Emilio Gentile

After this initial period of defensiveness and so on and so forth, which went down all the way, you know, after that time, she opened up to a number of other approaches.

She opened up to the secularization of politics, the Emilio Gentile idea.

She opened up to the transnational approach to fascism.

We worked a little bit together when I had this kind of period pet that I used to call parafascism, which was my attempt to say, loosen up, guys, loosen up.

And what, uh, fascist regimes understood very well, um, is this communal dimension that, uh, theater Has and they, they mapped it onto their own political aspirations.

So both Italian fascism and national socialism were obsessed with creating what, uh, historian Emilio Gentile has called, uh, sacralization of politics, so turning political life into a form of, of ritual.

And Greek theater, with its roots in a religious festival, a chorus speaking for a community, its open-air setting capable of holding thousands of spectators, all of these elements offered the perfect model for exactly this kind of political event.

But it's a cultural event, but it is used for political purposes.