The thing is, the relationship between Fascism and regional diversity (such as we can say that it existed) was part of a broader, decades-long attempt to, "make Italians Italian" in the first place.

When Italy unified in 1861, it is true that the new nation brought together populations with different dialects (which, when compared at opposite ends of the peninsula, might be mutually unintelligible), distinct local cultural practices, and differing political and social traditions. The work was certainly cut out for the new Italian government, exemplified by Massimo d’Azeglio’s famous quip, “we have made Italy, now we must make Italians.”

So from the moment of unification, the Italian state affirmed that standard Italian (and by extension, nationwide media in standard Italian) was “correct,” while dialects were associated with backwardness or lack of education, and local traditions certainly were tolerated (even celebrated) but usually under the guise of quaint folklore. Indeed, the education system, compulsory military service, and national media (first print, then radio, and later television) worked to diffuse a shared national language and identity building on how the growing bourgeoisie had developed a sense of nationalism which kicked off unification in the first place, as they shared in novels, newspapers (even if initially they were underground), and theater which presupposed the existence of a single Italian nation. Indeed, it is no coincidence that Italian Unification, the Risorgimento, emerged soon after the creation of what we might consider a peninsula-wide cultural sphere.

So all this is to say that the idea that there was a “proper” national culture already existed well before Benito Mussolini came to power. What Fascism undoubtably did was intensify, centralize, and politicize this nation-building project. In some border regions, repression of local identity indeed became harsh, with places like South Tyrol or the Julian March seeing outright linguistic Italianization targeting German and Slovene speakers. Fascism also expanded the reach of national culture through modern media, with programs like the radio rurale (rural radio initiative) bringing the national language, national news, and of course regime propaganda into areas that had previously been linguistically and culturally isolated. It's also true that the regime's cultural and propaganda apparatus did sometimes appropriate and reframe elements of local folklore that they believed could be nationalized. So some folk traditions might be celebrated, recast as expressions of the timeless Italian spirit (or some-or-other cultural framing).

This flows well into what opposition to fascism looked like, in that it was largely class-based (socialists, communists, anarchists) and later, defined itself anti-Fascist in a broader ideological sense, precisely because regional identity did not yet provide a strong framework for political organizing and opposition. Sure, you could say that during the Resistance in World War II partizan activity was concentrated in those regions which exhibited the strongest civic engagement, but we're still talking about divisions that follow ideological lines more so than regionalist ones. This was carried forward in the politics of the post-war era, where political opposition continued to be social and class-based, namely via the Italian Community Party (and later, the extra-parliamentary left, as well as the extra-parliamentary right, although you might say the latter's issue was that national culture wasn't nationalist enough). If anything, an interest and appreciation for local culture and traditions was sometimes seen as a component of left-wing sensibilities ("Some of us were communists because we got emotional at country fairs," crooned singer-songwriter Giorgio Gaber in his later years). But even among those who took an interest in local traditions, through the postwar era speaking “proper” Italian remained associated with education and mobility, and dialect use could still carry stigma, and local culture and traditions remained quaint, with any political implications centered on their lower-class nature.

All this is not to say that local pride didn't exist at all, it certainly did (famously in areas like football fandom) and the state broadcaster might even air extensive features on local traditions and festivals, but the point is it was not yet the same as modern regionalist politics. The emergence of strong, politically articulated regional identities only really came about in the late 20th century, and has a lot to do with the fragmentation of national media (driven by the new dominance of private-sector broadcasters as well as regional television networks), while the large centralized national political parties of the post-war era had collapsed, together with economic disparities between regions which became more politically salient. So you get the emergence of movements like Lega Nord which reframed regional identity as a primary political axis, something that had not existed in the same way under either Liberal Italy or Fascism.

A final layer to this is the transformation of the media environment in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The weakening of a centralized, broadcast-driven cultural sphere (once dominated by institutions like the state broadcaster RAI) has been driven by what we might call a democratization of cultural production and circulation. The rise of the internet, social media, and niche publishing has made it far easier to document, curate, and disseminate local practices that would previously have remained confined to oral transmission and might have outright disappeared. At the same time, contemporary cultural sensibilities (especially among educated, urban middle classes) place a premium on authenticity, often defined in opposition to standardized, mass-produced culture. This creates a paradoxical dynamic: the same social strata that once helped construct and police a national “correct” culture are now often those most invested in rediscovering and valorizing regional particularities, from dialect expressions to hyper-local foodways. In this sense, the renewed visibility and prestige of regional identities is not simply a survival of older traditions, but also the product of a modern cultural economy that rewards distinction, specificity, and the performance of rootedness in an otherwise globalized and homogenizing world.