Il popolo corporativo del fascismo. Aporie e variazioni

There is no need to recall that the very newspaper Benito Mussolini started his career as a Fascist with was headed “Il Popolo d’Italia”, to agree with Federico Finchelstein’s argument on the genetic link between fascism and populism, as part of a historical continuum that, whilst reversible and still viable, originated in post-WWI Italy and affected the "transatlantic" 20th century. From a political point of view, however, Italian fascist experience was not confined to the leader/crowd dialogue, patriotic sacralized politics, subversive “anti-elitist” appeals, and other traits of the populist choreography which formed the distictive political liturgy made known by Mosse and Gentile. Indeed, the defining political feature brought about by Italian Fascism, the one that was supposed to replace political franchise with an all-encompassing representation the people in its concrete entirety - and which in fact was for some years the theme of a successful cultural foreign policy on a transnational level - was its authoritarian brand of corporatist organicism. Corporatist “people” was not an indeterminate unity; authoritarian corporatism assumed a structured, organized and de-politicised people, defined by hierarchically arranged social affiliations. Corporatist “people” was shaped by intermediate bodies, and was not trusted to act politically, unless governed. The ambivalences of Fascist populism might therefore be worth of further investigation. In this contribution a tentative historical semantics of the concept of “people” is presented, starting with a reconsideration of Giuseppe Bottai’s works, then analysing some of the debates generated in his journals (Critica Fascista and Archivio di studi corporativi especially), and finally taking into account its legacy across the post war – and post-fascist – decades.