after the outbreak of the Great War. Then, to the
anger of the Socialists who condemned the
capitalist war and demanded non-intervention,
Mussolini switched and started banging the drum
of nationalism and patriotism in Avanti. The
Socialists thereupon ousted him from the editor-
ship. Mussolini then founded his own paper in
November 1914, the Popolo d’Italia, and cam-
paigned for intervention. Without political con-
nections his influence, however, was negligible.
He served in the army from 1915 to 1917, was
wounded and, on release from the army, returned
to patriotic journalism.
Mussolini observed the impotence and weak-
ness of parliamentary government after the war
and saw it as an opportunity for him to form and
lead an authoritarian movement; with its help he
might then play an important role in the state,
something he had so far failed to do.
A meeting in Milan, addressed by Mussolini,
of some 200 of his followers in March 1919
marks the formal beginning of the Fascist move-
ment. The movement in the beginning expressed
its hostility to property and to capitalist industry
and followed the line of French syndicalism in
advocating worker control of industry – ‘eco-
nomic democracy’ – and so tried to win the urban
workers’ support. Yet in its early years the money
flowing in to support it, and to fund Mussolini’s
own newspaper, came from Milan industrialists.
The landowners too intended to use his bands of
ruffians – the squadristi – against peasants.
Mussolini’s personal inclinations were probably
socialist still in 1919, but in his bid for power he
was ready to trim his sails and operate in the
interests of property to secure the support of
industrialists and landowners. He had become a
pure opportunist and adventurer.
Fascism was the main beneficiary of the inef-
fectual trade union activities, the occupation of
the factories in the summer of 1920 and the
Socialists’ appeals to workers to engage in a
general strike. During the winter of 1920 and the
following spring, bands of Fascists in their black
shirts, both in the towns and in the countryside,
attacked all forms of labour organisations, social-
ist councils, socialist newspapers, even cultural
societies. Opponents were beaten and tortured.
The ‘red shirts’ offered resistance and street
battles ensued. Liberal Italy and the Church,
while condemning all violence, connived at the
destruction of socialist organisations by the
Fascists. Since the government appeared power-
less to restore law and order, the Fascists came to
be regarded as the protectors of property by the
middle classes and not as the principal disturbers
of the peace, which they were.
The rapid growth of violent bands of Fascists,
swelled by the followers of D’Annunzio, whose
escapade in Fiume had collapsed, could no longer
be effectively controlled by Mussolini and at this
stage, in 1921, was unwelcome to him. Mussolini
had entered parliament as the leader of a small
party and sought power in alliance with either one
of the two large parties, the Catholic Popular
Party or the Socialists. He chose the Socialists
temporarily to capture the mass votes of the urban
workers. But the leaders of the Fascist bands were
outraged at this ‘betrayal’. Mussolini even lost the
leadership of the party for a short time. The
Fascists continued their violence in the cities and
the countryside. Mussolini also nourished the
belief of the parliamentary Liberals that he would
cooperate with them against the socialist left.
Mussolini played the anti-Bolshevik card for all
he was worth. The call by the Socialists in July
1922 for a general strike in a bid to stop the
increasing lawlessness and drift to the right pro-
vided a semblance of justification for Mussolini’s
claims. The strike call was a failure but increased
the desire for tough measures against the workers.
The support the Fascists were given was particu-
larly strong from those groups – artisans, white-
collar workers and shopkeepers, the lower-middle
class – who saw their status threatened and
usurped by the demands of the workers. The
army despised the parliamentary regime, which
was obliged to reduce their swollen wartime
strength. Mussolini’s strident nationalism natu-
rally appealed to them. Prefects and civil servants
in the provinces, too, connived at Fascist violence
and were hedging their bets in case the Fascists
should one day come to power. Giolitti’s policy
of non-interference in disputes which he believed
would blow themselves out was a clever tactic as
far as weakening the strength of the trade unions