ABSTRACT
Renzo De Felice's contention that fascism was, by the early 1930s, very much a regime based on the mass consensus of the Italians was widely contested at its publication, but it seems subsequently to have acquired a surprising degree of acceptance. Under totalitarian regimes, people's fears are obviously related to the question of repression, sometimes to that of terror. Fascism boasted that it had developed a system of social services that was among the most advanced in Europe—a claim that has been reproduced rather uncritically in much of the subsequent literature on the subject. The position attributed to an individual in the social hierarchy was extremely important in deciding the way in which he or she was treated, therefore. This inevitably gave considerable discretionary power to those fascist authorities responsible for determining classes and categories within the hierarchy.
