D'Annunzio ruled the city in defiance of the Allied nations. Enacting a Caesarist overthrow of its democratic scaffolding, the result was a protracted fascistic embryogenesis that never attained full political maturity and that stirred within the womb of its own birth.
Umberto Eco calls this embryonic stage "ur-fascism": He describes fourteen elements that, alone or in combination with two or more other elements, may form a germ seed of fascism: "It is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it." Most of these fourteen elements formed the nucleus of D'Annunzio's Fiume endeavor.
It was this political infancy, and its promotion of the model it represented in its own country and in other countries, that distinguishes D'Annunzio's Fiume as an ur-fascist regime. In its lifespan of little more than a year, it formed a seedbed that experimented with elemental and basic fascist concepts and encouraged the diffusion of its model to the world: Policies or ideas that would be embraced by Mussolini, Hitler, Codreanu, Mosley, Franco, Salazar, as well as postwar figures like Perón and Saddam Hussein, resonating in other movements.
D'Annunzio's Fiume embodied Eco's concept of ur-fascism in two ways:
1. D'Annunzio's Fiume remained at the political level of embryonic fascism.
2. D'Annunzio's Fiume promoted the birth of embryonic fascism elsewhere.
The constitution of D'Annunzio's Fiume, the Charter of Carnaro, coauthored by D'Annunzio and Alceste de Ambris, underlies both aspects of the regime. In particular, there are two key institutions it enshrines that echo this embryonic fascism over all else.
The first is the concept of the Corporation. As the Charter states, a Corporation is a "legal entity... recognized by the State." It establishes its own policies and rules, elects its leaders, and manages itself. Essentially, a Corporation ensures a vital societal interest:
The first is the concept of the Corporation. As the Charter states, a Corporation is a "legal entity... recognized by the State." It establishes its own policies and rules, elects its leaders, and manages itself. Essentially, a Corporation ensures a vital societal interest:
18. The State represents the aspiration and effort of the people, as a community, towards material and spiritual advancement. Those only are full citizens who give their best endeavour to add to the wealth and strength of the State; these truly are one with her in her growth and development. Whatever be the kind of work a man does, whether of hand or brain, art or industry, design or execution, he must be a member of one of the ten Corporations who receive from the commune a general direction as to the scope of their activities, but are free to develop them in their own way and to decide among themselves as to their mutual duties and responsibilities.
These Corporations are listed in it: Industrial and agricultural workers, seafarers, employers, industrial and agricultural technicians, private bureaucrats and administrators, teachers and students, lawyers and doctors, civil servants, and co-operative workers.
The organicism underlying the corporatism of D'Annunzio's Fiume is central to fascist views of society. This is not the contemporary US leftist view of "corporate fascism." Instead, it is a view of society as an organic whole, structured to nourish its vital interests.
In "The Doctrine of Fascism," Giovanni Gentile remarks that:
The organicism underlying the corporatism of D'Annunzio's Fiume is central to fascist views of society. This is not the contemporary US leftist view of "corporate fascism." Instead, it is a view of society as an organic whole, structured to nourish its vital interests.
In "The Doctrine of Fascism," Giovanni Gentile remarks that:
But within the orbit of the State with ordinative functions, the real needs, which give rise to the Socialist movement and to the forming of labor unions, are emphatically recognized by Fascism and are given their full expression in the Corporative System, which conciliates every interest in the unity of the State.
Mussolini, who wrote the second part, writes that the Corporation and the interests that it is intended to embody, gets to "the very foundations of the regime." In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes that the aim of his movement is to reconstitute the nation as an organic whole. This is expressed in later speeches, as well. In a 1934 speech, he stated that he viewed society as "a corporate body... a single organism." The word, 'corporate,' comes from the Latin word, 'corpus': a body. In "The Corporate State," Sir Mosley writes:
It envisages, as its name implies, a nation organised as the human body. Every part fulfils its function as a member of the whole, performing its separate task, and yet, by performing it, contributing to the welfare of the whole.The second institution enshrined in the Charter of Carnaro that is also especially noteworthy is the office of the Commandant. This institution, in effect, resurrected the Roman office of dictator, and preceded and anticipated the roles of Duce in Italy and Fuehrer in Germany. D'Annunzio occupied this office, and remained until the Italian government forcibly removed him from power in Fiume. The Commandant is imbued with all "political, military, legislative and executive" power. Its aim is to oppose or overcome societal decline:
43. When the province is in extreme peril and sees that her safety depends on the will and devotion of one man who is capable of rousing and of leading all the forces of the people in a united and victorious effort, the National Council in solemn conclave in the Arengo may, voting by word of mouth, nominate a Commandant and transmit to him supreme authority without appeal. The Council decides the period, long or short, during which he is to rule, not forgetting that in the Roman Republic the dictatorship lasted six months.
The office of the Commandant, Jonathan Bowden argues, was the principal institution within the occupied city that signified the primordial fascist character of D'Annunzio's Fiume. As its key institution, it grounded the social rituals that grew up around it:
The idea of the man alone set above the people who is yet one of them. The idea of a squad of people who are passionate, and fanatical, and frenzied, with a stiff arm Roman salute, dressed in black, who are an audience for the leader, as well as security for the leader, as well as a sort of prop who make sure that the masses go along with what the leader is saying. The idea of a nationalist chorus. All of these ideas come from D'Annunzio and his forced occupation of the port city of Fiume.The introduction of aesthetics into politics and government by spectacle was an innovation of D'Annunzio's Fiume. The societal pageantry it fomented was inherited by Mussolini's Italy and the various fascist regimes and movements that followed. However, these are surface level symptoms of fascism, outgrowths of its vital elemental impulses: The abandoning of democratic pretense, the corporatist restructuring of existing structures of inequality and hierarchy, and the authoritarian redemption of a community from conditions of decline.
