href="#ulink_ec598caa-26b8-524c-af94-4d9794ae4d3f">13
Many students were attracted to the excitement of fascism and Marimotti, the president of the student’s union, was killed in the fascist attack on Turin in 1921. These student groups would smash up the lectures of those they disagreed with and they benefited from the nepotism of right-wing academics who sided with them. They were also involved in violence in Bologna, a socialist stronghold, whose bourgeoisie relied on the support of the student-dominated squads and their ‘departure from legality and the repudiation of the liberal mentality’.14 On May Day, 1920, fascist patrols took to the Bolognese streets, facing no resistance, and later that year joined members of other ‘patriotic’ organizations to oppose ‘the acts of violence which the extremists of the PSU [socialists] and the anarchists were committing in the city’.15
As 1921 progressed, Mussolini’s squads became more openly violent, intimidating socialists, communists and anarchists and continuing to attack their institutions, burning buildings and destroying printing presses. This was seen as acceptable by the state and the bourgeois in order to keep the ‘Reds’ in hand; the industrial class saw fascism as effective against union militancy; and the landowners saw it as a way to suppress the peasants agitating for land reforms. The activities of the squads were very rarely punished by the police, military, government or courts. Sympathetic members of the military trained or armed them, and the police supplied vehicles for the roving squads to attack political opponents. As the Ras became increasingly powerful locally, the squads, which tended to include youthful students or the unemployed, soon became sanctuaries for misfits and criminals, as well as the fiefdoms of gangsters.
Gangsterism and Squadrismo
Moves by the fascist leadership to control the excesses of the squads were met with resistance. Once in control of a town, the fascists could attack with impunity anyone whom they saw as enemies, political or otherwise, and the Ras used the squads to consolidate their local power, so they were hardly likely to give it up. One notorious Ras was Ricci whose squad controlled Massa-Carrara. Ricci had his own private squad, ‘an armed and organized unit of blackshirts, with a uniform elegantly edged in white thread, and supported by another unit of cavalry’.16 This was used to intimidate the local prefect (the highest position of local authority) who turned ‘a blind eye to what is happening in the province…he denies the existence of the disperta (Ricci’s private squad)…he is unable to find those responsible for murders.’17
The Ras were often involved in feuds, and squad members were used to assassinating local rivals. The Ras also created a system of cronyism, and anyone who enjoyed their protection could almost guarantee their immunity from persecution. Local landowners and farmers were forced into protection rackets and, if they refused, they would be beaten up. The Ras also intimidated voters in order to deliver the results that Mussolini and the city fascists required from the regions. As Lyttelton succinctly notes, ‘Patronage and intimidation were mutually reinforcing; the Ras could threaten their enemies because they could reward their friends.’18 In certain areas both fascist and nationalist organizations sought ‘an alliance between the politicians and the forces of organized crime’.19 The centralization of violence and a flexible morality over whom they collaborated with was a characteristic of fascism, and many squads openly recruited known criminals and bored hooligans, despite a warning by fascist leader Achille Starace in 1922: ‘Do not let yourself be led astray by the stupid prejudice that the convicted criminal dressed in a blackshirt is an element of strength.’20
Faint-Hearted Fascism?
The Ras were often caught between their dedication to fascism and their pursuit of local profits and power. Whilst Mussolini sought to placate his political opponents over the direction of fascism, the rural squads remained at liberty to carry on as they pleased and the more faint-hearted fascists increased their demands that these local power bases be curtailed. After the violent incidents in Turin in 1922, even fascist leaders condemned the squads who were involved in the murder of eleven workers. On 18th December, fascists attacked Turin, beating workers and smashing homes. Some anti-fascists were seized, put in trucks, taken away and beaten up. The anarchist Ferrero, who had been involved in the factory occupations, was tied by his feet to a truck, dragged through the streets, and dumped by the roadside. The anarchist Mari had better ‘luck’: he was bound and thrown into the river Po but managed to get back to safety. The incident became known by militants as the massacre of Turin.
These attacks on individual anti-fascists often led to fatalities. There are many examples of fascist violence, both frequent and horrific, which never saw any legal redress. In 1921 in Sarzana, Dante Raspolini was beaten with clubs by a fascist gang, then tied to the back of a car and dragged for several miles. Ten years later, his son, the anarchist Doro Raspolini, shot at the fascist boss he held responsible. Doro was arrested and tortured to death. Even when exiled, militants still faced fascist violence: in Paris in September 1923, the anarchist Mario Castagna was attacked by a goon squad although he killed one during the fight. The following February, the anarchist Ernesto Bonomini assassinated a fascist journalist in a restaurant. Years later, Carlo Rosselli, an anti-fascist who had gone on to fight in Spain, was assassinated in France along with his brother. It was the second attempt on his life.
Arditi del Popolo
In the face of such violence, anti-fascists were forced to respond more aggressively, and many organized and fought back. Locally, coalitions of socialists, communists, anarchists and syndicalists organized together in the Arditi del Popolo (People’s Army) and political differences were temporarily put aside. However, in 1921, the leadership of the socialists ( PSI) signed the Pact of Conciliation with the fascists, which led to many socialists withdrawing from the anti-fascist militias, although many independent-minded socialists stayed. The newly formed Italian Communist Party ( PCI) feared the autonomy of local militants siding with syndicalists and anarchists, and ordered communists to withdraw from the fray, thus fragmenting and weakening resistance to fascist provocation. Gramsci later justified the withdrawal of communist militants from the Arditi del Popolo, thus ‘the tactic…corresponded to the need to prevent the party membership being controlled by a leadership that was not the party leadership’.21 The communist move away from non-partisan militant anti-fascism can only have hastened the success of Italian fascism. Anti-fascism is at its most effective when ideological differences are subjugated to the more important overall struggle.
Working-class militants, then as now, could not rely on the reformist party’s opposition to fascism or on the police, and had to defend themselves from fascist violence. They set up militias to protect their printing presses, union meetings and social clubs. In Cremona, the fascists led by Farinacci had mobilised against the socialist city council attacking people and property. Parliamentary opposition to fascism proved inadequate and anti-fascist deputies (MPs) were heavily outnumbered.
In 1922, the Alliance of Labour, an anti-fascist organization that had the support of socialists, communists and anarchists, called a general strike in opposition to fascism, but this turned out to benefit no one but the fascists, confirming the allegations they had made to the middle and upper classes that a Red Italy was just around the corner. The Alliance also saw the fascist squads mobilise to suppress the strike, thus securing the favours of the local boss class.
Working-class organizations were soon put under pressure to fight back against fascist gangsterism. In his essay ‘The Rise of Fascism in an Industrial City’, Tobias Abse describes the Arditi del Popolo as ‘this mass violent resistance to fascism
