Before becoming one of the most famous fascists of the 20and century, Benito Mussolini was a young socialist, but he broke away from the movement and then rode a wave of anti-socialist violence to seize power in Italy.
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini’s middle names came from Italian socialists Amilcare Cipriani and Andrea Costa, and his father was a socialist. In his twenties, Mussolini briefly ran a socialist newspaper in Austria-Hungary, then in 1912, when he was about 30, he took over as editorial director of Forward! (Before!), the official daily newspaper of the Italian Socialist Party.
But a few years later, the party expelled Mussolini for his support for Italy’s entry into World War I.
“Mussolini was more of an authoritarian revolutionary than an orthodox Marxist,” says Michael R. Ebner, associate professor of history at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School and author of Ordinary violence in Mussolini’s Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2011). “With the outbreak of the First World War, he came to see nationalism and militarism as the keys to revolutionary upheaval. He therefore left behind Marxist economic determinism and pacifism.
After World War I, Mussolini’s “black shirts” target socialists
Benito Mussolini (center), Fascist general and politician Emilio de Bono and aviator and politician Count Italo Balbo leading the Blackshirts in the Fascist ‘March on Rome’.
BIP/Getty Images
Mussolini may have left the Socialist Party behind, but many Italians embraced it after the war, in part because establishment politicians failed to address postwar issues, says Ebner, who is also co-editor of The Politics of Daily Life in Fascist Italy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
“After the sacrifices of war and the example of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, everything seemed possible,” he said, adding that the socialists made huge electoral gains, taking control of local governments, which raised alarm some middle- and upper-class Italians.
Seeing these gains, Mussolini took the socialists by force. In 1919, Mussolini created the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian combat squads), precursor of his fascist party. This group has engaged in violence against socialists and other enemies. In 1921, he founded the Fascist Party, transforming his paramilitary movement into an official political party. He coined the party name based on the Italian word for package—fascia—referring to “packages” of united people. The party emphasized national unity, even if that required violence to control dissidents.
“Basically, Mussolini hated the socialists, just like the rest of the fascists,” Ebner said. “One of the driving forces behind fascist violence was their desire to punish socialists for not supporting Italy during the Great War (World War I). Fascists viewed socialists as cowardly traitors, internal enemies, qu had to be eradicated.
He noted that Mussolini’s paramilitary groups that attacked the Socialist Party and trade unions – known as the Blackshirts – were often paid for or supplied by wealthy landowners. Fascist squads burned down Communist and Socialist offices as they took over cities.
The King of Italy asks Mussolini to form a government
In 1921 Mussolini was elected to the lower house of the Italian parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, and the following year tens of thousands of armed fascists marched on Rome, demanding that Mussolini be appointed prime minister. The King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, refused to declare a state of emergency and impose martial law. Instead, he dissolves the government and asks Mussolini to form a new one. Mussolini became both Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, the latter post giving him, critically, control of the police.
Before Mussolini became prime minister, fascist squads had used violence to kill, injure, frighten and humiliate their enemies. After Mussolini became prime minister in October 1922, squads were still important, but Mussolini could also rely on the police to pursue enemies like communists, socialists, and anarchists.
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“Mussolini could therefore mix ‘legal’ state repression with ‘illegal’ squad violence,” Ebner says. “Police found reason to arrest and harass left-wing political opponents, while squads might engage in beatings and killings to silence other critics.”
The rise of Mussolini’s personality cult
Mussolini poses with a bust in his likeness made by the sculptor Ernest Durig, around 1925
ullstein bild via Getty Images
In June 1924, assassins linked to Mussolini killed socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti, prompting opposition MPs to boycott parliament. On January 3, 1925, Mussolini essentially took responsibility for this assassination in a speech in parliament that is considered the start of his fascist dictatorship.
“I declare before this House, before the world and before God that I personally take full political, moral and historical responsibility for what happened,” he told the House. “I declare that if the Fascists are a criminal association, then I am the leader of this criminal association.”
In response to what he called “scandalous” press attacks on fascism, Mussolini said: “The whole nation asks what the government is doing, the whole nation asks whether it is ruled by men or by puppets”.
“Standing in his characteristic pose”, the New York Times reported, “with a well-bulging chest, hitting the ministers bench with his clenched fist to emphasize his points…he spoke with fire, passion and vehemence…Only force, he said, can decide between fascism and opposition , and this force he now proposes to use.
The participants stood up and applauded every sentence and shouted “Vivo Mussolini!” Long live fascism!
“It was the greatest triumph of Mussolini’s entire political career,” said the Time mentioned. After his speech, “deputies rushed at Mussolini from all sides and lifted him to shoulder height carrying him out of the chamber in triumph”, while others danced and sang.
Mussolini, says “The Duke(the leader), reigned as a dictator from then on. He nurtured a personality cult, projecting himself as an omnipotent and indispensable leader. His government expelled all opposition, including socialist members, and arrested all communist members of parliament. He abolished local elections and reinstated the death penalty for political crimes.
Mussolini’s government also demanded that cinemas carry government propaganda newsreels as part of a crackdown on the free press. In “The Doctrine of Fascism”, published in 1932, Mussolini and a fellow fascist described the state as “all-encompassing; apart from it no human or spiritual value can exist, much less have any value”.
Mussolini allied with Hitler, then executed at the end of the Second World War
Mussolini allied with German dictator Adolph Hitler during World War II and ruled Italy until 1943, when he was ousted from power by his own Grand Council and arrested. After German commandos rescued him, he was placed at the top of a puppet government in German-occupied northern Italy from September 1943 to April 1945.
As the Third Reich lost its grip on northern Italy, Mussolini attempted to flee with his mistress to Switzerland. He wore German clothes and a helmet to try to conceal his identity, but, thanks to his years of promoting his personality cult, he was quickly recognized. Mussolini was executed with his mistress by Italian Communist partisans on April 28, 1945.
