In its original historical context, the affirmation of Fascism in Italy took place at the end of a period of social conflict of which the theme of anti-Bolshevism reaction was most definitely a central one. It is therefore true that socialist organizations - unions, party sections, town administrations - were the main object of Fascist aggression. This also means that the counterposition with socialism was somewhat "intrinsic" to the affirmation of Fascism.

At the same time, Fascism - as capable as it was to earn the cautious approval, or tolerance of the liberal establishment, thanks to the dubious "defensive" character of its violence - was also marked by quite manifest anti-democratic traits which conferred to it an appearance, for at least a few, quite irreducible to any "liberal" system, whether of conservative or democratic character. Also, for both structural and contingent reasons, Fascism was often reluctant to tolerate forms of open dissent, unless they could be effectively reduced to a purely intellectual dissatisfaction. This meant that, on one hand, there were various notable figures of the liberal and even conservative world which spoke out, more or less loudly, against the Fascist practice of violence, or at least distanced themselves from it; on the other, Fascist violence did end up targeting some of the more outspoken voices. Men like don Giovanni Minzoni, a catholic leagues patron and organizer, murdered in 1923; Giovanni Amendola, technically a "liberal democratic", who tried to rally together an opposition after Mussolini's designation in October 1922 and was subsequently subject to various assaults, until he died in 1926 of probably related causes; Piero Gobetti, who, also a liberal, died in 1926; Carlo and Nello Rosselli, murdered in 1937. And many other expats who conducted press and public opinion campaigns against the Regime during the following years - Gaetano Salvemini, who, despite his early participation to the socialist movement, had moved towards liberal-democratic positions by the time of the Great War, perhaps the most prominent among them.

In Italy you have figures like Benedetto Croce - who, after a relatively brief time, took a rather negative view of the Fascist phenomenon and an even more scathing one of the Fascist methods - a true late XIX Century liberal, who promoted the famous Manifesto degli intellettuali antifascisti of 1925, signed among others by the liberal-conservative former owner and chief editor of the Corriere della Sera Luigi Albertini; by the well known philosopher of violence, Giuseppe Rensi; by matematician Tullio Levi-Civita; by liberal economist Luigi Einaudi; and indeed by many others.

While those individuals probably found similar reasons to oppose, or to manifest their opposition against the new Regime, their personal beliefs and political orientation was, broadly speaking, "personal".

It is true that many of these initiatives remained of symbolic character, and the only - somewhat, but modestly, effective - attempts at an organized propaganda action within Italy, at least until the early 1940s, were those conducted by the Communists, who counted on a relatively strong international network to support their efforts. But, in substance, the Communist leaders as well had to recognize that their effort could not undermine the Regime's stability, and were, in fact, limited to maintaining a residual political presence within the Italian territory.

That said, Fascism has, in its character, the inclination to draw an absolute - almost ontological - line between the "everything within Fascism" and the "nothing outside of Fascism", to quote the famous expression. Which means that those who fall outside of this line, wheter willingly or unwillingly, do exist only "anti-fascistly".