WHEN WE REBEL: Clashing Narratives and the Making of Subversive Identities

Individuals sometimes take extraordinary personal risks to resist and fight oppressive regimes. Material incentives alone fail to fully explain these life-threatening decisions, which appear to be largely driven by a profound sense of injustice and strong emotional motivations. This paper provides evidence of the significant role that immaterial incentives play in motivating rebellion, by examining the formation of subversive identities in Italy following World War I. We reconstruct the history of Italian families, tracing patterns of dissent and rebellion from the early 20th century through World War II. Using these novel data, we examine how a government propaganda campaign—the passage of the train carrying the Unknown Soldier—interacted with personal histories of grievance and loss, fostering the formation of subversive identities and increasing the likelihood of rebellion against the rising Fascist regime. Looking at individual participation in the armed resistance in WWII, we next isolate the longer-term role of the post-WWI propaganda campaign, the emergence of oppositional identities within families, and the role of early political dissenters in catalyzing the armed fight that put an end to the dictatorship.