Fascismo e dittatura in Ignazio Silone: Contorni di un modello di ordine politico mai "passato"

The idea that «fascism» should be considered kind of a «product of the past», which might emerge never again, seems to be not completely convincing, if that does not mean simply that it cannot emerge again in exactly the same form. As a matter of fact, if we indicate with the term «fascism» a model of political order characterized by specific assumptions, it can emerge in any time and place, in the presence of the contextual conditions allowing people to select and recombine again those assumptions in a different, and yet recognizable, way. In this article I consider two works by Ignazio Silone, Il fascismo (1934) and La scuola dei dittatori (1938), specifically devoted to fascism and dictator(ship) and their presuppositions, at the aim to show their relevance for rethinking «fascism» in current times.