When we talk about Fascism, we look back at a political phenomenon that we more or less understand but that still defies a unifying definition. Many of the features displayed by the Fascist Regime were not only peculiar but in fact entirely new - the role of the masses, the cult of the leader, the role of the new media in the propaganda, etc.

Of that, we may legitimately claim that the King had no idea at all, nor could we expect him to display any more foreseeing than his contemporaries did. In fact a large portion of the Italian establishment - essentially everyone except the Socialists and Communists - was at least open to a conditional support of Mussolini's Government, on the basis of what appeared to be a syncretic program largely indebted to the Nationalists, with liberal influence in the economic area and an overall tone that appealed to the masses through a mixture of traditional values and renovation claims.

This general positive view of Mussolini in 1922 was a key point in the King's choice to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister; a choice that the large majority gained by Mussolini in the Chamber confirmed. In fact Mussolini's Government wasn't rogue by any standards: it did not operate outside of the law, as the Italian law was already extremely favorable to the executive power - and the numerous acts of violence, that by our standards would certainly qualify as outside of a lawful government praxis, were often justified as reactions against the Socialist violence. Here again, the peculiar nature of the Fascist political violence was lost on many observers; and, while it appears that some were willfully blind to it, many others lacked the instruments or the oversight or even the mere forma mentis to concieve what we now can see with a certain degree of clarity.

To explain this point a bit, the tradition of public authority was - in short - authoritarian. Which means that to many observers in the public administration, the discretional use of force by the Government was wrong only in so far as it became arbitrary abuse, not wrong in itself. State violence was a prerogative of the Italian State and Fascism employed it sparingly, while the actions of the squads allowed for the illusion, that abuse of violence did not came from the Government but from elements that Mussolini tried to control and moderate, to survive for years.

This illusion was shaken in 1924-25 furing the crisis following the murder of Giacomo Matteotti. Still, by that time, the new Chamber (following the 1924 elections) was led by a huge Fascist majority, that included various political formations that had functionally joined the fascists under pressure of the new electoral law (the Acerbo law granted a huge boost to the relative majority coalition and had been devised with the purpose of favoring that process of concentration). There was therefore at the time no viable political alternative to Mussolini among the Parliamentary forces.

Had the King wanted to dismiss Mussolini, his most likely alternative would have been to establish an authoritarian Government, dismissing the Chamber and allowing the Ministry to pass law by the King's decree. A process that would have been a larger breach of the constitutional regime than the permanence of Mussolini in charge appeared.

In fact the King followed the letter of the Statute and was careful to move within the boundaries imposed to him by the constitutional regime; it was an unfortunate flaw of the Italian Liberal State that it's insitutes had not evolved any solid safety mechanism, to prevent a radical evolution.

The attitude of the King towards the spirit of the Statute is something we can speculate upon - as the King was extremely private and we do not have clear informations on his thoughts at the time.

What we know is that he appeared to care more for the form than the substance but also that he was genuinely concerned with preventing social conflict - both for his cautious nature and for his personal experience; the crisis of the years 1898-1900 had brought the death of his father, murdered by an anarchist. And we can safely say that the King had no sympathy for the Socialist forces, which probably favored a lenient attitude towards the fascist anti-socialist violence.

At the same time, the Socialists (and later Communists) had made themselves unavailable to any platform of reforms that could have brought about a moderate coalition Government, with the maximalist turn of 1919. Not only they were apart from the other political forces but had alienated most of the public opinion, including those progressive liberals that also would end up supporting Mussolini's Government from 1922 to 1924.

Therefore in October 1922 Mussolini was - sort of - an obligated choice for the King, as long as he did not want to defy what he percieved as the will of the Nation and of the various social and political forces. Still attempts were made at first for a coalition Ministry with Mussolini at the Interior and a conservative/moderate as Salandra or Giolitti as Prime Minister. Only when these options were no longer viable, the King appointed Mussolini - but still acted within his prerogatives, for example refusing to sign a preventive decree of dismissal of the Chamber that Mussolini had asked and that the King expressed no intention to give, unless a compelling reason existed.

But here again, we must understand that the fascist coalition Government was not inspired by any incendiary ideology - it's program, it's inception's speeches, it's first steps were in fact fairly moderate; and the large discretionality in the executive powers meant that no dramatic turns were needed for the fascist to gain a substantial control of the Country.

A first dramatic turn would be forced on the Nation in 1925 - almost by accident - as Matteotti's murder begun to shed light on the nature of the fascist "political praxis". Despite that event though, Mussolini retained a good measure of consensus and, as I noted before, no viable alternatives existed within the Chambers.