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By
Wikipedia
Benito Amilcare Andrea
Mussolini (July
29, 1883
– April
28, 1945)
led Italy
from 1922 to 1943. He created a fascist
state through the use of state
terror and propaganda.
Using his charisma, total control of the media and intimidation of
political rivals, he disassembled the existing democratic
government system. His entry into World
War II on the side of Nazi
Germany made Italy a target for Allied
attacks and ultimately led to his downfall and death.
Early years
Mussolini was born in a
medium-sized village named Predappio
in the state of Forlì,
in Emilia-Romagna.
His father, Alessandro, was a blacksmith.
His mother, Rosa Maltoni, was a teacher
who believed education was extremely important. He was named Benny
after Mexican reformist President Benito
Juárez. Like his father, Benito became a socialist.
By age eight, he was banned from his mother's church, and a few years
later he was expelled from school, due to stabbing a fellow student in the
hand and throwing an ink pot at a teacher. He did, however, receive good
grades, and he qualified as an elementary schoolmaster in 1901. In 1902 he
emigrated to Switzerland
to escape military service. During a period when he was unable to find a
permanent job there, he was arrested for vagrancy
and jailed for one night. Later, after becoming involved in the socialist
movement, he was deported and returned to Italy to do his military service.
He returned to Switzerland immediately, and a second attempt to deport him
was halted when Swiss socialist parliamentarians held an emergency debate
to discuss his treatment. After his return to Italy (prompted by his
mother's illness and death) he joined the staff of a socialist newspaper, Avanti!
("Forward!"), in the city of Trento,
ethnically Italian but then under the control of Austria-Hungary,
in 1908. At
this time he wrote a novel, subsequently translated into English as The
Cardinal's Mistress. Mussolini had a brother, Arnaldo, who would later
become the editor
of Il
Popolo d'Italia, the official newspaper of Benito Mussolini's
Fascist Party..
Birth of Fascism
The word "Fascio"
had existed in Italian politics for some time. A section of revolutionary syndicalists
broke with the Socialists over the issue of Italy's entry into the First
World War. The ambitious Mussolini quickly sided with them in 1914,
when the war broke out. These syndicalists formed a group called Fasci
d'azione rivoluzionaria internazionalista in October 1914. Massimo
Rocca and Tulio
Masotti asked Mussolini to settle the contradiction of his support for
interventionism and still being the editor of Avanti!
and an official party functionary in the Socialist Party. (1) Two weeks
later, he joined the Milan
fascio. In November, 1914, supported by his then mistress Margherita
Sarfatti, he founded a new newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, (The
Italian People) and the pro-war group Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria.
Mussolini was attracted to fasces,
the ancient Roman symbol of the life-and-death power of the state, bundles
of the lictors'
rods of chastisement which, when bound together, were stronger than when
they were apart — presaging the renewed Roman imperium
Mussolini promised to bring about. Mussolini claimed that it would help
strengthen a relatively new nation (which had been united only in the
1860s in the Risorgimento),
although some would say that he wished for a collapse of society that
would bring him to power. Italy was a member of the Triple
Alliance, thereby allied with Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. It did not join the war in 1914 but did in 1915 — as
Mussolini wished — on the side of Britain and France.
Called up for military
service, Mussolini was wounded in grenade practice in 1917 and returned to
edit his paper. Fascism became an organized political
movement following a meeting in Milan
on March
23, 1919
(Mussolini founded the Fasci di Combattimento on February
23, however). After failing in the 1919 elections, Mussolini at last
entered parliament in 1921. The Fascisti formed armed squads of war
veterans called squadristi
to terrorize anarchists,
socialists
and communists.
The government rarely interfered. In return for the support of a group of
industrialists and agrarians, Mussolini gave his approval (often active)
to strikebreaking, and he abandoned revolutionary agitation. When the
liberal governments of Giovanni
Giolitti, Ivanoe
Bonomi, and Luigi
Facta failed to stop the spread of anarchy, and after Fascists had
organised the demonstrative and threatening Marcia su Roma ("March
on Rome") (October
28th 1922), Mussolini was invited by Vittorio
Emanuele III to form a new government. At the age of 39, he became the
youngest Premier in the history of Italy
on October
31.
Contrary to a common
misconception, Mussolini did not become prime minister because of the
March on Rome. King, Victor
Emmanuel III, knew that if he did not choose a government under either
the Fascist or Socialist party, Italy would soon be involved in a civil
war. Accordingly, he asked Mussolini to become Prime Minister, obviating
the need for the March on Rome. However, because fascists were already
arriving from all around Italy, he decided to continue. In effect, the
threatened seizure of power became nothing more than a victory parade.
Despite his easy rise to
power, Mussolini and his fascist soldiers needlessly killed 12 people just
for the sake of intimidation on the way to Rome.
Mussolini's Fascist
state, established nearly a decade before Adolf
Hitler's rise to power, would provide a model for Hitler's later
economic and political policies. Both a movement and a historical
phenomenon, Italian Fascism was, in many respects, an adverse reaction to
both the perceived failure of laissez-faire
economics and fear of international Bolshevism
(a short-lived Soviet influence was established in Bavaria just about this
time), although trends in intellectual
history, such as the breakdown of positivism
and the general fatalism of postwar Europe were also factors. Fascism was
a product of a general feeling of anxiety and fear among the middle-class
of postwar Italy, arising out of a convergence of interrelated economic,
political, and cultural pressures. Italy had no long-term tradition of
parliamentary compromise, and public discourse took on an inflammatory
tone on all sides.
Under the banner of this
authoritarian and nationalist ideology, Mussolini was able to exploit
fears in an era in which postwar depression, the rise of a more militant
left, and a feeling of national shame and humiliation stemming from its 'mutilated
victory' at the hands of the World
War I peace treaties seemed to converge. Italian influence in the
Aegean and abroad seemed impotent and disregarded by the greater powers,
and Italy lacked colonies. Such unfulfilled nationalistic aspirations
tainted the reputation of liberalism and constitutionalism among many
sectors of the Italian population. In addition, such democratic
institutions had never grown to become firmly rooted in the young
nation-state. And as the same postwar depression heightened the allure of Marxism
among an urban proletariat even more disenfranchised than their
continental counterparts, fear regarding the growing strength of trade
unionism, communism,
and socialism
proliferated among the elite and the middle class.
In this fluid situation,
Mussolini took advantage of the opportunity and, rapidly abandoning the
early socialist and republican program, put himself at the service of the
antisocialist cause. The fascist militias, supported by the wealthy
classes and by a large part of the state apparatus which saw in him the
restorer of order, launched a violent offensive against the syndicalists
and all political parties of a socialist or Catholic inspiration,
particularly in the north of Italy (Emilia
Romagna, Toscana,
etc.), causing numerous victims though the substantial indifference of the
forces of order. These acts of violence were, in large part, provoked by
fascist squadristi
who were increasingly and openly supported by Dino
Grandi, the only real competitor to Mussolini for the leadership
of the fascist party until the Congress of Rome in 1921. [1]
The violence increased
considerably during the period from 1920-1922 until the March on Rome.
Confronted by these badly armed and badly organized fascist militias
attacking the Capital, King
Victor
Emmanuel III, preferring to avoid any spilling of blood, decided to
appoint Mussolini, who at that moment had the support of about 22 deputies
in Parliament, President
of the Council. Victor Emmanuel continued to maintain control of the
armed forces: if he had wanted to, he would have had no difficulties in
booting Mussolini and the completely inferior fascist forces out of Rome.
Therefore, it is not appropriate to refer to Mussolini's rise as a
"coup d'etat" since he obtained his post legally with the
blessing of the sovereign of the nation.
As Prime Minister, the
first years of Mussolini's reign were characterized by a coalition
government composed of nationalists, liberals and populists and did not
assume dictatorial connotations until the assassination of Matteotti.
In domestic politics, Mussolini favoured the complete restoration of State
authority, with the integration of the Fasci di Combattimento into
the armed forces (the foundation in January 1923 of the Milizia
Voluntaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale) and the progressive
identification of the Party with the State. In political and social
economy, he emanated legislation that favoured the wealthy industrial and
agrarian classes (privatizations, liberalizations of rent laws and
dismantlement of the unions).
In June of 1923, a new
majoritarian electoral law was approved which assigned two thirds of the
seats in Parliament to the coalition which had obtained at least 25% of
the votes. This law was punctually applied in the elections of 6
April 1924,
in which the fascist "listone" obtained an extraordinary
success, aided by the use of shenanigans, violence and intimidatory
tactics against opponents.
The assassination of the
socialist deputy Giacomo
Matteotti, who had requested the annulment of the elections because of
the irregularities committed, provoked a momentary crisis of the Mussolini
government. The weak response of the opposition (the secession
of the Aventine), incapable of transforming their posturing into a
mass antifascist action, was not sufficient to distance the ruling classes
and the Monarchy from Mussolini who, on 3
January 1925,
broke open the floodgates and, in a famous discourse in which he took upon
himself all of the responsibility for the assassination of Matteoti and
the other squadrist violence, proclaimed a de facto dictatorship,
suppressing every residual liberty and completing the identification of
the Fascist Party with the State.
From 1925 until the
middle of the 1930's, fascism experienced little and isolated opposition,
although that which it experienced was memorable, consisting in large part
of communists such as Antonio
Gramsci, socialists such as Pietro
Nenni and liberals such as Piero
Gobetti and Giovanni
Amendola.
While failing to outline
a coherent program, fascism evolved into a new political and economic
system that combined corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and
anti-Communism in a state designed to bind all classes together under a
capitalist system. This was a new capitalist system, however, one in which
the state seized control of the organization of vital industries. Under
the banners of nationalism and state power, Fascism seemed to synthesize
the glorious Roman past with a futuristic utopia. [2]
Despite the themes of
social and economic reform in the initial Fascist
manifesto of June 1919, the movement came to be supported by sections
of the middle class fearful of socialism and communism. Industrialists and
landowners supported the movement as a defense against labour militancy.
Under threat of a fascist March
on Rome, in October 1922, Mussolini assumed the premiership of a
right-wing coalition Cabinet
initially including members of the pro-church Partito
Popolare (People's Party).
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