Cultura fascista o cultura nel ventennio?

This essay analyses the controversial relationship between cultural production and the Fascist regime, investigating whether a specific ‘Fascist culture’ – distinct from a more general ‘culture of the twenty-year period’ – actually existed. Through a methodological distinction between Fascism as a movement and Fascism as a regime, the author demonstrates how the regime’s ideology had already taken on a mature and cohesive form by the mid-1920s. The core of the essay charts the profound theoretical and political convergence between Giovanni Gentile’s philosophical ‘actualism’ and Alfredo Rocco’s legal nationalism, both of which were aimed at building an ethical, authoritarian and all-encompassing state.