Paramilitary Violence in Italy: The Rationale of Fascism and the Origins of Totalitarianism

Italy was the first liberal country in which a paramilitary movement assumed power. In his contribution to this volume Emilio Gentile demonstrates how the practice and culture of paramilitary violence paved the way for the emergence, expansion and success of fascism and, consequently, for the laying of the foundations of a new type of political regime in Italy that opened the way to the rise of totalitarianism in Western Europe. [publisher]