In 1919, Benito Mussolini looked like just another failed politician.
His defeat seemed so complete after he lost his seat in the Italian Chamber of Deputies that his socialist opponents carted around a coffin symbolizing, they said, the death and burial of Mussolini’s career.
But just a few short years later, in January of 1925, the heavy-jawed, grim-faced Mussolini, with fists crashing the podium, delivered a vigorous speech before Parliament that is generally seen as the beginning of his dictatorship. The speech culminated with deputies surging forward amidst thunderous applause to raise Mussolini onto their shoulders and carry him in triumph from the hall on the wave of their enthusiasm.
Mussolini had risen to the peak of political power. He had become the brutal and undisputed master of Italy, “Il Duce,” “The Leader.”
A Violent Child
How did Mussolini rise to power? To answer that question, we must first glance at his childhood and temperament and the political situation of Italy during his time.
Mussolini’s penchant for violence revealed itself early. The awkward, aggressive, and disobedient boy bullied other children, and when he was sent to a strict boarding school because of his misbehavior he acted out even more, stabbing another boarder with a penknife and attacking a teacher. Mussolini was expelled from that school and sent to another, where he again stabbed a classmate. In spite of his behavioral issues, Mussolini succeeded academically and passed his final exams.
According to Denis Mack Smith’s biography of Mussolini, the politician’s somewhat loveless childhood and strict academic environment filled him with bitterness, resentment, and a desire to be in control. “A number of stories ... suggest that the young Mussolini had a bad-tempered willfulness and a streak of brutality,” Smith writes. “As he had a pronounced sense of vendetta, no insult was allowed to pass without his exacting vengeance, but he also ‘sought quarrels for their own sake and because he needed to dominate.’” By his late teens, Mussolini was also a womanizer, according to Smith.
After a short stint as a teacher, Mussolini traveled to Switzerland. Ironically for the man who would become such an adamant opponent of socialism and communism, Mussolini carried with him nothing but a medallion of Karl Marx. He had not yet abandoned his father’s socialist principles.
He did add on to those principles, however, by reading extensively. He dove into the work of Immanuel Kant, Benedict de Spinoza, Friedrich Nietzsche, G.W.F. Hegel, and Georges Sorel, among others, no doubt accumulating some of the seeds that would grow into Fascism, but without forming a very clear philosophical framework. Mussolini’s undisciplined, pick-and-choose philosophy might be responsible for some of the incoherence that lies behind Fascism. On this point, Smith observed, “One [acquaintance] noted how, like his father, he habitually and almost indiscriminately ranged from one belief to another, giving the impression that he was an instinctive revolutionary who was unsure what kind of revolution he wanted.”
Once Mussolini was back in Italy, he began working as a socialist journalist, including as editor of Avanti! (“Forward!”). He began to earn notoriety as a young revolutionary with interesting potential. Within the pages of Avanti!, Mussolini rabidly opposed Italy’s entrance into World War I, due to his socialist, anti-imperialist beliefs. But in a strange reversal, he soon began arguing in favor of Italy’s involvement in the war because he believed that revolution would follow on its heels.
Mussolini’s admiration for Marx and flip-flopping from socialist to fascist highlight the strange similarities between extreme left-wing and extreme right-wing groups. When we set aside some of the rhetoric and compare the day-to-day operations of Communist Russia and Fascist Italy, we find that they’re strikingly similar. Both ideologies, though purportedly opposites, share many key presuppositions, such as a philosophy of revolution, total state control, and the worship of power.
Mussolini’s political success happened in part because his battle cry fell on ears that were well-prepared for it. Mussolini’s call for Italians to come together and work for the glory of the nation resonated with a people who were inwardly divided and outwardly humiliated, they thought, by the outcomes of World War I.
Italy fought on the winning side of the war, but failed to gain much from the victory. Promises made to Italy by the Triple Entente were not kept. Many in Italy felt betrayed by both their own government and the governments of France and Britain.
Forming the Party
As the old political order of Europe crumbled away during and after World War I, new ideas, leaders, and parties rose up to fill the void. In most European countries, communism, fascism, and liberalism competed with one another to be the new dominant ideology and political system. Italy witnessed this battle as extremists on both the left and the right took to gang warfare in the turbulent years following the war. Worsening economic conditions drove many toward socialism, and the left-wing parties and trade unions ballooned to over three million members. Unrest, strikes, street fighting, property seizures, and agitations increased.In 1919, Mussolini formed the “Fasci Italiani di Combattimento” (Italian Combat Squad or Italian Fasces of Combat) in part to oppose the socialist and communist agitators. A “fasces” was a ceremonial weapon in ancient Rome made of an axe surrounded by a bundle of wood. It symbolized the power and jurisdiction of a magistrate. In the 19th century, Italians began using the term to refer to political associations with common goals. It also fit well with Mussolini’s doctrine of strength through unity (even if that unity was forced).
Mussolini and his combat fasces promised to deliver Italy from the grip of Bolshevik revolutionaries and restore the glory of the Roman Empire of old. They also hated the existing government and all those who had tried to keep Italy neutral in World War I, including the socialists whom they deemed cowards and traitors.
Mussolini was gaining a dedicated following, yet still suffered humiliating defeat in 1919 when he earned only 2,420 votes to the Socialist Party’s 1.8 million. This was the occasion for the coffin and fake funeral that the socialists used to mock him.
But Mussolini was far from finished. His Fascist squads—whose attire earned them the name “Blackshirts”—began hunting down socialists, burning union offices, terrorizing local people, and even attacking government institutions run by left-leaning officials. In some parts of the country, the Fascists were effectively in control. The Italian government did little to stop the Blackshirts, partly because they, too, feared the communists and wanted them suppressed. Mussolini and the Fascists’ power grew like an unchecked tumor.
The March on Rome
Mussolini’s strong image, personal charisma, and willingness to use force steadily expanded his influence. In 1921, he won a seat in parliament. By late that year, the Blackshirts movement—now officially the National Fascist Party—had metastasized from 30,000 members to 320,000.Il Duce now believed he had enough support to make the final push for total control. He just needed the right opening. It came in 1922, when the socialists launched a major strike and the government failed to put it down. This, according to Mussolini, proved the government’s weakness and incompetence. Italy needed a strong leader with the guts to get things done. That was the narrative, at least.
The fateful day arrived: Oct. 25, 1922. Mussolini ordered his party leaders to march the Fascist militia into Rome to pressure King Victor Emmanuel III. Instead of ordering out the Italian military, the king capitulated and appointed Mussolini as prime minister.
The dam had broken, and there would be no stopping the tide that would carry Mussolini to total dictatorship. The Chamber of Deputies granted Mussolini year-long emergency powers to crush the threat from the Left, and, as time passed, Mussolini continued to consolidate power and erode the rights of the people. The king became a mere shadow in the background, unable to control Mussolini, who sought to enlarge his Fascist state through conquest of Corfu and Ethiopia and an alliance with Nazi Germany.
This all-consuming ideology would devour the nation and leave it in ruins by the end of World War II, when Mussolini and his empire came crashing down.
