The development of anti-Fascism in Italy was a laborious and difficult process: whereas a few had grasped the true nature of Fascism, many others believed Fascism to be a temporary phenomenon or that it might be transferred into the frame of legality or ‘normalised’. What made a large part of Italian intellectuals wait and see? Why did anti-Fascism reach its turning point only as late as 1924–1925?

The interpretation of Fascism as a kind of “totalitarianism” has been the subject of controversies lasting over many years. This contribution tries to consolidate our understanding of Fascist totalitarianism by discussing its interpretations by early anti-Fascism. The latter’s representatives – Liberals, Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Socialists – grasped the “totalitarian” features of a movement before it had established as a one-party regime, and they coined the term itself.

Outside Italy, little is known of the anti-Fascism of Francesco Luigi Ferrari, one of the closest allies of Sicilian priest and Christian Democrat Luigi Sturzo. Based on his most important publications before and after his exile (1926), the contribution pursues this crucial question: Did Ferrari, in ways similar to Sturzo’s, combine anti-Fascism with anti-totalitarianism? How did he comparatively classify Italian Fascism as a movement and a regime? To which analytical categories did he reach back for this purpose? Did he change his attitude over time?

Der Journalist und politische Schriftsteller Piero Gobetti ist eines der prominentesten Opfer des Faschismus. Der Beitrag unternimmt den Versuch, den Inhalt und die Instrumente seines (wesentlich kulturellen) Antifaschismus zu erfassen. Die zentrale These lautet: Gobetti bekämpfte den Faschismus im Namen seines politischen Projekts einer zivilen und ökonomischen Modernisierung des Staates. Seine zentrale Idee war die einer „liberalen Revolution“, entwickelt im Geist der Erneuerung der Jahre nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Da er Faschismus ausschließlich als italienisches Phänomen ansah, stand er an der Grenze zwischen dem Zeitalter des Liberalismus und dem des Totalitarismus. Dennoch sind die Stärke seiner „Rhetorik“ und die Effektivität seines kulturellen Antifaschismus von hoher Relevanz für die Gegenwart.

The contribution analyses the historical and the present fundamentals of anti-Fascism. In present-day Germany there exist organisation-, action- and discourse-oriented kinds of anti-Fascism. Most of all the political party Die Linke champions anti-Fascism, as becomes obvious, among other aspects, from their support of including an anti-Fascism clause into the Basic Law and the constitutions of the Federal States. The author rejects anti-Fascism, yet he speaks out in favour of anti-extremism as an alternative.