Mussolini

- In 1912, Benito Mussolini comes into the spotlight as the leader
of the Italian Socialist Party’s radical wing opposing the cooperation with Giolitti and his Libyan war (and remains neutral in the Great War)

- In 1915 he joins the Interventionist movement, where he meets Futurists, radical nationalists, and conservative Liberals. (starts siding with the nationalists. Nation > class)

- Never loses his moral dislike for the political and business establishments.

- Convinces himself that nationalism will produce a movement able to rid of bourgeois liberalism.

- In 1915 Italy entered the war.

- The war exacerbates class and gender conflict class and gender conflict.

- Defeat at Caporetto in October 1917 belatedly galvanized public
opinion, permitting Italy to hold out for the rest of the war.

This was the context in which fascism became a mass movement.


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Mussolini's Fascio di Combattimento, founded in Milan on 23 March 1919, recruited a
few ex-soldiers, syndicalists, and Futurists. Its programme combined nationalism with republicanism, anticlericalism, female suffrage, and social reform, the guiding idea being the mobilization of men and women, workers and employers, peasants and
landowners in a secular national community. Fascism polled hardly any votes in 1919, but in 1921, as working-class and peasant agitation reached its peak, it began to win recruits.

- Fascism took off in regions affected by agrarian unrest, where the youthful rural bourgeoisie began to join in large numbers. These sons of estate managers, small-town officials, and teachers, many of them veterans, saw in fascism a means to take upon themselves the task of fighting the Socialist and Catholic leagues. They won the support of many conservative small peasants and landless labourers, who agreed that the authorities were not protecting them from the left. Fascist squads (squadristi) began a violent campaign of intimidation against Catholics and especially Socialists, in which many hundreds were killed.

- By the end of 1922 Fascism possessed a quarter of a million members.

- Large landowners and big businessmen, who despaired of government support against strikers, provided encouragement and money.

- Fascists laughed at the feminine side of the bourgeoisie and castigated the idleness of it.

- Mussolini remained reluctant to cut all ties with the Socialists.

- Fascists set about forming unions of their own. They drew upon a pre-existing fund of conservatism amongst some peasants and workers, while carrotand-stick methods encouraged many more to join.

- Fascists did not condemn private property itself, so they were, in the
eyes of the wealthy, far better than the left.

- Conservatives were reassured when at the end of 1921 Fascism became an organized
party, the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF), and embraced monarchism and liberal economics.



source: Passmore - fascism