Mussolini and the Rise of Fascism by Donald Sassoon

Author:Donald Sassoon [Sassoon, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-00-740421-6
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2007-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

Violence paid off: Ferrara, hitherto a socialist stronghold, turned fascist at the national election of 15 May.43 The bloodshed continued for the following year and a half – until the March on Rome. Italo Balbo, the leader of the Ferrara fascisti, described, with some satisfaction, the destruction and violence inflicted in the course of twenty–four hours in July 1922, ‘destroying and burning down … offices and buildings belonging to socialists and communists. It was a terrible night. Our passage was marked by high columns of fire and smoke.’44 ‘Our objective’, he explained, was ‘to devalue the state, destroy the present regime and all its venerable institutions. The more our actions are seen to be scandalous, the better.’45

The flavour of the rhetoric of the time – mimicking D’Annunzio – can be captured from a document of one of the many right–wing student groups that were springing up in Italy, the ‘appello’ launched in April 1920 by the Consiglio nazionale dell’avanguardia studentesca:

If the War celebrated for us who are young the glorious epic tale of conscious youth springing from blood and ruins, from clashes and battles more scorching and red than the sun itself, for those of you who are even younger, the present twilight of mediocrity and base cowardice must not appear like the implacable grey of the autumn. You should feel it announcing the flight from darkness and the rise of a radiant dawn that will never know sunsets.46

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