DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT ACCUSING NEW ORDER OR ANYONE AT FACTORY (RIP) OF BEING FASCISTS. Please don't feel obliged to ride in on a white horse to defend NO/Factory.

I was recently watching a Sky mini-series called Mussolini: Son of the Century (8.1 rating!)
It's basically about Mussolini - the early years - when he left the Italian socialist party and invented Fascism.
It's directed by film director Joe Wright who is perhaps best known for directing Keira Knightley in films like Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and Anna Karenina.
He also directed the film version of Hanna in 2011 - which was more recently adapted into an Amazon series. That film had a soundtrack by Tom Rowlands/Chemical Brothers, and Mr Rowlands returns here to soundtrack all 8 parts of this mini-series.

Anyway, during episode 2, a character called Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (aka F.T. Marinetti) popped up to recite his poem Zang Tumb Tumb. There's a clip in the tweet below. His poem - with some help from Tom Rowlands - soundtracks a montage of the Blackshirts meting out their fascist violence.

So I said "ah Zang Tumb Tumb, I remember Paul Morley talking about this as the inspiration for the ZTT record label name." If you read all of the Wiki link to the poem above you may have noticed this bit under "Influence":

The Art Of Noise were of course on ZTT (along with Frankie Goes To Hollywood and a bunch of other acts mentioned in the wiki link to the record label).
Trevor Horne of course co-founded ZTT with Morley, and Horne was involved with Art Of Noise. Was it his idea to name the label and the band? Could Paul Morley (who had wrtten about JD/NO) have taken inspiration from NO/Factory?

Anyway I had a quick google whilst watching Mussolini, and then realised that Mr Marinetti was known for something else too:



On the NO artwork, the F and the L at the top and bottom of the image represent Factory and 50.
Here the F and T seem to represent both Marinetti's initials (Filippo Tommaso) and also Futurismo and Trentino.
From my rusty school Italian, the poster/image says: Futurism, 1932, 10th year, Marinetti in Trentino (- a place in Italy). However I don't know what the S.E. stands for here. Does anyone else know? The artwork is by Fortunato Depero who had a strong link with Marinetti as per this article.

I called the image a poster, however page 45 of The Factory Records Compete Graphic Album says "Movement is based on the Fortunato Depero's cover of the Futurismo journal of 1932". It goes on: "The band had received criticism for the choice of their name and its Fascist connotations...the Italian Futurist reference only fuelled the fires of controversy since the movement was closely aligned with right-wing politics. Saville claims that NO's management were aware of this and requested that he remove the credit that directly identified the source of the original artwork".

Hooky adresses choosing the artwork in his Substance book on pages 58-59. He claims he was single-handedly despatched to visit Peter Saviile in London. He says, "So I was presented [by Savile] with several books on Arte Mechanica (machine aesthetics). An hour or so later... I pointed out two designs. One for Movement, saying 'Can't you just replace the words on that one?' and another nice strong one for the single". Hooky does mention the word Futurism here but he doesn't mention Fascism.

On page 43 of the Factory Graphic Album, we have the Procession sleeve in its various colours. The blurb tells us that it was based on Fortunato Depero's Dynamo (1927) and also says "The original source material for this single and the album Fact 50 were chosen by the band after Savile showed them a book on the subject".
I'm strugling to embed the original Dynamo image but you can see it HERE.
Oh hang on, here we are:



Opposite Procession in the Factory Graphic Album book, on page 42 we have the Factory anvil logo, which Savile "sourced from an Italian printing book". It doesn't tell us any more about that source. It's not as futuristic as the Procession dynamo, but could this also have come from a Futurist book? Does anyone know more about this?

While I'm asking questions... Does anyone know the story about the Movement album title? I've heard it said that after the "Still" of JD came the "Movement" of NO. But I don't know if that's an intentional follow-on title.
I noticed in the Mussolini series that Benito talks of being tired of the lack of action from the Socialists, and as he and the Blackshirts head for the train - so that they can "march on Rome" - he talks about wanting movement and action. And yes inevitably there is a reference to making the trains run on time. Could "Movement" have also been a reference to Fascism, or am I reaching here?

Another thing I noticed in the Mussolini series was the choice of music on a gramophone record in the first episode. Wagner - sometimes associated with Nazism and Fascism. The track is the intro to Das Rheingold - or All Day Long, as we kinda know it. I suspect this piece may have been a Tom Rowlands sugestion. Mr Rowlands, like some of us here, would have heard All Day Long when he was about 15, so All Day Long may have "introduced" the Wagner piece to him as it did for some of us.
We also get an operatic rendition of Madam Buttefly at one point. And coincidentally, Malcolm McLaren's Madam Butterfly album was once listed by Hooky as one of his Top 10 favourites. But I digress...

Ok, back to the Fascist artwork. Up next is Factus 8.





"But that's not Fascist/Futurist, it was painted by Martha Ladly", I hear you cry. True, but I think it was comissioned from her by her boyfriend, Tony Wilson wasn't it? So he may have had an idea what he wanIted.

If you google Futurist Painting Images you get this
Or google Italian Futurist Painting
Or google Fortunato Depero Futurist Painting
I guess this is down to opinion, but there seems to be some similarity with Martha's image. Did Tony ask Martha to do a painting in the style of the Futurists/Fascists?

BTW Fortunato Depero actually has his own Discogs listing
It omits the Procession Dynamo (maybe someone needs to fix that - on the NO Procession page).
But it has a couple of other albums - classical albums with a familiar look:

Franco Casavola – Lombardi* / Rigaci* – Futurlieder (2006)


George Antheil / Leo Ornstein / Arthur Lourié – Daniele Lombardi – Futurpiano (2009)


This second one surely took inspiration from the US pressing of Movement, no? I'm not aware of the original Marinetti/Depero image coming in these colours. This was chosen by Factory wasn't it?



Thoughts welocme, of course.

I don't really have a big ending for this post, but the Mussolini series is/was available on Sky Atlantic and streaming on NOW TV in UK & Ireland. It is also on various Sky affiliates around Europe. It streams for free on SBS in Australia, and it's coming soon to the rest of the world on MUBI. The full Tom Rowlands soundtrack is on YouTube and I think it's on streaming services like Spotify too.

I guess after 1982, Tony/Peter/NO decided to raid artwork from less controversial sources. So we have a good old basket of roses for album No 2.

Good post and a lot to unpack here. I will review in more detail when I get the chance.

I just wanted to point out that Martha Ladly was dating Peter Saville at the time, not Tony. Tony would've been married to Lindsey in 1982, I think.
It's probably even more likely that Saville asked Ladly to paint something in 'futurist'.

I'm not sure how much the band members went on to regret the name Joy Division, but all the fascist imagery was, as you said, put to rest by 1983.

I've always felt the choice of New Order for the band name was just a remnant of their punk attitude in response to the unfounded claims that they somehow cared about that ideology. The standard tale of Rob Gretton seeing the phrase "New Order" as part of a newspaper headline may well be true. But I think their decision to go with it was influenced by its ties with Iggy Pop: TheNewOrder. And don't forget, that band's music (in addition to Iggy's) was released by a record label named Revenge.

I think I'll definitely try and watch this series, as it looks really interesting. I'm always looking to expand my knowledge on 20th century history, especially the rise of fascism. I find incredible that something that dangerous was allowed to grow so quickly.

Once I've watched it, I'll try and post back here. Going away for a few days, so haven't got as much time to digest stuff as I normally have.
As I said earlier, this a great thread and I love deep dives into the band like this.



I'm not sure about the origins for the name.
I've always kind of believed the story of the headline that the band (Rob?) spotted and suspected that they thought it fit nicely with the 'new order' of the band (i.e. a rejigged line-up).
I'm not sure if the band members, who were between 19 and 24 years old at the time would've really been aware of the term 'New Order' in its fascist form. I'm sure they were aware of what went on during this dark period, but I don't think the term 'New Order' was used that much back in the day, was it? I think it's quite conceivable that they hadn't heard the term in that way until it was pointed out a short while after they changed their name (it was probably a 'oh shit! we've done it again' kind of mistake).

I reckon, if I hadn't been as much into the band as I was when I was in my late teems, I probably wouldn't have heard the term myself.
I suppose it all depends on what you were interested in reading about. We know the band were interested in this sort of stuff (after all, they used the JD name), so maybe they did know.

As regards The Stooges thing, I've always kind of doubted that the band were even aware of that offshoot and probably would've avoided the use of it, if they'd known.
After all, I think 'The New Order' were fairly obscure, weren't they? Although it's possible that they knew of them, it also seems really likely the band they didn't know anything about them when they thought up the name.

There was a quote somewhere about the Kevin Hewick collaboration where the band told him that they were planning on calling themselves 'New Order' and Hewick pointed out the Stooges connection. One of the band members, apparently, insultingly said to Hewick 'Only you would know something like that!'.

So, if that quote is to be believed, the band were certainly aware of it after they'd decided on the name.
But they still used it anyway. Go figure...
Seems odd that they still went ahead with it after the Warsaw/Warsaw Pact fiasco. Although there wasn't much chance of both bands being confused by gig promoters etc., it would probably be best to just avoid naming your band in such a similar way.