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# This antifascist celebration focuses on pasta
- URL: https://www.theplatia.com/this-antifascist-celebration-focuses-on-pasta/
- Published: 2026-07-27T20:31:22.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-27T20:31:22.000Z
- Author: Annemarie Dooling

It’s time for **pastasciutta antifascista**, a celebration that stems from the arrest of Benito Mussolini.

As early as the 1920s, Mussolini launched an anti-pasta campaign to promote nationalism, encouraging Italians to eat homegrown rice rather than imported wheat. Although Italy produced its own wheat, it couldn’t keep up with demand for pasta and other wheat products. Mussolini declared November 1, 1927, National Rice Day and established the National Rice Board to oversee marketing and production. Today, Italy [produces about 50%](https://italysegreta.com/panissa-in-the-po-valley/?ref=theplatia.com) of the European Union’s rice.

Mussolini believed that replacing pasta with rice would create a more dynamic and fit Italy, and he wasn’t alone. By 1932, [cookbooks appeared](https://food52.com/story/19324-meet-the-italians-who-thought-pasta-wouldn-t-last?ref=theplatia.com) urging Italians to stop eating pasta. Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti believed that pasta promoted a gloomy life, [writing](https://emikodavies.substack.com/p/pasta-antifascista-for-july-25), “Pasta is anti-virile because a heavy, bloated stomach does not encourage physical enthusiasm for a woman, nor favour the possibility of possessing her at any time.”

Despite these attempts to all but ban pasta, Italians didn’t stop eating it. In July 1943, when Mussolini was arrested, farming families in the Emilia-Romagna region celebrated by sharing bowls of simple pasta with butter and cheese.

More recent critics have argued that Marinetti’s cookbook was a [“kooky treat”](https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/21/futurist-cookbook-marinetti/?ref=theplatia.com) of satire and that efforts to reduce Italy’s reliance on pasta were simply a wartime necessity. But we can’t ignore that the farming family who began the **pastasciutta antifascista** tradition—the Cervi brothers—[were executed](https://jacobin.com/2026/07/pasta-antifascism-cervi-brothers-italy?fbclid=IwY2xjawTUjX1leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFMTGVucnF1Z1NkSmtPaEk5c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHoxjkAuxwc5Tg23Ky%5Fjkgjo01evZt4S8WMXnKI6TKEfhnszAu8kh789B4J1M%5Faem%5FmvNFrjBUEU-oLqqJW6ryEg&ref=theplatia.com) by soldiers of the Italian Social Republic, the final incarnation of the Italian Fascist state. At the time, pasta was not the romantic fork twirl featured on Positano tourism posters, but peasant food that sustained rural laborers through a day’s work. “Macaroni eater” was used as an insult to Neapolitan street food. 

But pasta is still around, and remains a meal of resistance, [eaten by Italian antifascists every year on or around July 25](https://www-lacucinaitaliana-it.translate.goog/article/pastasciutta-antifascista/?%5Fx%5Ftr%5Fsl=auto&%5Fx%5Ftr%5Ftl=en&%5Fx%5Ftr%5Fhl=en&%5Fx%5Ftr%5Fpto=wapp&ref=theplatia.com).

**The Platia will be serving this meal at our Friday Free Food Picnic in Mifflin Square Park at 2pm. Come enjoy a free bowl of pasta with butter and cheese while reflecting on what we can learn from the farmers and mutual aid groups who helped keep their communities safe during times of struggle.**

If you'd like to be part of the event, just show up to the park and meet [all of our wonderful mutual aid groups](https://www.theplatia.com/behind-the-scenes-of-free-food-distribution/) who do this work every week.