Before they arrive

The most disturbing lesson from Antonio Scurati's books on fascism is that it did not impose itself solely through force. Totalitarianisms are not the victory of fanatics over an innocent society corrupted by a leader's ambition. It was also a sum of fears, renunciations, opportunisms, and complicities. A tired democracy stopped defending itself; elites believed they could use Mussolini; a part of society accepted violence in exchange for order. It allowed itself to be seduced.

Scurati explains that Mussolini understood something essential: fear can be politically more powerful than hope. Post-World War I Italy lived amidst national frustration, social conflict, inflation, fear of revolution, and the sensation that the old order was collapsing. Fascism did not resolve those anxieties. It organized them.

His great skill consisted of simplifying. Democracy is slow because reality is complex: it requires compromise, discussion, listening to opposing interests, and accepting that no problem has a total solution. Fascism offers a much more comfortable way out. It turns conflict into a battle between patriots and traitors, between the authentic people and those who corrupt them. It does not ask to understand the world, but is satisfied with pointing out culprits.

Socialists, trade unionists, intellectuals, foreigners, dissidents: there is always someone to blame for decadence, uncertainty, or misunderstanding the world. Fear is transformed into political energy. The leader then appears as the only one capable of imposing order, even though he himself has decisively contributed to the disorder.

Violence was the method, not an accident. Fascist squads attacked cooperatives, unions, town halls, newspapers, and party headquarters. They beat, humiliated, and murdered. But Mussolini knew how to combine the street and the palace, threat and negotiation, brutality and an appearance of legality. While his men destroyed the opposition, he presented himself to the monarchy, industrialists, and conservatives as a guarantee of stability.

Here is one of Scurati's most current warnings. Elites are not always victims of fascism: they are often its enablers. Many liberal leaders, businessmen, and large landowners believed that Mussolini was a useful instrument against the left and that, once the dirty work was done, they could control him or get rid of him. They normalized him, opened institutions to him, and called pragmatism what was an absolute lack of principles. His inconsistency was an advantage. He didn't need a coherent doctrine; it was enough for him to sense the mood of the crowd, amplify its resentment, and present himself as the embodiment of its anger.

Democracy did not fall in a single day: it was surrendered in installments, with the illusion that each concession would be temporary and reversible.

Seen from today's perspective, it is disturbing. Fascism not only repressed; it also fascinated. It offered belonging, youth, virility, community, action, and a ridiculously pompous idea of the nation. Insignificant people could suddenly feel like protagonists of history. There were parades, symbols, anthems, gestures, and uniforms. An aesthetic designed to make obedience exciting. Evil does not always have a monstrous and perfectly recognizable face. We have learned that, sometimes, it is even ridiculous. This is where Scurati meets Hannah Arendt and her idea of the banality of evil. Political evil does not need an entire society of criminals. It is enough with a crowd of normal people who stop thinking, adapt, obey, or decide that what is happening is none of their business.

Banality explains the ease with which evil spreads and the role played by spectators. It needs cowardly officials, judges who don't want complications, frivolous journalists who present abuse as eccentricity, businessmen who see opportunities in it, and citizens who prefer not to know. It needs people convinced that there is no need to exaggerate, that everything will pass, that someone will set the limit.

Therefore, knowing history and getting involved in society is not a cultural luxury. It is a civic obligation. Knowing how fascism imposed itself allows us to recognize the mechanisms before they take their final form: the dehumanization of the adversary, the reign of lies, the contempt for the democratic system, attacks on the press, the conversion of the dissenter into an enemy, and the promise of an ideal, albeit nonexistent, world.

At certain times, ignorance becomes a form of collaboration. Ignorance does not make us innocent. Those who do not want to see the degradation of institutions may end up getting used to it.

Fear is easy. It asks for protection, obedience, and culprits. Hope is more demanding: it calls for knowledge, responsibility, and courage. It does not consist in denying dangers, but in preventing them from being used to destroy what they claim to save.

Scurati's great warning is that fascism does not begin when the black shirts appear. It begins much earlier: when a society considers that force is more effective than words, that freedom is a luxury in difficult times, and that the dignity of some can be sacrificed to appease others. Fear has already begun to make its way into our time and a choice must be made. First of all, one must choose whether to be informed.