"I spoke the other day to the art historian Vanni Scheiwiler who publishes in Milan. But Signor Scheiwiler is pessimistic; he says that under the influence of the new conformism the city, after all the cultural centre of Italy, has been undergoing a decline in intellectual vitality. Anyone who comes up with something that does not fit in with the line is promptly put down by being called a Fascist. The word Fascist is reported so often that one wonders whether it hasn’t lost all meaning! This reminded me of what Ignazio Silone said in 1945 soon after he returned to Italy from his Zurich exile: “The fascism of tomorrow will never say ‘I am Facism’. It will say: ‘I am anti-Facism’.”"
Ignazio Silone

January 1, 1970