Italian Nationalist Association

Ideology

The ANI's ideology remained largely undefined for some time other than it being nationalist. The ANI was divided between supporters of different kinds of nationalism - authoritarian, democratic, moderate, and revolutionary.

Corradini, the ANI's most popular spokesman, linked leftism with nationalism by claiming that Italy was a "proletarian nation" which was being exploited by international capitalism which had led to Italy being disadvantaged economically in international trade and its people divided on class lines, but instead of advocating socialist revolution, he claimed that victory against these oppressing forces would require Italian nationalist sentiment to succeed.

Corradini occasionally used the term "national socialism" to define the ideology which he endorsed. Though this is the same term used by the movement of National Socialism in Germany (a.k.a. Nazism) no evidence exists to indicate that Corradini's use of the term had any influence.

In 1914, the ANI began to tilt towards authoritarian nationalism with its endorsement of the creation of an authoritarian corporate state, a radical idea created by Italian law professor Alfredo Rocco. Such a corporate state would be led by a corporate assembly rather than a parliament, which would be composed of unions, business organisations and other economic organisations that would work within a powerful state government to regulate business-labour relations, organise the economy, end class conflict, and make Italy an industrial state which could compete with imperial powers and establish its own empire.

Membership

Many of the ANI supporters were wealthy Italians of right-wing authoritarian nationalist background, in spite of efforts by Corradini and left-leaning nationalists to make the ANI a nationalist mass movement supported by the working-class.

Prominent members

(In alphabetical order.)

• Francesco Coppola
• Enrico Corradini
• Luigi Federzoni
• Roberto Forges Davanzati
• Ezio Maria Gray
• Maurizio Maraviglia
• Giovanni Papini
• Alfredo Rocco

Electoral results

Italian Parliament

Notes

References

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