CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (22)
By:
March 18, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… anti-fascist art! Series edited by Josh Glenn.
I often have blind faith in the artists. I think of us as norm-challenging, open-minded, risk-taking: all things that I imagine to be antifascist. But it’s a fantasy. Artists can turn that dark corner just as easily as anyone else can.
Case in point: The Futurists. Their dream seems to have been to eradicate the romanticization of tradition and replace it with a romanticization of industrialization. But also, they wanted war and destruction for its own sake — as a kind of social hygiene program.
Needless to say, many of the Italian Futurists were thrilled to support Mussolini when he rose to power. As enlisted military, but also through propaganda-spreading art, poetry, and performance art happenings. Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published the first manifesto for Futurism in 1909 that included the glorification of war, militarism, patriotism and contempt for women among its predicating ideals.
The Futurists’ most bizarre political stance was against pasta.
In 1932, Marinetti published a cookbook containing mostly farcical recipes. For example, “The Great Waters” served anchovy paste on a communion wafer floating in a bowl of equal proportions gin, grappa, kümmel, and anisette. “New Year’s Lunch” involved a live turkey racing around the table while diners ate a cooked one.
The book also made a serious argument for treating food as fuel rather than as a pleasure or communal activity. Their ideal was nutrition in state-produced supplements, with dining reserved for artistic entertainment only. In this view, pasta was stodgy anathema — a symbol of all that was wrong with Italy, or as Marinetti summed it up, an “absurd Italian gastronomic religion.”
Mussolini borrowed Marinetti’s logic to fuel a campaign against pasta — to shift wartime food production towards ingredients that were easily cultivated in Italy (wheat at the time was not among them.) But the people were.not.having.it. Both men’s attacks on pasta were met with populist outrage covered by press as far away as Australia.
On the days following 25 Luglio, the Italian independence day marking the fall of fascism in 1943, pasta was reclaimed in public space to celebrate.
Alcide Cervi, a farmer and staunch member of the resistance, and his seven sons (who were executed soon after) took to the streets with barrel after barrel of pasta, seasoned with butter and cheese, to share with neighbors as a marker of their freedom from the fascist regime and its rationing of wheat.
The tradition is kept alive now by the Istituto Alcide Cervi di Gattatico, a research center of fascism and the resistance in Reggio Emilia, which lists over 300 separate public pasta-eating events occurring annually in Italy. And many more happen around the world on every July 25th.
Should you want to resist fascism yourself at home on this date or any other, a recipe based on the Cervi’s original one can be found here.
CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON | Lynn Peril on ZAZOUS | Judith Zissman on DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI | Annie Nocenti on MEDIUM COOL | Mike Watt on FASCIST | William Nericcio on LALO ALCARAZ | Josh Glenn on THE LADY VANISHES | Carlo Rotella on INQUIETUD | Heather Quinlan on CASABLANCA | Adam McGovern on HEART OF GLASS (MAD JENNY) | Matthew Battles on WOODY’S GUITAR | Carl Wilson on PALACES OF GOLD | Ramona Lyons on UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED | Lucy Sante on CAMOUFLAGE | Adelina Vaca on THE LIVES OF OTHERS | Tom Nealon on THE BARON IN THE TREES | Nikhil Singh on PARIS PEASANT | Mandy Keifetz on THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED | Gordon Dahlquist on THE CONFORMIST | Michael Grasso on PYNCHONIAN RESISTANCE | Gabriela Pedranti on THE ETERNAUT | Heather Kapplow on ANTI-FASCIST PASTA | Marc Weidenbaum on (WHAT’S SO FUNNY ’BOUT) PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING | Peggy Nelson on PUPPETS | Sonia Marques on CARNATIONS AGITPROP.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!