Abstract

Building on the reflections carried out by contemporary opponents and observers on the advent of fascism (e.g., Angelo Tasca, Emilio Lussu, Luigi Salvatorelli, Antonio Gramsci), the article focuses on two questions: the continuity/ discontinuity between the liberal and the fascist State; the authoritarian/ totalitarian nature of the fascist regime. For what concerns the first issue, the article supports the thesis whereby the regime was founded and may be identified according to the legal rupture that was brought about by the systemic and permanent use of political violence. For what concerns the latter issue, starting from Emilio Gentile’s historiographical thesis on the understanding of fascism as a «totalitarian experiment», it enhances the intrinsically dynamic nature of totalitarianism as a continuing process which has never been fully accomplished.