That's most definitely not a bug. Unfortunately, before we attempt to answer whether someone truly believes in Fascism, we should ask ourselves: what does a true believer in Fascism believe?

Was this a genuine ideology change or was he simply changing because he saw the opportunity for power through nationalism?

Your question does play a central role within the historiography of Italian Fascism, and more so in the examination of Mussolini's specific political trajectory. Before I attempt to address it, though, I feel the need to call your attention to the fact that, as you framed it, it appears to involve an assumption that may be somewhat misleading in our present case. There may be a fundamental opposition between the two terms of the problem, but it doesn't have to. Indeed, in so far as Mussolini goes – and, by extension, at least to a degree, for Fascism as a whole – the antinomy between true beliefs and opportunism is a secondary, if not entirely inconsequential one. By adopting it acritically, we risk undertaking our examination of Fascism and its ideological contents under our own preemptive assumption of what an ideological belief should look like, and thus disregarding ideological elements of decisive value for those who experienced them, in consequence of the fact that we do not recognize them as an active, effective ideology.

It's a difficult pitfall to avoid. Fascism is often shallow, incoherent, passionately “problematist” and quickly dismissive of problems, action and (little) thought, totalitarian and unfinished, if not hardheartedly cobbled together – its ideological core appears to run skin-deep. One should not be surprised to hear Benedetto Croce – insightful scholar of late XIX Century ideologies – replying, back in 1924, to those who had asked for his take on Fascism, that, after a cursory examination of the new movement, he could not find “any new conceit” nor the “new philosophy, supposedly implicit in it” and concluding that “I am afraid there is no new conceit, because there can't be”. But in our examination of a Fascist ideology, we should not be dissuaded by the perceived absence of a system, and look instead for something closer to a behavioral pattern. If Fascism can't explain itself, or elects not to bother with, acts may serve as guidance, words assist in conveying meaning, patterns reveal intention, and opportunities inspire belief.

In the words of historian Emilio Gentile, disregarding any ideological manifestation of Fascism just because we can conveniently and effectively point out that it makes for a poor, incoherent and ill-conceived ideology, would be

tantamount to argue that, if a person doesn't think with the same systematic rigor of a philosopher, then they don't possess a worldview which, no matter how simplistic or eclectic, regulates, inspires and justifies their behavior.

The comparison may not be a flattering one, and should not lead us to look at Fascism as purely brutish, obtuse, anti-intellectual out of ignorance, but rather it should alert us to the fact that, at the time when Fascism appeared, at the end of the Great War, and as well at the turn of the Century, when many of its original influences developed, the coherent formulation of a system – whether philosophical, ideological or political – appeared to many as a thing of the past, unnecessary or entirely to be rejected, and the grand, complex machineries of positive thought, something to be broken down and scrapped for parts. In this specific environment, Fascism may appear more attuned to the intellectual sensibility of its age than one might believe at first glance.

Which is not to say that we should regard Fascism as a mere empty vessel, ready to receive whatever convenient ideological fragments the ongoing political, social and economical events had produced, and therefore as an inherently opportunistic political formulation. Fascism certainly had ideological elements which characterized it, but not in the form of an ideological foundation – if I were to try and describe it in abstract terms, I'd say it had a “non ideological” or even “anti-ideological” ideological core, where a rejection of ideological formulations came first, and before the subsequent rationalization of pragmatism. In this sense, Fascism did, quite often, and by design, approach the solution of a fundamental antinomy by ignoring it.

Furthermore one should also be wary of insisting too much on the “incoherence” of Fascism as evidence of its fundamental ideological vacuity. Incoherent it may very well have been – and this should inspire caution, and plenty of it, to those who wish to seek the ideology of Fascism in a purely abstract fashion, through the examination of its “sacred texts” and accurate calibration of scholarly glosses – but its lack of coherence does not allow one to conclude, somewhat conveniently, that there is nothing to be learned in the examination of its untidy ideological shelves.

One may recognize – argues E. Gentile [Le origini dell'ideologia fascista, ed. 2011] – in all political movements, a dissonance between ideology and action, incoherence of programs, changes of direction, compromises and adjustments to circumstances […] In every political movement there is a complex of fundamental principles which define its identity, despite the inevitable alterations determined by its evolution […] establishing its ideological core in a definitive manner […]

Certainly there is in Fascism a degree of pragmatism and relativism arguably greater than in other movements; but this wasn't mere opportunism and ideological emptiness; pragmatism and relativism were features of a mindset and ideological imprint, which contrasted theory with [direct] experience, the experiment of action to a coherence of doctrine, faith in myths to rational persuasion.

Where does this leave with regards to Mussolini himself? Pretty much where we started, I'd say. One needs to keep in mind – and more so if we are to address the argument of opportunism – that Mussolini's transformation didn't take place in a vacuum. And that, as a general rule, people, including those holding sincere beliefs, change; even if, one might argue, most of them don't end up as leaders of a Fascist dictatorship.

The experience of the Great War was one of transformation. And, if the extent of this transformation in so far as the material and moral condition of the Italian masses went has been called into question, the degree to which it affected the social, political and intellectual elites and the active portion of civil society can't be overstated. To the men returning from the trenches – to those who bothered with the whole idea of change, that is – truly appeared a new Italy, or better, the old Italy on the verge of becoming new. For many of them, holding onto things of old, when they were called to one last fateful endeavor, may have appeared almost inconceivable.

Mussolini certainly did come to represent those feelings. He did so from the pages of his newspaper, carefully, craftily embodying a climate, moving in a landscape of ideological fragments, appealing to the combatants, veterans, to a whole galaxy of lesser elites struggling to hear a voice directed at them, until those fragments coalesced into recognizable forms. He did so with his personal trajectory, from new man of the Italian “intransigent” socialism, to new man of interventionism, to new man of the anti-Bolshevik reaction, to new man on the Italian political scene, and then to his eventual affirmation as the youngest Prime Minister in Italy's history. Always changing, always moving past things, always leading the way, until he found a place comfortable enough to stay, and – as he told his biographer Emil Ludwig - “I have come to stay as long as I can”.

1 – Overcoming Socialism

Throughout its first (almost) four years of existence, Mussolini's Popolo d'Italia had come out every day with a subtitle declaring its character of “socialist newspaper”. Which was certainly done partly out of spite for the Direction which had unceremoniously (but not unexpectedly) thrown him out (his expulsion had been approved on the rather severe terms of “moral indignity”), and partly because of the appeal of the word on the (Milanese) masses, where Mussolini had hoped to find new readers among his old ones, priding himself of not surrendering the flag of Italian socialism to the “tribe of the membership card”. Regardless, it's obvious that the choice to remove the subtitle and replace it with a new one - “the newspaper of the combatants and the producers” - was significant enough to warrant an explanation.

Today, after four years – Mussolini wrote on August 1^st 1918 – the subtitle socialist disappears from the headline of this newspaper. It is replaced by a new one that I like better and that our readers – I believe – will like more. From now on this newspaper will be the newspaper of the combatants and the producers... That “socialist” on the header made sense in 1914 and meant that in 1914 one could be socialist […] and at the same time in favor of the war. But since then that word “socialist” had become obsolete. It meant nothing to me any more. Rather it produced all the inconveniences coming from the possible mix up with the “others”... All that repeating that the true, authentic, genuine socialism – according to the letters, the saints, the apostles – was ours, only ours, in opposition to the others who claimed just as much truth and authenticity for their socialism, had become in the end ridiculous and farcical like the squabbles of two shop owners. This one is not a shop […] it replaces its signboard and leaves the market to the others. And truly it must be hard for them to sell their goods, its cheap stuff. Still, second hand from before the war... Combatants and producers. I mean to defend the rights and interests of both. Combatants and producers, which is fundamentally different from saying workers and soldiers. Not every soldier is a combatant and not every combatant is a soldier. Combatants means from Diaz to the last grunt. Producers, that is whoever produces, whoever works, but not only with their arms... To defend the producers means to fight back against parasites […] among which the socialists are first in line […] To defend the producers means allowing the bourgeoisie to accomplish its historical function – there are still two almost untouched continents awaiting to be swept up in the whirlwind of capitalistic civilization – and it means as well to help the workers towards the achievement of the maximum wealth for the maximum number and the development of all those abilities that can, at a given time, build out of the working masses the new ruling aristocracies of the nation. Within workers' unionism, that which has resisted the infection of political socialism, within that unionism which is working and fighting, there is a sparkle and a deep reason of life.

Productivism^1 was indeed quite popular at the time, and Mussolini was a keen reader – or so he liked to appear – of the French La bataille syndicaliste. Aside from contributing to the impression of a broader approach to the major political questions of the time, productivism, which is to say the identification of the (now less than fundamental) conflict of social organization no longer in the existence of opposite classes but in the natural struggle of the productive forces of the nation against the negative influence of the parasitic organisms of society, played a significant role in his “overcoming” of socialism. As Mussolini himself explained [Orientamenti e problemi in Popolo d'Italia August 18^th 1918] continuing the ongoing process of clarification:

The key is “to produce”. That's the “first step”. In a nation of passive economy one must praise the producers, those who work, those who build, those who increase wealth and thus general well being. To produce, to produce with method, with study, with patience, with passion, with desperate effort; that's above all to the gain of the so called proletarians. Only when the amount of circulating goods becomes large enough, can the immense mass of proletarians gain access to a decent portion of it. We must praise the producers because to their efforts is entrusted the more or less rapid post war reconstruction. If you disturb the production process, you will prepare the most miserable times for those coming back from the trenches. The producers represent the new Italy, in opposition to the ancient one of story tellers and professional politicians. There is a great feeling of rebirth. The world of tomorrow will be magnificent. There are capitalists who understand their historical function and “dare”; there are proletarians who understand the necessity of such capitalistic process and see the direct and indirect profit they can gain from it. Yes, to produce, produce, produce: not only so that tomorrow's Italy can be less poor, but also so that it can be free. We would have fought our war for nothing if tomorrow's Italy won't have, as much as possible, an independent national economy. […] To produce in order to be free. To work in order to stand clear and honorable in the world challenges.

The use of productivist themes was, as we mentioned before, a common way of addressing social conflict at the end of the Great War – no longer kept apart by economical prejudice, workers and owners were pushed to the realization that their best interest laid in collaboration for the purpose of turning the immense energies unleashed during the conflict to the restoration and development of national production. Of course, there were those who understood this new state of things and those who didn't, persisting in the observance of rules and subdivisions from a now distant and remote past.

On immediate practical grounds, this allowed Mussolini to maintain his openings to both the proletariat and the bourgeois – better, the workers and the owners – insisting on drawing a neat distinction between the the “Italian Bolsheviks” of the Official Socialist organizations with their bureaucratic, “parasitic” party structure and social function, and the “workers” who, instead, had to be “welcomed back from the trenches” and into the productive forces of the nation.

In more abstract terms, his adoption of productivist themes represented an implicit overcoming of the economical antithesis based on the possession of production means, and a confirmation of the true revolutionary character of the Great War. Here Mussolini appears to agree with the most “nationally” advanced portions of national syndicalism, sharing Lanzillo's view that the Great War had represented “a deep, universal revolutionary solution” to the crisis “of capitalistic life and democratic regime”. In other words – argued Lanzillo in his fortunate La disfatta del socialismo (published in February 1918, then reprinted during the Summer) – the conflict had freed, both structurally and ideologically, the productive forces intrinsic to the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, thus overcoming the traditional forms of class antagonism, and opening the way for new forms of economical and political organizations. The main failure of Socialism had consequently been the inability of the socialist organizations to overcome their “class prejudicials” and to account for the new situation created by the war.

From Mussolini's perspective, rooted in his disregard for economical factors and confirmed through his insistence on the true revolutionary value of the Great War, this acknowledgment meant that there was no longer a need to reconcile the two extremes of social struggle, as the conflict had solved this supposedly fundamental antithesis by sweeping past it. With history overcoming ideology, and the two new classes of “combatants and producers” - more attuned to the idealistic and “willing” atmosphere of the Century, and anyways able to fluidly transmute into each other – replacing the old ones, the core issue of the social question became the organization of productive forces. A theme, this one, where – once ideological “prejudices” and personal reservations to a practical agreement with the ownership were out of the way – Mussolini's “national syndicalism” was already quite close to the proper Nationalist position.

2 – Enemy of the nation

“Hostes sunt, qui nobis, aut quibus nos publice bellum indiximus: ceteri latrones aut praedones sunt”.

It had been Vittorio Emanuele Orlando – if I am not mistaken – who used the citation, during his tenure as Minister of Interior in Paolo Boselli's “national unity” Government, to argue that the Italian enemies were only those at the front, and that there could not be real enemies within the nation. So that, in other words, the ordinary and “special” civil legislation passed by the Italian Government during the war had to suffice.

The main point of contention was the recurrent call for the introduction of exceptional measures to ensure public order, analogue to those adopted in “war zone”, under the authority of military law. There, Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna had quickly resolved (July 28^th 1915) to make use of art. 251 of the penal military code, which granted him the exceptional power to pass executive legislation applying to “anyone, either military or civilian within the territories of the Kingdom declared in a state of war or within the territories occupied by the King's Army”. The nature of the violations falling under the scrutiny of military justice included the divulgation of “news that could in any way disrupt the public tranquility or anyhow be damaging to public interest”. But the vagueness in the definition of punishable offenses was only destined to increase during the war, while civilian authorities attempted to restrain the expansion of military jurisdiction across the Peninsula and to retain control of administration and police functions.

Nonetheless, already before the war, a first series of limitations to individual freedom, freedom of the press, divulgation of war related news by means of private correspondence, had been introduced (law 273 of March 21^st 1915) and subsequently expanded with a series of executive decrees (674-675 of May 23^rd 1915 and 885 of June 20^th 1915). As a result, Italy underwent a progressive – albeit less than extreme, and comparable to that of other belligerent nations – expansion of administrative and police measures^1 applied to ordinary forms of social and private life, including, first and foremost, labor and political organizations.

Given the crucial role of industrial production – and the fact that many “strategic” workers, while conscripted, had been allowed to remain at their workplace – the Italian production system had undergone a process of militarization, with workers being limited in their mobility, while both workplaces and related infrastructure become subject to military legislation (exceptions were made, of course, for women and children, who could not be transferred to the front). A process culminating in the inclusion of the whole municipalities of Turin and Genoa within war zone, after a series of strikes occurring during the Summer of 1917; so that, by the end of the year 1917, almost the entirety of Northern Italy was equated to war zone.

It was one of these episodes – the so called “facts of Turin” - which represented, together with the growing concerns for subversive activities after the “democratic” revolution in Russia had sparked new rumors of imminent peace, the main inspiration behind the most in(famous) piece of war legislation in Italian history. The main fault of the so called “Sacchi decree” wasn't its severity but its extreme genericity, since it punished, up to five years,

anyone who by any means commits or instigates a fact that can mortify the public spirits or otherwise diminish the capacity of resistance of the nation or damage the interests connected to the war or the internal or international situation of the State.

While the decree was passed on October 4^th 1917 – and subsequently integrated by another one, of October 10^th 1917, which introduced various “crimes against work”, subject to military legislation even outside of the aforementioned war zones, as long as those violations interfered with the production of war related goods – its reputation rests in good measure upon its use during the aftermath of the Italian military collapse in Caporetto, when the alarming situation of the front, paired with rumors of troops actively and massively surrendering to the enemy, sparked a climate of nation-wide “national” and “anti-defeatist” mobilization. The immediate result was a series of campaigns for the intensification of police measures against the alleged “defeatist” forces, affecting various groups notoriously hostile to the war or suspect of insufficient patriotic enthusiasm, from former “neutralists”, to Catholics, to foreign citizens and their associates. And, obviously and more prominently, those measures, whereby – as summarized by the General Secretary for Civilian Affairs, Agostino D'Adamo – a “necessary purification effort was carried out, especially in active centers of organized workers and subversive organizations”, were going to affect the Socialist Party and its organizations.

On January 24^th 1918, Costantino Lazzari, the Secretary of the Socialist Party was arrested, and would remain in jail until after the end of the war, on the grounds of providing local sections with instructions to spread pacifist propaganda. In May 1918, the other leader of the former "intransigent" left and chief editor of the Avanti!, Giacinto Menotti Serrati was arrested as well on similar grounds. As a result, the Direction of the Socialist Party remained within the hands of Serrati's deputy, Nicola Bombacci – who, despite what various sources claim, and despite being co-signatory of Lazzari's instructions, was not arrested until October 1918 and, anyways, remained in jail for only about a month – who spent the Summer of 1918 pushing the various socialist organizations towards a platform based on the "maximum program" of a Bolshevik revolution.

In the meantime, the Parliamentary Group, hegemonized by the reformers, Turati, Treves and Modigliani – who had lost control of the Party already by 1914 – found itself caught between two fires: on one hand the repression action of the Government, threatening the existing socialist organizations, on the other the expanding influence of the "maximalist" fraction and the "myth" of a Bolshevik revolution that appeared, and was, substantially extraneous to their political sensibility. On February 16^th 1918, the week of the Chamber's reopening after Caporetto, the Socialist Group submitted an order of business – the formulation of which is revealing of the ambiguity of their difficult position – denouncing "the arrest of the secretary of the socialist party" and "the suppression, as a matter of fact, in violation of the fundamental guarantees towards the press and of the very same exceptional war legislation, of the Avanti! in a growing number of provinces" as well as "the general abuse of censorship and inconsistent and arbitrary application of the public order decrees" as "manifestations of a more and more reactionary orientation of internal politics", which was ultimately damaging as well "for those very objectives of unity and resistance the Government wishes to pursue". According to Turati, Orlando "didn't wish for Lazzari's arrest" but had "suffered it", after "weeks of press clamoring unrestrained by censorship".

Ettore Sacchi, the old radical leader, who had supported the Italian neutrality in 1914, and then reluctantly taken the uncomfortable chair of Minister of Justice, curtly replied that his decree merely "punished anti war propaganda".

It was to be expected – argued Claudio Treves – "that the conservative parties, which had voted the war, would refuse to take responsibility for Caporetto".

In March 1918, Orlando, who had inspired his action as Minister of Interior to the attempt of maintaining the prerogatives of civilian legislation without surrendering its functions to the military, had to give in to the parallel pressure of the "national" front and of a growing administration disarray, allowing for the extension of war legislation over the entire Peninsula, and thus, eventually, equating the authority of the Government and that of the High Command.

But, while the "anti-defeatist" climate after Caporetto had an immediate impact on the socialist organizations (and, arguably, contributed to the affirmation and relative popularity of a maximalist position), its most significant outcome was a widespread polarization of the Italian political landscape. The national mobilization, albeit impressing a sense of renewed urgency to the Italian military and collective effort, and despite the insistent appeals to national unity, resulted in a consolidation and almost in the institutionalization of the fracturing between interventionists and neutralists produced by the traumatic process which had brought Italy into the Great War. The interventionist groups, the “active minority” which had sparked the first moment of “national” mobilization during the Spring of 1915, had since then been forced to deliver both the moral and practical leadership of the war to the traditional institutions of the State. But these institutions, those men, reluctant to embrace any process of renovation, no matter how “national”, had proven inadequate to the task.

On October 30^th – with the new Italian defensive line still unsure – Benito Mussolini wrote to fellow interventionist and volunteer Silvano Fasulo

Our most serious and unforgivable mistake was to leave our war to the care of people who had no feeling for it, who did not want it, did not accept it, and suffered it as a corvée, a fraught and heavier burden than others. We were foolish. I agree with you that, as soon as this tragic time has passed, it is necessary to put firmly under scrutiny the way we have conducted the war and the men, none excluded, even the highest.

3 – Democracy and the Nation

If history had proven – by means of the supposed socialist revolution, no less – definitively and conclusively, the failure of the official Marxist-socialist doctrine, now itself a thing of the past, surpassed by the great advance of the Century, the central problem became: what next? What new idea could serve the same purpose without leading to the extreme absurd, to that parody of socialism which, in Mussolini's eyes, Bolshevism (and its Italian declension most of all) had come to represent?

This one, for Mussolini, wasn't merely an ideological quandary, but also, and probably most of all, a proper practical one. Since the frantic weeks of his interventionist turn, hastily putting together a newspaper, funds, advertisement, redaction – and even before then, since he had begun his full time commitment to the socialist organizations – Mussolini had always inspired his action to a clear, if often contingent and instrumental, goal. First, the affirmation of the intransigent-revolutionary current, from his section of Forlì to the national congress of Reggio-Emilia, then the direction of the Avanti!, the intervention, the Nation, the internal front, Caporetto and Vittorio Veneto. Now, with the war over, victorious yet far from fraught of the promised prizes, the Italian intervention, which had provided his newspaper not only with a raison d'etre but with its practical means of existence, ceased to be an actual, future or extant goal, and begun to slip into the past, leaving Mussolini to wander the desert in search of a revelation, at serious risk of following the same path of many other figures of Italian interventionism, lost, soon enough irrelevant, and forgotten.

More prosaically, Mussolini needed to find an editorial line, maybe an underlying core theme, an idea, but more urgently a series of causes, of battles for his “newspaper of the combatants and producers” to commit to and fight on the new front line of the Italian public opinion – and with all that, and by means of that, to find funds as well, since those who had supported his newspaper during the war were likely to be less inclined to do so in peacetime, or to ask in return for tighter restraints on his freedom of action.

It was during these months of wandering that Mussolini's journey – at least if we focus on his collocation as a public persona, rather than on his private mind – brought him to a closer alignment with the “national” field and with nationalist positions. And it is also during the same months that Mussolini came to sponsor his most impactful initiative among the many others of those weeks, with the foundation, on March 23^rd 1919 of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, thus marking the beginning of the fascist movement in Italy, and broadly speaking of fascism. Nonetheless the two processes – the latter being not just the foundation of the Fasci but also the composite attempts to provide the new formation with some form of ideological content during the remainder of the year, until D'Annunzio's occupation of Fiume in September and the elections of November 1919 opened a new period in the history of the Fasci – should not be necessarily taken to have exerted a decisive influence over each other, or to represent, the latter, a consequence of the former. Indeed, while certainly related to each other, as the combatant groups, the arditi, the ardito-futuristi, as well as the elements coming from the “national syndicalist” experience, shared for the most part a common “national” and therefore “anti-Bolshevik” sentiment (or vice versa), which led them to look at Mussolini's contemporary initiatives from a certain definite angle, it was Mussolini's unsuccessful attempts to broaden his public and political appeal and to characterize his “interventionism” less narrowly which played a decisive role in his acknowledgment of those small “national” and “radical-national” groups as his true audience. Point being that, while Mussolini was – of the many “left-interventionist” figures – one of the less “democratic” in a comparatively modern sense (as opposed, for instance, to Salvemini), and therefore certainly more in touch with those “radical-national” themes, the “democratic-interventionist” platform was, in the immediate aftermath of the war, significant enough that Mussolini could not disregard it without running his business at a loss and risking being marginalized or cut out entirely from the ongoing political discourse. Conversely, even the whole front of national-radicalism, unless someone managed to expand its reach beyond the arditi, ardito-futuristi, national syndicalists and fringe nationalists, into the larger basin of the “combatants”, was by itself too limited and scattered to represent a viable center of political attraction for Mussolini to commit to.

Indeed, while Mussolini continued to treat his “aristocracies of the trenches” quite lavishly in so far as compliments went, his patronage of the Fasci remained somewhat incidental – with the new formations resembling a lesser version, given the limited array of groups represented, of the “Interventionist Constituent” which Mussolini had unsuccessfully launched a few months before, and numerically much, much smaller than the National Combatants Association, which Mussolini would later attempt, without success, to bring closer to the Fasci. Rather, Mussolini's main occupation at the time was still, and remained for a few more months, that of chief editor of the Popolo d'Italia, with his contribution to the early fascist movement ideological and practical organization being limited mostly to that of a sympathetic observer (the fasci even had their own newspaper and separate funds, while Mussolini decided to launch his own, glossy, monthly periodical, Ardita), so that it's probably fair to say that the most energetic attempt to turn the fasci into an effective political force with an original and distinctive program came from Alceste de Ambris, who at the time wasn't even a member. In other words, the fasci, being left quite a lot to themselves, and being often composed of very few active members, were driven in their attempts to find an orientation more by local political considerations, by the influence of notable personalities, by mere circumstances at times, than by a coherent action deriving from Mussolini. Which, to sum up, means that Mussolini's “national” tones and those of the Fasci were more a result of a convergent evolution than of a direct influence of the former over the latter.

Of course, the date of March 23^rd remains relevant for Fascism and for Mussolini, and it's easy to see how it could come, later on, to be seen as a turning point, a "fateful" day, to echo one of the most overused attributes of all things fascist. It was one of the three official “party-national festivities” (with October 28^th and April 21^st – the “Roman Nativity”) established in 1927, when the “regime's calendar” took its definitive form. It's also the date chosen by Mussolini to end his own recollection of the weeks he spent in search for his way – as recorded by his contemporary biographer Y. De Begnac, in October 1939

We were lost, looking for a path ahead of us. Could my own Popolo d'Italia lead the way? I dared not say so myself. But the shop was open and in need of someone running it. The public had whirled around in a kaleidoscope of new trends and then returned to the […] negative ideas of before the War. [As for us,] we were like revenants whose tongue had been forgotten among the people of the rear and we had, therefore, to free our vocabulary from all archaisms […] Our spiritual guides had fallen behind a thousand years, in comparison to us who had suffered the long experience of service in the trenches. […]

It was that real perspective, which always comes after a flood, to open my eyes. Milan was by then a scene without characters. The intervention had burned out Turati, Treves and many others […] The War had killed Corridoni and the revolutionary syndicalists. D'Annunzio, to exist and survive, had to make up the Fiume affaire. I felt the public for their pulse and understood how, amidst general disorientation, there was an audience for me. It was a matter of finding a way to let them see themselves in my newspaper. With wars, intermediate social classes are gradually pushed towards financial equality with the poor: with wars, great financial concentrations triumph above the graveyard of institutions; with wars, quotas of the lower strata, speculating on the dead and the living, turn themselves into strong militants for a new system of conservation. The defeated of victory were the low rank officers, non commissioned officers who had been given no guarantee of returning to their pre war workplace. The defeated had been, due to the devaluation of currency, the holders of fixed income, owners of small savings, those who had fronted the state the means to wage war, that is the subscribers of public debt. A right to life had been betrayed. Someone had failed their sworn promises. My way found its right direction by itself. It was March 23^rd 1919.

4 – Programs and Postulates

The first meeting – the adunata - of the Fasci di Combattimento in Milan, on March 23^rd 1919, was regarded by contemporaries as one of the many initiatives occurring within the lesser spheres of the Italian political world, the motion of which was regulated and directed from a much higher plan by the greater events of the time: the serious financial situation, the repercussions of the ongoing peace on international credit and supplies, debt, inflation and social unrest, the threat of Bolshevism spreading through Europe, the massive, growing movement for workers organization, the fall of the “autocratic regimes” and dissolution of Austria-Hungary with its corollary of new insidious nationalism, the peace conference in Paris, with its repercussions on the Italian aspirations over Fiume and Dalmatia as well as on the stability of the Orlando-Sonnino Government, the debate over the new electoral law and the much needed renovation of local administrations.

Those contemporaries who were able to notice it in the first place, that is. Police authorities reported somewhere around three hundred participants, and the adhesion statements publicized on the Popolo d'Italia are more or less consistent with that number.

Even Mussolini's own Popolo d'Italia had to somewhat restrain its coverage of the event, to account for the bigger and momentous events of national and international politics – the Popolo d'Italia was a newspaper, after all, and Mussolini had a business to run. Which is not to say that he didn't have political ambitions, or aspirations – and some were far from modest either – but rather that these remained, at the time, complementary to his activity as a publicist, in so far as Mussolini understood that his personal stature and relevance, from the point he had chosen to run his own shop onwards, was tied to his ability to maintain a “voice”, a channel which enabled him to appeal directly to his public. And this action – as Mussolini himself described and understood it – was a complex mixture of leading and following, or rather of leading those already on the move and especially of finding ways to lead them where they wanted to go.

On March 18^th Mussolini justified the absence of an extensive coverage on the program of the upcoming Fasci assembly – someone might have compared this lackluster introduction to the far wider and vocal campaigns-debates he had promoted on the Avanti! - (“March 23^rd ” - it's the title of the piece, published on the 18^th of March)

I had resolved to develop and illustrate the general lines of what our program of tomorrow may be, in a series of articles during this week before our meeting. I have given up on this exposition because, this one being the decisive week for the resolution of the fundamental problems of peace, foreign politics absorbs time and space and focus, and furthermore because the vast coverage of the previous months has already “settled in” the readers of the Popolo.

For these reasons Mussolini contented himself with a few generic arguments – keeping the exposition of the “program to be” for the meeting of the 23^rd – and, to be precise, there had been no “vast coverage” during the previous months, unless Mussolini truly intended his adunata to somehow replace the old “Interventionist Constituent”, and no real program was exposed on the 23^rd either since no program was ready at the time (and no substantial attempt to prepare one in advance seems to have been made). In substance Mussolini appears to have walked into the meeting with a few “topical” points to discuss briefly, mostly to reiterate the “revolutionary” character of the war and of interventionism and its fundamental opposition to the Official Socialists and Bolshevism (but not to labor as a whole), acting more as a speaker, albeit a distinguished one, than as a political leader of sorts. Which should not really surprise, given the process of formation of the Fasci, Mussolini's general attitude at the time and the fact that, even in so far as a “by design” approach went, the Fasci were not meant to be a political party.

This should certainly warn us against interpreting the foundation of the Fasci as an inherently decisive moment in Mussolini's political trajectory – even if it can, of course, be retroactively read as one – an arrival point of an arc which begun with the interventionist choice in October 1914 (which was, instead, a much more decisive moment in his personal and political arc), where one would expect to recognize certain definitive ideological characters of “Fascism” in their manifest form, maybe even summed up in a convenient list. In fact, the assembly of March 23^rd 1919 represents only a moment in the process of definition of the ideological character of fascism, and even Mussolini's own alignment with more nationalist positions is still complicated by the various “democratic” ideological fragments of revolutionarism, subversivism and radicalism, which inspired the – at times convenient but not entirely empty, despite the attraction force of the latter – distinction between “national” and nationalist themes.

The Fasci themselves had called their assembly before they could come properly into existence, and therefore had no policies or political structures of their own, with the first Fascio, that of Milan, being officially constituted only on the 21^st of March. Consequently, the main “ideological” contributions came in the form of a few, rather generic, speeches delivered in the morning (followed by a short discussion in the afternoon) by the main personalities who intervened, after Mussolini had read, and briefly illustrated, the three statements submitted for approval.

According to Mussolini's own report of the following day (March 24^th 1919 - Popolo d'Italia - I refer to this issue for the contents of the various speeches of the 23^rd as well) the assembly had been “effective”.

Perhaps a unique circumstance in the history of our national politics, the entire debate was over in four hours. Maybe, three could have been enough. Everyone perfectly understood that it was pointless, more so because it would have been too easy, to go through all things imaginable. It was necessary, rather than examine an interminable series of particular issues, to establish the general program lines of our action. […]

Now it is time to create the organisms of agitation and enactment, and those have to be put together without delays in every city and town. […] It doesn't take many [to make one]. I dare say it's better, while not necessary, to be few. Five, or ten, are enough to form a Fascio […]

After a brief introduction, contrasting once again “the willful and conscious minority of the Italians”, bonding together like they did in the weeks of the interventionist campaign, with “the resentful misoneism of the card-touting plebs” and “the fearful misoneism of the ruling classes”, Mussolini begun his summary:

It's been four years – of glory and passion – and the faithful of the good fight, the survivors of our liberation war are once again together […]

Among the various personalities listed on the Popolo d'Italia, Mario Gioda from Turin, Ernesto De Angelis, from Naples, Eno Mecheri from Genoa, Mario Carli from Rome, Piero Jacchia from Trieste, Roberto Farinacci from Cremona – and, for obvious reasons, a larger group from Milan: Marinetti, Ferruccio Vecchi, Enzo Ferrari, Guido Podrecca, Ambrogio Binda, Eucardio Momigliano, Decio Canzio Garibaldi, Guido Pesenti, Celso Morisi, Umberto Pasella “with a large group of workers from the Milanese USI”, “and many others whose name we can't remember”.

The honor of the opening declaration had gone to the arditi captain and president of the assembly, Ferruccio Vecchi, who had “reclaimed for the combatants the right to give new impulse to the Italian things” as well as denouncing the “serious danger” represented by “the Bolshevik attempt to take root within Italy”.

“This will never be!”

Enzo Ferrari, speaking second after Vecchi, praising again the combatants, as well as those who, “unable to fight at the front against the foreign enemy, fought at home and covered our backs against traitors and defeatists of all sorts”, sent his renewed appeal to “save our Victory”.

The Nation in arms wanted the war, and won it, despite the “imbecile and nefarious” saboteurs, despite the skepticism and inadequacy of its government leaders. The Nation in arms will save our Victory, despite the attempts to strike back of the Official Socialists, of the clericals, of the Giolittians, despite a government and a ruling class that have yet to understand the greatness and the immeasurable revolutionary consequences of our victory […]

What is that we want then? In the matter of internal politics: to be a frontier against menacing Bolshevism from below – but also to demolish overbearing state-bureaucratic Bolshevism from above. […] In the matter of foreign policy: we want for Italy and her forty millions […] the place in the sun, moral dignity, the international prestige they deserve. We want Dalmatia, Roman and Venetian, to be ours, against the insanity of Yugoslav imperialism […] We want not to be fooled any longer, by those others who carve apart lands, markets, colonies in the shade of Wilsonism […]