Republican Fascist Party

The Republican Fascist Party (Italian: Partito Fascista Repubblicano, PFR) was a political party in Italy led by Benito Mussolini during the German occupation of Central and Northern Italy and was the sole legal representative party of the Italian Social Republic. The PFR was the successor to the National Fascist Party but was more influenced by pre-1922 early radical fascism and anti-monarchism, as its members considered King Victor Emmanuel III to be a traitor after his signing of the surrender to the Allies.

Republican Fascist Party Partito Fascista Repubblicano
Abbreviation	PFR
Duce	Benito Mussolini
Secretary	Alessandro Pavolini
Founded	13 September 1943
Dissolved	2 May 1945[lower-alpha 1]
Preceded by	National Fascist Party
Succeeded by	Italian Social Movement (de facto)
Headquarters	Palazzo Castani, Milan
Newspaper	Il Lavoro Fascista
Paramilitary wing	Black Brigades (from 1944)
Membership	900,000 (1943 est.)
Ideology	Italian fascism Sansepolcrismo Anti-monarchism Pro-Nazism[1][2][3][4][5]
Political position	Far-right[6][7]
Colours	Black[8]
Anthem	"Giovinezza"[9]
Party flag
Politics of Italy Political parties Elections

History

Alessandro Pavolini (right), Secretary of the PFR and commander in chief of the Black Brigades, and Vincenzo Costa (centre), commander of "Aldo Resega" Black Brigade, during a ceremony in Milan, late 1944

After the Nazi-engineered Gran Sasso raid liberated Mussolini, the National Fascist Party (PNF) was revived on 13 September 1943 as the Republican Fascist Party (PFR) and as the single party of the Northern and Nazi-protected Italian Social Republic, informally known as the Salò Republic. Its secretary was Alessandro Pavolini.

Due to the strong control of the Germans, the party's power in the context of the Republic of Salò was always very limited. To obviate this inherent weakness, the party tried to obtain the support of the few population strata who still sympathised with fascism.^[10] In the provinces under the control of the Germans it was organised into three entities called Administrative, Assistance, and Political.^[11] The Assistance, also called the National Fascist Assistance Body, was formed in early October 1943. In the minds of the party leaders, the Assistance was to be a continuation of the powerful cadres of militants and volunteers of the former National Fascist Party.^[11]

The PFR did not outlast Mussolini's execution and the disappearance of the Salò state in April 1945. However, it inspired the creation of the Italian Social Movement (MSI)^[12] and the MSI has been seen as the successor to the PFR and the PNF.^[13] The MSI was formed by former Fascist leaders and veterans of the National Republican Army of the Salò republic.^[14] The party tried to modernise and revise fascist doctrine into a more moderate and sophisticated direction.^[15]

Giuseppe Pizzirani [it] led the PFR organisation in Rome until April 1944, when he was named Deputy Secretary of the national party organisation.^[16]

Ideology

The PFR sought to reconnect the new party with pre-1922 radical fascism. This move attracted parts of the fascist 'Old Guard', who had been sidelined after Mussolini had come to power in 1922. The new party was, however, internally divided, with different internal tendencies vying for Mussolini's support, and whilst the PFR revived some of the early revolutionary fascist discourse, it did not return to the anti-clerical positions of the early fascist movement.^[17]

In addition, the party promoted a revolutionary^[18][19] form of Italian nationalism,^{[20][21][22][23]} antisemitism,^[24][25] anti-liberalism,^[26][27] anti-communism,^[28] anti-capitalism,^[29] anti-monarchism and republicanism.

Secretary of the PFR

Main article: List of secretaries of Italian fascist parties

• Alessandro Pavolini (15 November 1943 – 28 April 1945)

National Congress

• 1st National Congress – Verona, 14–15 November 1943

References

1. Banned by the Constitution of Italy on 22 December 1947

1. Arrigo Petacco, Il comunista in camicia nera: Nicola Bombacci tra Lenin e Mussolini, Milano, Mondadori, 1997.
2. Roberto D'Angeli, Storia del Partito Fascista Repubblicano, Roma, Castelvecchi, 2016.
3. Guerrazzi, Amedeo Osti. "9 From Fascism to the Italian Civil War: The Republican Fascist’s Identity from 1943 to 1945." Italy and the Second World War. Brill, 2018. 203-223.
4. Roggi, Alessandra. "The role of ideology in the Italian Social Republic (1943-1945)." The role of ideology in the Italian Social Republic (1943-1945) (2015): 676-687.
5. Berardi, Silvio. "L’impossibile dialogo tra repubblicani fascisti e repubblicani storici (ottobre 1943-aprile 1944)." MONDO CONTEMPORANEO 2015/1 (2015).
6. Mack Smith, Denis (1983). Mussolini. New York, NY: Vintage Books. pp. 43, 44. ISBN 0394716582.
7. Raniolo, Francesco (2013). I partiti politici. Roma: Editori Laterza. pp. 116–117.
8. Adams, Sean; Morioka, Noreen; Stone, Terry Lee (2006). Color Design Workbook: A Real World Guide to Using Color in Graphic Design. Gloucester, Mass.: Rockport Publishers. pp. 86. ISBN 159253192X. OCLC 60393965.
9. Olick, Jeffrey K. 2003. States of Memory-CL: continuities, conflicts, and transformations in national retrospection. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3063-6. p. 69.
10. Roberto., D'Angeli (2019). Storia del partito fascista repubblicano. Castelvecchi. ISBN 978-88-3282-582-4. OCLC 1091262426.
11. Dianella Gagliani, Il Partito nel Fascismo Repubblicano Delle Origini: Una Prima Messa a Punto, in Rivista di Storia Contemporanea, vol. 23, n. 1/2, 1º gennaio 1994, pp. 130-169.
12. Davies, Peter; Lynch, Derek (2002). The Routledge Companion to Fascism and the Far Right. Routledge. p. 328. ISBN 978-0-203-99472-6.
13. Levy, 1996, p. 188.
14. Ignazi, 1998, p. 157.
15. Stanley Payne (1992). "Fascism". In Mary E. Hawkesworth; Maurice Kogan (eds.). Encyclopedia of Government and Politics. Psychology Press. p. 177. ISBN 978-0-415-07224-3.
16. Claudia Baldoli; Brendan Fleming (25 September 2014). A British Fascist in the Second World War: The Italian War Diary of James Strachey Barnes, 1943-45. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 211. ISBN 978-1-4725-0789-1.
17. John Pollard (22 July 2005). The Fascist Experience in Italy. Routledge. p. 116. ISBN 978-1-134-81904-1.
18. Griffin, 2000, pp. 31–35
19. Kallis, 2008, p. 515
20. Grčić, Joseph. Ethics and Political Theory (Lanham, Maryland: University of America, Inc, 2000) p. 120.

    • Griffin, Roger and Matthew Feldman, eds., Fascism: Fascism and Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2004) p. 185.
    • Jackson J. Spielvogel. Western Civilization. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2012. p. 935.
21. Stanley G. Payne. A History of Fascism, 1914–1945. p. 106.
22. Roger Griffin, "Nationalism" in Cyprian Blamires, ed., World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, vol. 2 (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2006), pp. 451–53.
23. Riley, Dylan (2010). The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain, and Romania, 1870–1945. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-8018-9427-5.
24. L' antisemitismo nella Repubblica Sociale Italiana. Repertorio delle fonti conservate all'Archivio centrale dello Stato, Libreria Universitaria
25. La Repubblica sociale italiana e la persecuzione degli ebrei
26. Jim Powell, "The Economic Leadership Secrets of Benito Mussolini", Forbes, 22 February 2012
27. Eugen Weber. The Western Tradition: From the Renaissance to the present. Heath, 1972. Pp. 791.
28. Stanislao G. Pugliese. Fascism, anti-fascism, and the resistance in Italy: 1919 to the present. Oxford, England, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004. pp. 43–44.
29. Rimbotti, 2018