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With the March on Rome in October 1922—when Mussolini became prime minister—and later, in 1925—when he began establishing his dictatorship—the theoretical foundations that Papini had gestated for many years rapidly became a political reality. That this state of things did not exactly follow Papini's dream is of little importance. And our author in fact chose, at least at the beginning, a low profile, functioning more as a cultural repository for the regime when the need arose to award top positions in the Italian academia to loyal intellectuals. The central issue for us here is one in which the popular element is essential—and as we observed in the previous chapter, Papini's elitism for the most part precludes a direct access to it. Papini envisions and merely activates a mechanism that only a second generation of intellectuals and militants would take up and fully develop. For once power had been seized through the occupation of the government and the rapid control of its entire key administrative branches, Fascism still faced a hard task. It had to consolidate its authority over the most unstable and heterogeneous element of the country: its people.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137476869_3

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