Dominic R
How did Fascism rise in Italy and how is it connected to modern-day Fascistic and Ultranationalist movements?
QUOTES:
"‘The violent ones? I need them as well!’ Benito Mussolini said this to a senator, Ettore Conti, the day after the elections of 6 April 1924. Who were these violent ones? It became clear a few weeks later, when Giacomo Matteotti was brutally murdered by a gang of ex-squadristi. Matteotti s murder and the outrages committed by blackshirt 'action squads' caused considerable embarrassment to Mussolini and the National Fascist Party but the Duces words to Conti show his awareness that squadrista violence was an essential prop to his personal power and to Fascism itself." (The Institutionalisation of "Squadrismo": Disciplining Paramilitary Violence in the Italian Fascist Dictatorship, Matteo Millan, pg. 552)
"Fascism's institutional centrepiece, giving structure to the ethereal notion of the totalitarian ethical state, was corporatism, which the regime began embracing formally in the wake of the Matteotti crisis of 1924. Fascist corporatism derived especially from the disparate syndicalist and Nationalist traditions, each accenting the import of trade unions as specifically modern organisations that potentially, at least, could nurture a new ethical-political consciousness through economic roles. But the syndicalists accented the scope for mobilising energies from below, whereas the Nationalists saw especially the scope for discipline from above. A patina of Gentilian idealism then gave deeper resonance to fascist corporatism - but introduced some further tensions at the same time. Even if the point was to unleash energies from below, was technical competence or ethical capacity the key?” (Myth, Style, Substance and the Totalitarian Dynamic in Fascist Italy, David D. Roberts, pg. 15)
Notes Document
Bibliographic Information:
Author: Matteo Millan
Title of article or book: The Institutionalisation of "Squadrismo": Disciplining Paramilitary Violence in the Italian Fascist Dictatorship
Title of publication (if article in magazine, newspaper, or journal): Contemporary European History November 2013, Vol. 22, No. 4
Page numbers (if article in magazine, newspaper, or journal): pp. 551-573
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date published: November 2013
URL (if applicable): https://www.jstor.org/stable/43299403
Paraphrased Notes: Include Page #s
-The use of violence as a tool to gain political power and relevance might work in the short term, but long term it leads to increased instability and throws your legitimacy into question. (Page 552)
-The origin of the Squadrismo and Squadrismo tactics coincided with Mussolini’s original efforts to create a Fascist party. The purpose of these tactics were to suppress opposition, especially in rural areas, and to gain notoriety for Mussolini’s movement. (page 556)
Direct quotes: Include Page #s
“'The violent ones? I need them as well!’ Benito Mussolini said this to a senator, Ettore Conti, the day after the elections of 6 April 1924. Who were these violent ones? It became clear a few weeks later, when Giacomo Matteotti was brutally murdered by a gang of ex- squadristi. Matteotti s murder and the outrages committed by blackshirt 'action squads' caused considerable embarrassment to Mussolini and the National Fascist Party but the Duces words to Conti show his awareness that squadrista violence was an essential prop to his personal power and to Fascism itself.” (Page. 551)
“In 1921 Mussolini talked in terms of 'surgical' or 'gentlemanly' violence and condemned those who saw it as 'a school, a system or, worse still, an aesthetic'. This scarcely squares with the habitus of squadristi : their personalities, their mindset and their social practice had all been forged through violence. Squadristi and Fascist paramilitaries in general, saw violence not simply as an instrument in the political struggle but as a lynch pin of their individual and group identity.” (Page. 552)
“There can be no doubt that the years between the March on Rome and 1926 were a decisive period within the ventennio, the two decades of Fascist supremacy. This period is traditionally interpreted as an internal power struggle between two currents of Fascism: on the one hand, government Fascism as incarnate in Mussolini and the moderates, anxious not to scare off their allies and determined to suppress all forms of illegal action, including squadrismo; on the other, local Fascism in the person of ex- squadristi leaders, intolerant of all restraint and determined to use violence to maintain their own power. It is generally assumed that these two Fascisms had very different political programmes and perspectives on the movements future - differences made irreconcilable by the assumption of government after the March. If Mussolini was to maintain his grip on power for the 'duration', one of his most urgent and immediate tasks was to put a final stop to squadrismo and its destabilising influences. According to this interpretation, the formation of the Milizia, the progressive bureaucratisation of the Fascist Party and the strengthening of the position and powers of the prefects were all aimed at subordinating the party to the state. The exceptional legislation of 1925-7 is therefore seen as the culmination of the process whereby the party was neutered.” (Page. 554)
“From 1926 onwards the party became steadily more hierarchical, largely as a consequence of Mussolini s own decisions. The same period saw an ever more rapid fascistisation of the state. State and party had different tasks and different functions, and the rivalry among the centres of power was bitter and intense; however, the struggles were purely internal, and limited to a political context that was unequivocally Fascist. In a regime which recognised only one party - the Fascist Party - and had placed most of the key sources of power in the hands of men who derived their political legitimacy from their status as 'protagonists of the Fascist revolution', it makes little sense to argue in terms of the party's subordination to the state. Indeed, the 'institutionalisation' of dictatorship and totalitarianism was mainly due to the party itself.” (Page 555)
“Thousands of squadristi formed 'action squads' and spread terror through the countryside, destroying the premises of 'subversive' parties, occupying whole towns, beating up and humiliating political opponents. This squadrista violence profoundly undermined the institutions of Italian governments, which proved wholly incapable of maintaining law and order, especially as it was not uncommon for the police, and even some prefects, to side openly with the blackshirts. The confrontations became so violent that some scholars have seen them as an outright civil war. In one comparatively short interval, between November 1918 and June 1921, 986 people were killed in this political violence.” (Page 556)
“Mussolini's strategy for the seizure of power culminated on 28 October 1922, when thousands of squadristi marched on Rome, determined to take over the government lock, stock and barrel. King Victor Emmanuel III made a virtue of necessity by appointing Mussolini to lead the new administration; but this did not check the squadrista killings that were going on all over Italy. For thousands of blackshirts, participation in squadrista militancy from 1920 to 1922 was the ultimate formative experience - politically, mentally and strategically.” (Page 556)
“In the aftermath of the March on Rome, Mussolini's attitude to squadrista violence was ambivalent. On the one hand, he promised a rapid demobilisation; on the other, in his inauguration speech to the Chamber of Deputies he bluntly threatened to put his faithful blackshirts back on the streets if necessary. Collectively, the squadristi were insubordinate and violent, but they were Fascism's, and the Duce's, indispensable iron fist. On 10 November 1922 Agostino Lanzillo wrote in II Popolo d'Italia , the daily paper founded by Mussolini himself, that 'the squadristi have not yet outlived their usefulness, because Mussolini cannot save Italy without them.” (Page 556)
“Mussolini and the PNF always used, or threatened, violence as a means to an end: both the survival of the squads and the creation of the Militia were crucial to a strategy of retaining power by eliminating all forms of pluralism.” (Page 557)
“Gratuitous, even commonplace, as such violence was, it enabled the squadristi to 'throw their weight about and strike fear into everybody'. The fact that the squads enjoyed the protection of national and local leaders legitimised their violence and convinced them that they could do as they liked, while the population as a whole was frankly terrified. This violence had a profound effect on Italian society: not only on those who practised it, but also on those who suffered or witnessed it: squadrismo generated a 'collective habituation to violence' which conditioned 'Italians' responses' to the tyrannical, repressive and racist policies of the Fascist Regime. This banalisation of violence turned out to be an excellent means of controlling and preventing dissent, the best possible way to demonstrate that no form of opposition was possible and so prepare the ground for dictatorship, consensus and the 'new Fascist order'. Paradoxically, however, even as squadrismo was underwriting the new regime, it was simultaneously writing its own death warrant.” (Page 558)
“Barely five days after the attempt in Bologna the Minister for the Interior, Luigi Federzoni and the Keeper of the Seals, Alfredo Rocco, tabled before the Council of Ministers a series of 'administrative' regulations intended to put an end to subversive violence while simultaneously reining back the worst excesses of the Fascists. The very next day, Federzoni s proposals were included in the new Consolidated Public Safety Act, which governed all aspects of law and order. Although it was presented as an emergency measure, the Act had actually been in the governmental pipeline for some time. It was a key stage in the organisation of repression in the Fascist police state.” (Page 560)
“The Consolidated Public Safety Act was the starting point for a process of 'institutionalising' violence and terror as part of everyday life. Nevertheless, if the state was in a position to pass new measures to suppress liberty and strangle the rule of law, it was largely thanks to squadrismo. The special legislation did no more than 'give legal backing to de facto powers' - powers created by squadrista force and long-term squadrista action, an inheritance now appropriated and consummated by the state.” (Page 561)
“Their reports represented the March on Rome as a turning point. Before that, blackshirt violence 'was justified if criminal activity by subversives was disturbing the peaceful evolution of national life, [but] there was no such justification once Fascism had become established'. Many squadristi had turned out to be devoid of the 'merits' that they had acquired during the revolutionary era, and had continued to act violently and arrogantly to the detriment of ordinary people, and even of Fascism itself. Squadristi condemned to political confinement had always tried to disguise their 'hooliganism as something conducive to the good of Fascism, although their actions actually damaged the good name of the party'. In police eyes these activities were completely anti-Fascist: while 'thanks to Fascism, the Nation had regained the law and order so necessary to civil life', squadristi seemed incapable of understanding 'that the time of mindless violence is over.’” (Page 562)
“If the blackshirts thought that the past justified the future, the provincial commissions for the confino thought the opposite: that their actions before the March were no more than an adumbration of the moral depravity they were subsequently to exhibit. The blackshirts did not understand that the time of violence was over; they refused to obey the regime because they were 'displaced', 'immoral', 'born criminals'. The second recurrent accusation against the squadristi was that they were depraved and perverted. They were to be judged not so much on what they had done, as for being a danger to society - at least in the opinion of adherents of the school of positivist legal thinking headed by Cesare Lombroso and Enrico Ferri. The aim was to 'show how the individual already resembles his crime before he has committed it'.” (Page 563)
“Discipline and political order could not be restored without normalising sexual relationships and eliminating all forms of immorality, which was now both a crime and a political offence. The 'new Fascist man' must combine the intransigence, strength and courage of the squadrista with the discipline and rectitude of an upright family man. It was no coincidence that this new conformity was imposed alongside a campaign to increase the birth rate. When taming revolution as when remodelling and re-educating the population (according to the projects of Human Reclamation that the regime initiated in the late 1920s), the Fascism needed to discipline the virility of the squadrista. What was allowed to happen inside Italy, however, was quite different from what could happen elsewhere: wherever violence was unconstrained - in the colonies, in war, in the campaign for racial purity - the squadrista inclination towards sexual and moral transgression was not only legitimised, but encouraged as a means of oppression and domination.” (Page 564)
“Accused of being bogus Fascists, the squadristi proudly evoked their own past. Very many of them described themselves as 'Fascists from the outset', and boasted of having taken part in 'all the conflicts and riskiest endeavours'. They had suffered serious injuries; they had devoted a large measure of their personal resources to finance blackshirt action. Having 'deserved so well' of Fascism, they surely deserved leniency whatever their offences. Hence they took care to emphasise that they had acted in good faith and that their violence was intrinsically moral. They represented themselves as young men who had been swept away by the 'underlying idealism and morality of Fascism and the greatness of its Founder and Leader', by the 'sacred passion of squadrismo'.” (Page 565)
“The squadristi were well aware of the fundamental hypocrisy underlying the accusations against them: their violence had been approved at the highest levels of the party. They themselves were not politicians, but 'merely' squadristi. They had simply carried out the orders of local politicians, who had had 'no complaints' when they beat up anti-Fascists or ordinary people in order to 'change their outlook on Fascism'.” (Page 566)
“At other times, punishment was replaced by various kinds of positive discipline. By conferring lesser or greater administrative or political office on squadristi and Ras, the regime secured their loyalty and could continue to exploit their abilities. In return, they must have been willing to acknowledge the Duce s sole authority, formally at least. Mussolini himself remarked that it was 'incredible how a squadrista captain changes when you make him a councillor or a mayor'.78 It is interesting to note that from 1926 onwards all the under-secretaries in the Ministry of the Interior (with Aldo Finzi as an important forerunner) were ex- squadristi. They also provided many leading civil servants. In 1937 15.3% of prefects were ex- squadristi , rising to 29.4% if only 'Fascist prefects' are taken into account.” (Page 567)
Summary of Source (2-4 sentences)
This source is a history and analysis of the Blackshirts or “Squadristi” from the founding of the Italian Fasicst Party, all the way to the early 30s and beyond. It describes how political violence was utilized by the fascist party, the men who willing committed this violence, and how the Fascist party brought them to a heel once they had risen to power, for while they were a huge factor in Mussolini coming to power, they also brought with them massive amounts of political instability.
Does this help me answer my question? Why or why not?
Yes, this source gives great insight into why the paramilitary wing of the Fascist movement was created, how it was utilized, and how it was instrumental in Mussolini’s power grab. Along with that, this article also highlights the desensitizing effect the Blackshirts’ violence had on the general populace and how it made them willing to move out of the way and be silent as the Fascist party increased its stranglehold on Italian government and life.
Lingering Questions
What was life like for the general populace during this period of violence. What was life like under Mussolni’s regime? With Mussolni’s delusion of recreating the Roman Empire, what were the factors that lead to his downfall?
Connections to other sources