Motorsport and Fascism

Book excerpt: This book is the first English-language study of motorsport and Italian Fascism, arguing that a synergy existed between motor racing and Fascism that did not exist with other sports. Motorsport was able to bring together the two dominant, and often opposed, cultural roots of Fascism, the Futurism of F. T. Marinetti, and the Decadence associated with Gabriele D’Annunzio. The book traces this cultural convergence through a topical study of motorsport in the 1920s and 1930s placing it in the context of the history of sport under Mussolini’s regime. Chapters discuss the centrality of speed and death in Fascist culture, the attempt to transform Rome into a motorsport capital, the architectural and ideological function of the Monza and Tripoli and autodromes, and two chapters on the importance of the Mille Miglia, a genuine Fascist artefact that became one of the most legendary motor races of all time.