IL MARCIA SU ROMA

Today, October 29, 2022, is the centenary of Il Marcia su Roma, The March on Rome, an organized mass demonstration and coup d'état on October 29, 1922, which resulted in Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party taking power in Italy.

Italy had originally been allied with Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but refused to go to war with them in 1914. In 1915, Italy ended its neutrality and entered the war on the side of the Allies, following promises by Britain and France to support Italian claims on the Austrian Tyrol border between Italy and Austria, the port of Fiume, and Trieste, following the defeat of the Central Powers.

The war did not go well for Italy. Fighting in the Alps at high altitude on the northern border was unlike any other fighting in the war; the remains of these desolate outposts are still being found, complete with the skeletons of the troops who manned them, more than a century later.

The Italian defeat by the combined German and Austro-Hungarian Army on October 24 1917 in the Battle of Caporetto, also known as the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, or the Battle of Karfreit (to the Germans) was one of the most crushing defeats of World War I, decimating the Italian line along the northern stretch of the Isonzo River. Italy was nearly knocked out of the war and only managed to hang on with French and British support. At the end of the war, the Italians had gained nothing and received nothing at the Treaty of Versailles.

The veterans of the war believed they had been betrayed. The Italian economy was battered and a nation not that far removed from its medieval roots outside the major cities was experiencing more economic difficulty for the working class and the poor agricultural workers than was “normal” in Italy.

Following his defeat in the election of November 1919, former Socialist leader Benito Mussolini founded the first Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (FIC - Italian Fasces of Combat), who came to be known as “Squadristi.” This was at the beginning of the so-called Red Biennium, a two-year long social conflict between the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI - Italian Socialist Party) and the liberal and conservative ruling class.

During the "two red years", there were numerous strikes, protests against the rise in the cost of living, occupations of factories and land by industrial workers or agricultural laborers, and other types of clashes between socialists on one side and landowners and business owners on the other side.

The government tried to play the role of neutral mediator, which dissatisfied both sides.

Local elites felt themselves vulnerable and began to establish an alliance with the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento , composed of veterans with a reputation for violence, in the hope of using these Fascist paramilitary squads to destroy socialist organizations.

The Fasci Italiani di Combattimento grew into the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale, MVSN, known as “The Blackshirts” for their distinctive uniform modeled on that of the Arditti, the elite Italian mountain troops who had fought the Austrians.

In August 1920, the Blackshirts were used to break the general strike which started at the Alfa Romeo factory in Milan, while in November 1920, after the assassination of Giulio Giordani, a right-wing municipal councillor in Bologna, the Blackshirts were active in the suppression of the socialist movement in the Po Valley.

Local elections in 1920 were won by the socialists in many towns, cities and villages across Italy. In response the Fascist militias attacked union organizers and municipal administrators, making it difficult for local governments to function. A local deputy in Budrio sent a telegram to the prime minister in October 1921 reporting that the Fascists had effectively taken over, that "unions and socialist clubs were ordered to dissolve themselves within 48 hours or face physical destruction" and that the "life of the town is paralysed, authorities impotent".

Similar events happened in other towns across Northern and Central Italy between 1920-22. The police repeatedly failed to intervene against Fascist violence, and in some cases police officers openly supported the Blackshirts and supplied them with weapons.

In the 1921 general election the Fascists ran within the National Blocs of Giovanni Giolitti, an anti-socialist coalition of liberals, conservatives and fascists. The Fascists won 35 seats and Mussolini was elected to Parliament.

After a few weeks, Mussolini withdrew his support for Giolitti and his Partito Liberale Italiano, (PLI - Italian Liberal Party) and attempted a temporary truce with the Socialists by signing the so-called "Pact of Pacification" in the summer 1921.

The Pact led to protests by the radical members of the Fascist movement, led by local leaders like Roberto Farinacci. In July 1921, Giolitti attempted to dissolve the Blackshirts, but failed. The Pact with the Socialists was nullified during the Third Fascist Congress on November 7 1921, during which Mussolini renamed his movement the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF - National Fascist Party).

In August 1922, an anti-fascist general strike was organized throughout the country by the socialists. Mussolini declared the Fascists would suppress the strike themselves if the government did not immediately intervene to stop it, allowing him to position the PNF as a defender of law and order. At Ancona on August 2, Fascist squads moved in from the countryside and razed all buildings occupied by socialists. This was repeated in Genoa and other cities.

On August 3-4 in Milan, there was street fighting between socialists and fascists; fascists destroyed the printing presses of the socialist newspaper Avanti! and burned its building. With the support of local business owners, they took over local government and expelled the elected socialist administration from the town hall.

The Italian national government in Rome did nothing to react to these developments, and its inaction prompted Mussolini to begin planning Il Marcia su Roma, a march on Rome.

From their new power base in Milan, Italy’s industrial core, the Fascists gathered the financial support of large companies who were determined to fight against "strikes, bolshevism and nationalization". A delegation from the General Confederation of Italian Industry met with Mussolini two days before the March on Rome. Mussolini also consulted with the U.S. Ambassador Richard Washburn Child about whether the U.S. government would object to Fascist participation in a future Italian government and Child gave him American support.

When Mussolini learned that Prime Minister Luigi Facta had given World War I hero Gabriele D'Annunzio, a Fascist, the mission to organize a large demonstration on November 4, 1922 to celebrate the Battle of Caporetto, he decided to immediately implement the March.

On October 24, Mussolini spoke to a Fascist rally of 60,000 militants in Naples, declaring: "Our program is simple: we want to rule Italy."

On the following day, Mossolinia appointed the Quadrumvirs - Emilio De Bono, Italo Balbo, Michele Bianchi and Cesare Maria de Vecchi - were appointed by Mussolini to lead of the march, while he went to Milan.

On October 26, former Prime Minister Antonio Salandra warned Prime Minister Luigi Facta that Mussolini demanded his resignation and was preparing to march on Rome. Facta did not believe Salandra and thought Mussolini would become a minister of his government. To meet the threat posed by the fascist troops gathering outside Rome, Facta (who had resigned but continued to hold power) ordered a state of siege for Rome. However, King Victor Emmanuel III refused to sign the military order.

In Milan on the morning of October 28, Mussolini received a delegation of supportive industrialists at the Il Popolo d'Italia headquarters who asked him to find a compromise with Antonio Salandra, who refused Mussolini’s proposal to rule alongside him.

On October 29, Victor Emmanuel III handed power to Mussolini, supported by the military, the leading industrialists, and the right wing.

Il Marcia su Roma itself was composed of fewer than 30,000 men, but the King feared a civil war since the Squadristi had already taken control of the Po plain and most of the country, while Fascism was no longer seen as a threat to the establishment

Mussolini was asked to form a government on October 29, 1922, while 25,000 Blackshirts paraded in Rome. He had thus legally taken power in accordance with the Statuto Albertino, the Italian Constitution.

Il Marcia su Roma was not the seizure of power that Fascism later celebrated but rather the precipitating force behind a transfer of power within the framework of the constitution. This transition occurred because of the surrender by public authorities in the face of fascist intimidation.

Many business and financial leaders believed it would be possible to manipulate Mussolini, whose early speeches and policies emphasized free market and laissez faire economics.

In the aftermath of the Marcia su Roma, Mussolini demanded he be named President of the Council of Ministers, to which the government agreed, fearing conflict with the fascists.

Mussolini went on to install the dictatorship after the June 10, 1924 assassination of anti-fascist author Giacomo Matteotti by Amerigo Dumini, accused of being a communist and the leader of the "Italian Cheka", though there is no evidence for the existence of such an organization.

That’s how it happens, ladies and gentlemen.

I strongly recommend Bernardo Bertolucchi’s stunning 1976 masterpiece, “1900” to give yourself an emotional grounding in these events. Robet DeNiro plays land owner Don Alfredo Berlinghieri, Gerard Depardieu plays communist partisan Olmo Dalcò - two boys raised together whose adult lives illuminate the history of 20th century Italy - while Donald Sutherland gives a truly chilling performance as local Fascist leader Attila Mellanchini; the scene in which Sutherland cries “Fascism is the triumph of the will!” will scare the daylights out of you, and I’m not going to tell you what happens.

As William Faulkner famously said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

This week, Giorgia Meloni, leader of the neofascist Fratelli d'Italia, (FDI) party became Prime Minister of Italy.

Today, neofascist militants in Italy hung a banner from a bridge near the Colosseum in Rome to mark the 100th anniversary of Benito Mussolini’s march on the city.

At the same time, The Italian Partisan’s Association, an organization representing partisans who fought to free Italy from fascism and Nazi occupiers during World War II, organized a march down the main street in Predappio, where Mussolini was born and buried. They were joined by trade unionists and left-wing politicians.

“I owe this to my parents and to all those people who gave us freedom, and I mean the partisans,'' Daniela Vicchi, the daughter of a partisan, said during the march.

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