The Existence Of Totalitarianism And Racist Italy

The existence of the church, an organisation which many Italians would consider to be a higher authority than any government, by definition means that fascist Italy was not and cannot have been a totalitarian regime.

The other major institute which prevented Italy from being a totalitarian state was the Church, and despite the Lateran pacts there was still a lot of friction between the youth organisations. An uneasy relationship continued until disagreement over the anti-Semitic race laws sparked another clash with the regime.

As well as this, the factories were still owned by rich industrialists, huge estates in the south were still owned by the families that had owned them for centuries, and the monarchy still existed, with a monarchy that had the constitutional power to dismiss the prime minister.
Each of those reasons on their own are enough to prove that totalitarianism was not achieved by Mussolini, but the existence of all them at the same time shows just how unsuccessful fascist totalitarianism was.
An example of a truly totalitarian state would be Stalin’s Russia; a stark contrast to the feeble attempts at totalitarianism in
Italy.