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Violence in Fascist Criminal Law Discourse: War, Repression and Anti-Democracy

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Abstract

This article constructs a critical historical, political and theoretical analysis of the essence of Fascist criminal law discourse in terms of the violence that shaped and characterised it. The article examines the significance of violence in key declarations about the role and purpose of criminal law by Alfredo Rocco, Fascist Minister of Justice and leading ideologue, in his principal speech on the final draft of the 1930 Italian Penal Code. It is grounded on the premise that criminal law is particularly significant for understanding the relationship between State power and individuals, and so what was distinctive about Fascist thinking in this regard. The article analyses Rocco’s declarations as a discourse in order to highlight their contextual foundations, construction and ideological connections. It argues that the core theme of that discourse is violence, which has three principal dimensions: a close historical and rhetorical connection with war, a focus on repressive and intimidatory force, and a paramount concern with subordinating individuals to State interests. The article then uses this analysis to develop a theoretical reading of the nexus between criminal law and violence in Fascism, in terms of its foundations and reversal of ends and means. The article thus provides an original perspective on Fascism and criminal law, which it argues is important for critical engagement with criminal law discourse in our democracies today.

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Notes

  1. This article follows the usual convention of using the capitalised terms ‘Fascist’ and ‘Fascism’ to refer to the regime’s specific Italian manifestation, and an uncapitalised ‘fascist’ and ‘fascism’ in a generic sense [34, p. 1]. Although some references are made to the idea of generic fascism, the article focuses on Italian Fascism.

  2. Fraser makes a similar argument in relation to Nazi criminal law [22, pp. 97–98].

  3. The Penal Code was completed in 1930 and came into force in July 1931, coming to be known as the Rocco Code after Alfredo Rocco and his brother, Arturo, who was also a key influence on its formulation. It is a paradigm example of the problematic connections between the Fascist past and the present, as it is still in force today albeit after extensive reforms. It is important to recall though that the Penal Code was not the only ‘Fascist code’ with a significant post-Fascist afterlife. The Penal Procedure Code, arguably even more indicative of Fascist intentions and practice, was also introduced in 1931 but was replaced in 1989. The Civil Code and Civil Procedure Code, introduced in 1942, have like the Penal Code remained in force but with numerous amendments. For general discussion see [66, pp. 183–206 and on the Penal Code 68].

  4. In this analysis, reference is also made to ideology in order to indicate systems of belief or political thought as factors within Rocco’s discourse. The term ideology could perhaps be used instead of discourse, because it too could include the interaction of Rocco’s beliefs, intentions and rationalizations with ‘the external “supra-personal” forces which condition human existence’ [34, pp. 15–17]. However, given the particular Marxist connotations of the term ideology—perhaps especially in the context of an analysis of Fascism—discourse is preferred here as the main term.

  5. A full bibliographical survey is not possible here, but key works on Rocco, Fascism and law include [33, 47, 66, 74].

  6. The term ‘totalitarian’ was first used in relation to Italian Fascism but has since been used predominantly in relation to Nazism and Communism. Principal studies here include [3, 23]. Specifically on Italy see [15].

  7. Engagement with the decades-long struggle to define Fascism and an outline of its principal features is beyond the scope of this article. A useful analysis and bibliographical survey may be found in Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism; Griffin also provides an influential analysis of some key theoretical approaches and disagreements in the field [52, pp. 221–249, 34, pp. 1–25]. Major but not uncontroversial Italian studies include De Felice [19] (for discussion see [10, p. 2, 50]) and Gentile [26, 27].

  8. This could in itself be seen as a violent act of linguisitic and conceptual positioning [61, p. 9]. A full intellectual history of meanings of violence falls beyond the scope of this study, for there are as many meanings and implications as there are theoretical usages.

  9. See notes 29–30 and related text on Futurism and Sorelianism, below.

  10. The 1926 Leggi Fascistissimi, or ‘ultra-Fascist laws’ were introduced under Alfredo Rocco’s direction in order to consolidate the Fascist grip on power. These laws included the reintroduction of the death penalty and other repressive measures to deal with political opposition. See in particular [13, pp. 407–473].

  11. It is important to note that an emphasis on the difference between Fascist claims, or propaganda, about the Code and its substance became a crucial part of the post-Second World War reform debate [54].

  12. Mussolini formed the Partito Nazionale Fascista in 1921 and, benefitting from the anarchy his own followers had caused, led the so-called March on Rome in 1922.

  13. On this point see further the discussion in [38, p. 30, 41, pp. 60–61, 4, pp. 48–53]. In his floridly Fascist tribute to Rocco, Mezzetti represented all Rocco’s ideas as being inherently Fascist, an incorrect elision criticised by Gregor [42, 33, p. 60 fn 60].

  14. As noted by Sbriccoli, Rocco’s discourse on criminal law is a body of intentions and political argument rather than actual criminal legal doctrine: [64, p. 1009].

  15. Predominantly made up of ex-soldiers, Sorelian revolutionaries and Futurists, Mussolini’s newly-formed Fasci di combattimento of 1919 gathered momentum from 1920 through the vigilantism and violent activities of his armed supporters, known as squadri [21]. Mussolini then used the ongoing squadrist violence (including the infamous murder in 1924 of the socialist member of parliament, Giacomo Matteotti, who opposed his activities) to his advantage by consolidating his grip on power [11, pp. 210–214].

  16. Author’s translation.

  17. Author’s translation.

  18. Author’s translation. This section of Rocco’s Report to the King reproduces his earlier speech on the project for the new ‘Law for State Defence’, the ultra-Fascist law of 1926 that first reintroduced the death penalty [57, pp. 849–855].

  19. Violence and law in relation to Fascism were also discussed by another key Fascist intellectual, Sergio Panunzio. Panunzio devoted much attention to the relationship between law, force and violence, arguing that the latter has an inherent morality and legitimacy when it is used to defend community rights, or when it constitutes a necessary revolutionary change in the interests of the community that is not otherwise possible within an existing legal order [51, p. 70, 33, pp. 61–84].

  20. Rocco’s position in relation to positivist and classical criminology, and the influence of his brother, Arturo Rocco in developing the ‘technical legal’ approach to criminal law fall beyond the scope of this discussion: see further [62, pp. 522–534].

  21. Author’s translation.

  22. For further discussion of Fascism and continuity, as opposed to Fascism as an exceptional parenthesis in Italian history see [2, p. 12].

  23. For more detailed consideration see [73].

  24. Author’s translation.

  25. Significantly, in his earlier speech on the death penalty in 1926 Rocco also emphasised the fact that leading contemporary democracies had retained the death penalty [57, pp. 847–849].

  26. The Fascist doctrine of the strong State was not the sole product of Rocco’s ideas, however, and was also influenced by other key Fascist thinkers, as well as Mussolini’s own political doctrine [48, pp. 780–784, 33].

  27. The speech delivered on 30th August 1925 in Perugia was entitled ‘The Political Doctrine of Fascism’ and came to be one of his landmark works for Fascist doctrine [58].

  28. As Neocleous argues with regard to generic fascism ‘Far from being a parenthesis in European history, fascism is a product of philosophico-political struggles within European intellectual, cultural and political history, and … is in turn constitutive of that history’ [45, pp. ix–x].

  29. According to Paxton, Futurism ‘dismissed the cultural legacies of the past’ and ‘praised the liberating and vitalizing qualities of speed and violence’ [52, p. 6, 9]. From its beginnings in Filippo Marinetti’s delineation of literary Futurism in 1909, the movement became a pro-war political force at the outbreak of World War I [52, p. 6, 65]. The Futurists were only part of the Fascist intellectual corpus and later diverged from it [33, pp. 252–254].

  30. Sorel’s writing idealised the dynamic and unifying action of the general strike, and subsequently nationalist revolution, as a ‘mythical’ violence that could galvanise the proletariat, and from it the nation as a whole, into throwing off the chains of liberalism and democracy [52, pp. 32–33, 60, 70, 31, p. 54].

  31. On modernism and the Enlightenment more generally see [6].

  32. Author’s translation.

  33. Author’s translation. In this part Rocco goes on to declare that in such an understanding it is clear that it is at times necessary to sacrifice the individual to the ends of society through capital punishment: see excerpt above comparing the death penalty with war.

  34. This refrain was central to Fascist thought more generally, appearing frequently in declarations of Fascist ideology by Mussolini and Gentile [45, pp. 24–25, 29, pp. 303–304].

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Acknowledgments

This article is based in part on a paper presented at the SOLON conference on Crime, Violence and the Modern State: Law, Order and Individual Rights, University of Lyon, 10th September 2011. It is largely the product of research carried out with the financial assistance of British Academy Small Grant SG101739 at Florence University’s Social Sciences Library and the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt in 2011, and the British Library in 2012. I gratefully acknowledge the support of those institutions and thank Catherine Dupré, David Fraser, Richard Ireland, Anthony Musson and this journal’s anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier version. Any errors are my own.

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Skinner, S. Violence in Fascist Criminal Law Discourse: War, Repression and Anti-Democracy. Int J Semiot Law 26, 439–458 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-012-9296-3

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