Nationalism in Modern Europe by Derek Hastings

Author:Derek Hastings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury

Mussolini’s first two years in power represented a continuation of parliamentary constitutional rule, but with increasing totalitarian overtones. In December 1922, Mussolini created the Fascist Grand Council, which served as a sort of shadow cabinet, and the following month he established the Voluntary Militia for National Security, built largely on the foundation of private fascist militias and used primarily for intimidation of political opponents. In July 1923, the parliament passed the so-called Acerbo Law, named for its author Giacomo Acerbo, which essentially gutted the Italian constitution’s provisions for democratic rule. The law gave any party who garnered more than 25 percent of the vote a two-thirds supermajority in parliament; it was used after the next elections, which took place in April 1924 in an atmosphere of violent intimidation, to give the Fascist Party firm parliamentary control. But several weeks later, in early June, the Acerbo Law’s most vocal critic, the socialist parliamentary leader Giacomo Matteotti, disappeared.82 His body was discovered later that summer, and it was widely suspected that the murder had been commissioned either by Mussolini himself or by someone close to him.83 Matteotti’s socialist colleagues responded by abandoning their parliamentary seats in protest, and Mussolini’s administration entered the most severe crisis of its entire existence.84 Amid swirling rumors and calls for his deposition—calls that were ignored by King Victor Emmanuel III—Mussolini slipped into a deep depression lasting throughout the fall. In December 1924, a delegation of Fascist Party leaders met with Mussolini threatening to push him aside if he did not rouse himself from the doldrums of inactivity.

Mussolini’s response came in the form of one of his most famous public addresses, on January 3, 1925, in which he accepted responsibility in a general sense for the atmosphere of crisis that had spread over the preceding months and pledged to exercise firmer control of governance. The speech, which is generally seen as the beginning of Mussolini’s actual dictatorial rule, was followed by the arrest of more than one hundred suspected subversives.85 Over the ensuing years the structures of dictatorial control were erected. In December 1925, Mussolini was made responsible to the king alone, and following a series of assassination attempts the following year, all rival political parties were outlawed, making Italy a one-party state. Non-fascist trade unions were neutralized, corporatist economic structures were introduced, and the press was heavily censored. In 1929, Mussolini signed the Lateran Accords, which established the independence of Vatican City and healed much of the rift that had existed between the secular Italian state and the popes since national unification the previous century.86 Although Mussolini’s totalitarian aspirations never came close to being realized—with the monarchy, church, and military all retaining important elements of independence—the four to five year period that followed the Matteotti crisis represented a significant achievement in dismantling the democratic structures of a major European nation-state.

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