Chapter III. Essence of fascism

Ordinary participants were disappointed with the failed revolution. Public support of socialistic party and trade unions began to fall rapidly. Landlords and businessmen understood the situation and arranged the counterattack. They figured out that their further game of democracy and legalism could result in the onset of another revolution’s tide and could put under threat private ownership for the means of production. It had not to be allowed. The democracy had to be dealt with. Furthermore in 1921 the Communist party of Italy was founded, and it had been getting more and more popular unlike the socialists.

 

 

Under those circumstances the most aggressive businessmen and landlords started to look for the new people and new methods of political struggle and management. The ruling class needed the persons, who could ensure the defeat of the labor movement that was still dangerous and prepare the country for the next war to partite the world. That was the way of fascism.

The Italian fascism as a political movement was born in March 1919, but its origin related with The First World War. The hatred of the labors who refused to support the War and the glorification of the War were exactly those attributes that were similar between the fascists and the most aggressive Italian businessmen, apart from Mussolini’s gang was depended on private investments.

 Actually, it’s really remarkable that some historians enjoy considering the fascist ideology but totally ignore questions about fascist party financing. Who was the beneficiary of their actions? Who paid for the fascist propaganda? What was the money source for the salaries? Who provided them uniform? You can try to organize such a movement without external financing, you can try to outside and we will look, how many people will join your movement for free.

Actually, the fact of financing the fascist by the businessmen and the landlords is not denied, it is only hushed up. The famous Italian historian Renzo de Felice, the specialist in Italian fascism, made the scrupulous research of the fascist documentation in the Italian State’s archive. The results of the research were summarized in the table, which clearly shows the fascist party financing sources since 1921 to 1924.

Cities. Sum of money(lyres). Financial source: Individuals – 25%, credit and insurance institutions – 10%, industrial and trading companies – 65%. 

Meanwhile, American historian Franc Snowden, speaking about the relationship between heavy industry and fascists, writes:

…they prefer the financial support rather than joining directly. Fiat, Ansaldo and Ilva…they have opened their wallets for Mussolini as many other companies on the peninsula, but their leaders rarely joined the movement or supported it publicly. There were exceptions, of course: Giuseppe Braila – one of the leading employees of Anieli in Fiat, he was part of the Turin Fascio; Edoardo Rattiliano – the leading employee of the Elva concern, he was known as “fanatical fascist”; and Perrone brothers of Ansaldo took part in public speeches of Mussolini... the help that industrialist would be ready to provide, usually didn’t include active political struggle. They provided fascists with money instead; they exerted pressure on

the government, so that it turns a blind eye to the fascist lawlessness and provide the support and favorable conditions for negotiations with the fascist unions.

“The Biennio Rosso” was worried the landlords really much too, not only have peasants started to capture their lands since 1919, but rural workers and laborers started to found the trade unions and to demand the raise of salary, the guarantees of employment during the off-seasons and the working day limitation. And what could the security forces do with that? Actually nothing. Desperately the landlords tried to find the way out of the situation. Then they went to fascists. The terror began against trade unions exactly at the rural regions.

The Fascism started its offensive in autumn 1920 and it firstly attacked with furious anger not the socialistic clubs and not the socialistic party’s branches, but the Chambers of Labor and cooperatives that were mostly adhered to the socialism and even sometimes it also united workers from other political parties or workers indifferent to politics.

For those who were called the men of law it was important not so much to oppose the socialists ideologically as to undermine the superior influence of the Leagues in the “red” regions and to brake already signed contracts with colons and to deny the Chambers of Labor recognition of their representative role.

The first fascists were recruited of the WW1 veterans overfilled with war spirit, chauvinism, nationalism, and pseudo patriotism. In general, it was such part of soldiers as that which was always showing off their military merits and hated every non-patriot. Italian labors protested openly against joining the WW1 were exactly those non-patriots in their eyes. Those groups of soldiers took the name “Fashi italiani di combattimento” (Italian combat union) where the word fascism comes from.

Until the autumn 1921 total number of fascists was even less than 10 000. That was a drop in the bucket compared with multimillion labors movement. However, after the failed Revolution the situation began to change significantly. On the one hand there was the cashflow from the landlords and businessmen. On the other hand, there was an influx of infantry, so to speak, from among those who were disillusioned with the socialist party and the trade unions. For example, the part of intelligentsia, a part of peasantry and even a part of labors. Furthermore, reliable allies

 

 

of the fascists became those who suffer any losses because of the labor movement: rich farmers (so called “kulaks”), speculators, some landlords and renters, golden youths, security forces, bureaucrats, police, criminals and etc. Business provides them with money and social tensions provides them with the executors and the support force.

At first, fascists attacks looked like ordinary street hooliganism with its street fights, vandalism etc. Nevertheless, due to the impunity, fascist violence soon took on much more horrific forms.

One of the first terrorist acts was the massacre on the Palazzo di’Accurcio plaza. In the November 1920 in Bologna, the northern part of Italy, fascists shot civilians celebrating the win of the socialist party on the elections. As a shooting result, there were eleven men killed, almost sixty were wounded.

Further – it was more. Fascists became the sole reliable ally of the ruling class in the struggle against the revolution unrest. Only Fascism with its widespread violence could turn the “red” regions into the obedient suppliers of the rightless labor force. Not with a word, but with brutal force fascists proved their efficiency to the investors.

With the 1921 beginning there started the real civil war against the labors. Businessmen literally filled the fascists up with money, reactionary militaries provide them with weapon and the government gave the kart blanch to every fascist actions. Dead squads broke into the villages, burnt and crushed the offices of the party’s organizations, labor newspapers, trade unions, cooperatives, mutual aid funds, tormented and beat the locals, captured the local administration and kidnapped the leaders of the labor movement. Fascist terrorist gangs hunted for the most active workers and peasants and especially for all the socialists and communists.

This is the book named “Fascismo”, released in 1922 by socialistic publisher “Avanti!”. There are several cases of fascists violence described in the book. The Minister of the Internal Affairs had to confess the accuracy of the cases after the deputy of the socialist party Jacomo Matteotti publicly had stated them during his speech at the Chamber of Deputies of Italy. Deputy Matteotti would be murdered by fascists two years later for his political investigations. Now let’s read some references of the speech:

In the middle of the night, carts filled with fascists flood small towns or miserable villages with several hundred inhabitants... Here, they are approaching a hatch. The order is given: "Surround the house!" There are twenty, maybe a hundred of them, armed with revolvers and rifles. The name of the head of the local peasant league is loudly called,

and he is ordered to leave the hatch. If he refuses, they would tell him: "If you do not go out, we will destroy your house, wife and children." He walks out. As soon as he appears in the doorway, he is beaten, tied up, thrown into a cart and there he is tortured sophisticatedly - sometimes they kill him, and sometimes they throw him out in the middle of the field or tied to a tree in the nude. If the chairman of the peasant league is a fearless person and does not open the door, resorting to armed resistance, his fate has been decided in advance, he will be killed immediately. The murder will take place in the darkness of the night, a whole hundred will attack one unfortunate person and quickly deal with him.

In Pettorazza, one day the chairman of the league hears a knock at his door. He is told that the authorities have arrived. The unfortunate man believed. He opens the door. Then he was seized, tied up and mercilessly beaten with sticks, then, during the day, they dragged him along almost across the Padua province, exposing the unfortunate man as an intimidation for everyone. When the fun gets boring, he is thrown from the cart onto the pavement. Returning home, the unfortunate man complains about the tormentors. The head of the local carabinieri listens to the complaint and orders to arrest him instead.

And so, from day to day, all the same events are repeated. No one ever finds the culprits. Detective agents living on the same street where the attack has taken place always are not hearing anything or are not coming to the rescue.

Then, after listing a number of other cases of violence by business squadrons, deputy Matteotti says:

We are not talking about individual facts, but about a whole system that permits the existence of an open organization of criminals, bragging about their feats in the press and at meetings, covered up by your authorities; an organization that publicly passes death sentences to certain persons, openly and with impunity organizing its own punitive expeditions. If it happens that even a one enemy is beaten by the peasants, the chairman of the local peasant league, the syndic, the assessors and all our comrades from the communal administration are immediately arrested, regardless of whether there is even the slightest evidence against them. But nothing like this ever happens to the opposite side. From there comes only open praise of murder and arson.

In Contarini, many houses were searched; Persons unwanted by the Nazis were dragged out naked into the street, then taken to the forest or field, where they were tied to trees and left to fend for themselves. In the same way, moving from town to town, from village to village, the Nazis terrorized all 60 small communities in Polezin. Within 2-3 weeks all villages and communes were attacked by gangs, numbering several hundred people. Those were mercilessly beaten, who were determined as socialists by the members of the landlord’s league. The Nazis entered the offices of various institutions, destroyed them, taking away all the values from there. They entered the houses of everyone who belonged to the local communal government, the "resistance league" or the cooperative.

In one community near Marina, the Nazis tied up all the assessors at a meeting, put them on carts and drove them 200 kilometers from their home, where they were thrown away!... The reason for the beating is the funeral, every insignificant event, your tie, handkerchief, the slightest gesture, and, finally, just the fascists' unstoppable thirst for mayhems and punitive expeditions. All authorities, from prefects to ministers, from carabinieri to royal prosecutors, indifferently observe everything that happens.

Having dealt with the village communities, the fascists, according to Matteotti, get down to small towns, small centers in which the economic struggle is weaker, but where the moral has not yet been broken, where there are various small branches of the socialist party.

There was a small fraction of the Socialist Party in Grangett. The fascists, together with the hired criminals, break into the faction's offices, destroy furniture, take away whatever they want from there - in conclusion, they arrange a raid on the chairman of the local league. The poor man escapes to his mother, who lets him in through the window. The tormentors break into the house and firstly beat him with sticks then finish him off with a revolver, in front of his mother, distraught with grief. The chairman's daughter dies of fear.

The worst of all these episodes, says Matteotti, is daily life, which has turned into a nightmare for the locals. Local criminals turn into true masters of the situation, into despots. Socialists, i.e. peasants and artisans, constituting 8/10 of the population, were turned into slaves. Whatever the imagination can come up with is permitted against them; this is especially true for the coastal strip of the Po River. A group of local despots can order you to return home or leave your enterprise at a certain hour,

 force you to appear at the office of the local "fashio" at least 10 times a day, parade you down the street, wrapping a rope around your neck and smearing paint on your face, forbid you to meet or talk to a particular person. Red badges and emblems are persecuted with the greatest brutality. Sometimes people are tortured for hanging the red banner. It is impossible to list all the types of repression applied to slaves: deprivation of work, hunger pangs, beating with sticks, and sometimes murder in the presence of wives and children. People are tortured in the nude, and whenever the fascists want, the people are thrown into the Po River. Life turned into the endless torture. Hundreds of people flee from their homes, leaving their families: some are fleeing from death, some looking for a work, go to Milan, Venice or Piave. A lot of people leave for America - with curses on their lips...

Then deputy Matteotti talks about freedom of elections under the yoke of fascist terror.

But is there any hope that the violence will end, at least with the end of the elections? No. The fascists declared: if in our area the number of elected socialists will be more than the assigned number, those who is guilty of this will be punished, and their houses will be set on fire. And in Polesella, Borzei and other places, there are already hundreds of beaten, tortured and evicted out of their homes, because too many votes were cast for the socialists in these villages.

That is, for example, a note from one of the fascist sections in which they offer the community management to resign voluntarily within 48 hours. Or here's another note that shows the attitude of the fascists to freedom of speech, which, by the way, is so praised by the businessmen who finance them:

That is to inform the editors of the named newspaper. They need to keep within the framework of the absolute truth in presenting the facts that took place in Cavriago. At the same time, we warn them that if, as usual, they begin to spread false or tendentious information, we will be forced to take measures regarding them, which we will consider as the most convenient.

 

 

Few people know, but the Italian fascists had two notable nicknames. The first is the Schiavista - slave owners. Here's a good example. In one of the Italian provinces, the fascists imposed the following conditions on the peasants:

1. Ban on league meetings in the absence of fascist observers

2. Everyone is required to join the local Fasci

3. Ban on work without membership in the fascist organization

4. ---

5. The working day is set at 10 o'clock, of which 8 are paid, and the remaining 2 hours go to the benefit of the fascist unions.

And the second nickname of the fascists Tricolore (tricolor), due to their ardent and patriotic love for the Italian national flag.

The times of the Huns have come back. The hunt for humans continues. The fear of tricolors is so great that they can use, generally, all means to strangle honest people.

Such inculcation of love for capitalism by methods of terror is called fascism. The liberals, who headed the government at that time, simply turned a blind eye to the actions of the fascists. Because they wanted the same but did not want to get their hands dirty.

all executive authorities - the army, magistracy, royal guard, carabinieri - saw the liberator of Italy from the Bolshevik danger in fascism.

The prefect... allowed the fascist assembly, the quaestor rejoiced the beating of the socialists, the lieutenant or captain helped the fascists to get their weapons, the royal guards were more willing to arrest the socialist than the fascist.

Thanks to multilateral support, fascism:

got the opportunity to combine all means of organization and activity that went beyond the law and got all forms of passive or active assistance from the law.