ABSTRACT
At the start of the century, the predominant ideologies in Italy were represented by the Nationalists, Futurists and the followers of D’Annunzio. Nationalization, regeneration and modernization of the country and defence of the race came together in the Fascist revolution headed by Benito Mussolini after the Great War. Fascism very soon became a political ‘religion’ in which subscription to myths, rites and symbols were linked to faith in Mussolini, the ‘envoy of destiny’. A Superman was proposed and promulgated. This new Italian, virile, dynamic, bellicose, was embodied by Mussolini who, through both his personal charisma and insistent propaganda, created a myth of himself, by successfully adapting the image of the Nietzschean Superman to the Superman of the Italian forma mentis (Italian mentality).
