Frédéric Le Moal has a doctorate in history and a teacher at the Saint-Cyr military school. He is the author, in particular, of
Victor-Emmanuel III. A King Facing Mussolini
(Perrin, 2015) and
History of Fascism
(Perrin, 2018), Ernest Lemonon Prize from the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Last work to appear:
Pius XII, a pope for France: investigation of the 1939 conclave
(Le Cerf, 2019)
.
On May 15, 1921, the Italians went to the polls to elect a new Parliament. The electoral campaign, marked by the violence of the black shirts making a hundred deaths, led to the election of 35 fascist deputies including Mussolini. This victory, obtained at the cost of an alliance with the conservative parties, constitutes a crucial stage in the rise to power of fascism. However, the right turn of the movement should not mislead us. As François Furet notes in
The Past of an Illusion
, Italian fascism, as much as National Socialism, "
were revolutionary responses
". For it was not only a question of crushing the Communists, but also of subverting the liberal state which had to be transformed and replaced.
In reality, Italy was sinking into a civil war opposing socialists and fascists, the latter united in paramilitary groups, the
squadrons.
. The squadron brought together veterans, determined to preserve the legacy of the Great War, but also attracted students and adolescents eager to know the supposed ecstasies of combat, exalted not to say fanaticized by this fight for the nation. A generational revolt, fascism recruited en masse from this youth in search of an ideal of overthrowing the established order and stemming in large part from the bourgeoisie, even though the movement never ceased - and would never cease - to devote this social class to complaining. A purely apparent paradox in truth because these well-born sons stood up against their own environment which in their eyes embodied the old Italy to be destroyed.
In addition, the middle class, radicalized by socio-economic difficulties and sidelined by the liberal elite, supported this fascist project for political transformation.
All the revolutions of the twentieth century operated on this pattern.
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The squadrists corresponded to all the criteria of a well-organized minority: ideological intransigence, the total absence of doubts as to the purity of their cause, violence and terror against adversaries who had to be brought down by humiliating them, the mobility and exaltation of a youth sure to embody the future. They had their uniform, their hierarchy, their rites, their liturgy, their martyrs, and devastated all the provinces of the center-north of the peninsula.
Fascism, let us remember, was born in the economic heart of the country, the most integrated with the rest of Europe, the most open and modern. With the force of a storm, these henchmen, now dressed in a black shirt, set fire to political, union or journalistic buildings, forcibly deposed the socialist municipalities, humiliated their opponents, watered them with castor oil, and even killed them. .
Their ardent patriotism fueled their hostility to internationalist socialism. However, their dream of uniformity, steeped in Rousseauism, also made them hate the liberal system and all that it represented: the separation of powers, the acceptance of social divisions, adversarial debate, individual freedoms. These realities clashed with their obsession for national unity. Indeed, the fascists aspired to complete the unitary process started with the Risorgimento of the nineteenth century, and then to merge the nation with fascism.
Such a revolutionary plan not only did not tolerate the debate with the adversary, assimilated to a traitor, but also pushed for the elimination of the opponents who had become obstacles to the realization of the utopia.
It was for them by sacralized and purifying political violence, by iron and fire, by fighting in the squares and in the streets that the political conflict lacerating society would be resolved, which led an Italian historian, Mimmo Franzinelli , to see in fascism a "
kind of negation of parliamentary mediation
".
Universal male suffrage was not instituted in Italy until 1912.
Frédéric Le Moal
Faced with such a danger, the liberal regime displayed its powerlessness. We cannot stress enough the profound weakening of the Italian state, unrepresentative, open to universal male suffrage only since 1912, plagued by clientelism, undermined by the ordeals of war and unable to defend the country at the conference of the peace. A sick state that stumbled over the major question of the integration of the masses into political life. A state whose leaders, between insipidity, disconnection, parliamentary cunning and overestimation of their own strength, seemed quite helpless.
This dying regime believed to find its lifeline in the return to power of Giovanni Giolitti, master of the political game for twenty years and goldsmith of
trasformismo
, this policy aimed at the integration of subversive forces into the government apparatus for better disarm them.
But the man had aged and the situation no longer resembled that of the pre-war period.
It was no longer the time for "
combinazioni
".
Read also: "There have never been so many anti-fascists since fascism disappeared"
As early as 1919, the government had shown its inability to ensure order in the face of the subversive actions of the "reds". This loss of confidence in public power led a whole part of society - which was not limited, far from it, to the famous large landowners - to turn to the squadrists, who in their eyes had become the only way to guarantee 'order. The soldiers, alarmed at the breakdown of public authority, barely concealed their sympathies. The prefects did not or badly apply the orders from Rome. In short, the liberal state lost its monopoly on legitimate violence to the benefit of fascist thugs and did not recover from such discredit.
The National Fascist Party, founded in November 1921, stripped fascism of its disorderly “anti-party” character.
But the Duce always had to reckon with those enraged, self-reliant black shirts.
Frédéric Le Moal
The primacy of ideology, however, never prevented Mussolini from being pragmatic, hence the electoral alliance with the conservative forces for the elections of May 1921. On the strength of his electoral victory and experienced in maneuvering the apparatus, he believed then to be able to negotiate a pact of pacification with the socialists but which encountered the absolute refusal of the "hawks" of his movement. He nevertheless remained convinced that the seizure of power required discipline, order and a political party, which he founded in November 1921. The National Fascist Party thus deprived fascism of its "anti-party" character. messy.
But the Duce always had to reckon with those enraged and autonomous black shirts, which he used to deliver fatal blows to a worn-out liberal state, but which terrified the supporters of the regime without whose support he would lose power. It was on this narrow road that Mussolini walked to the ambiguities of the march on Rome the following year.