Leagues of Revolutionary Action Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria | |
---|---|
Leaders | Benito Mussolini Alceste de Ambris Angelo Oliviero Olivetti |
Founded | 11 December 1914 |
Dissolved | 1919 |
Split from | USI [1] (interventionist factions) PSI [2] (interventionist factions) |
Preceded by | Fascio Rivoluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista |
Ideology | Italian nationalism National syndicalism [3] Republicanism Interventionism [4] [5] Italian irredentism [6] |
Political position | Right-wing |
Colours | Black |
The Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria (English: "Fasces of Revolutionary Action"; fig.: 'Leagues of Revolutionary Action') was an Italian political movement founded in 1914 by Benito Mussolini, and active mainly in 1915. [7] Sponsored by Alceste De Ambris, Mussolini, and Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, it was a pro-war movement aiming to promote Italian entry into World War I. It was connected to the world of revolutionary interventionists and inspired by the programmatic manifesto of the Fascio Rivoluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista , dated 5 October 1914.
The movement achieved its primary goal when Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in May 1915, and most of the movement's members joined the army. After the war, almost all of them met in 1919 in Piazza San Sepolcro for the foundation of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento , which preceded the National Fascist Party founded in 1921.
The Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria was founded on 11 December 1914 [7] and held its first meeting on 24 January 1915. [6] : 41 The First World War had begun in July 1914, but Italy remained neutral, and public opinion as well as the political majority in parliament supported continued neutrality and non-involvement in the war. [8] : 27 In this context, the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria was created as an umbrella organization for pro-war activists led by Benito Mussolini, who were called interventionists because they wished for Italy to intervene in the war. [6] : 41
At the meeting in January 1915, a motion was passed which stated that national problems – including the issue of national borders – needed to be resolved in Italy and elsewhere "for the ideals of justice and liberty for which oppressed peoples must acquire the right to belong to those national communities from which they descended". [6] : 41 Mussolini asserted on this occasion that Italy should join the war "for the liberation of the unredeemed peoples of Trentino and Istria", which implied territorial claims over regions inhabited by ethnic Italians. [6] : 43 The Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria committed itself to Italian irredentism – the desire to expand the borders of Italy to encompass all ethnic Italians – while also wishing to annex some strategically important territories without an Italian majority, such as South Tyrol. [6] : 40
Due to Mussolini's support of Italian intervention in the then-ongoing World War I, he received financial support from Ansaldo (an armaments firm) and other companies, especially from the sugar and electrical industries. [9] : 284 He received additional support from government-backed sources in France. [6] : 36 Later, in 1917, Mussolini was allegedly also supported by the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, who are claimed to have paid him a £100 weekly wage; this help is said to have been authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare. [10] However, regardless of the financial support he accepted for his pro-interventionist stance, Mussolini's socialist critics noted that Mussolini was free to write whatever he wished in his newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia, without prior sanctioning by his financial backers. [6] : 37
In March 1915, Mussolini declared the movement's irredentist stance towards Trieste, in which he stated that Trieste "must be, and will be Italian through war against the Austrians and, if necessary, against the Slavs". [6] : 42 In an article on 6 April 1915, Mussolini addressed the movement's irredentist stance towards Dalmatia, arguing that Italy should not annex all of Dalmatia because claims that it had a majority of Italian speakers were "not a good enough reason to claim exclusive possession of all of Dalmatia". [6] : 42 However, he did support Italy annexing a vast section of Dalmatia including its entire archipelago. [6] : 42
The Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria also received ideological influence from members other than Mussolini, such as Giuseppe Prezzolini, who had previously been a member of the Italian Nationalist Association. [6] : 49 Prezzolini was impressed by Mussolini, and in late 1914 began to write for Mussolini's newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia. [6] : 49 During an interventionist demonstration on 11 April 1915 that was confronted by neutralist PSI members, Italian state police killed one man, an electrician named Innocente Marcora. [6] : 52 Both interventionists and neutralists were outraged by the man's death. [6] : 49 The Fasci took part in a joint neutralist-interventionist work stoppage for one day on 14 April. [6] : 52 In writing about these events, Mussolini referred to his supporters for the first time as "fascists", although he put the word in inverted commas at this time. [6] : 52
Also in April 1915, Mussolini accused Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III of being a pro-German "Philistine", charging him of being "foreign" and allegedly a "neutralist". [6] : 52–3 However, the Italian government was already secretly negotiating the Treaty of London to join the war on the side of the Entente, and in May 1915 the king signed the declaration of war. [8] : 27 Most of the members of the Fasci quickly volunteered to join the army and left for the front lines, but Mussolini himself waited until he was conscripted in September 1915; he remained in the army until he was wounded during a training exercise and discharged because of his injuries in June 1917. [8] : 27–28
"The Manifesto of the Italian Fasces of Combat", also referred to as the Fascist Manifesto or the San Sepolcro Programme being the political platform developed from statements made during the founding of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, held in Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan on March 23, 1919.
Duce is an Italian title, derived from the Latin word dux, 'leader', and a cognate of duke. National Fascist Party leader Benito Mussolini was identified by Fascists as Il Duce of the movement since the birth of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in 1919. In 1925 it became a reference to the dictatorial position of Sua Eccellenza Benito Mussolini, Capo del Governo, Duce del Fascismo e Fondatore dell'Impero. Mussolini held this title together with that of President of the Council of Ministers: this was the constitutional position which entitled him to rule Italy on behalf of the King of Italy. Founder of the Empire was added for the exclusive use by Mussolini in recognition of his founding of an official legal entity of the Italian Empire on behalf of the King in 1936 following Italy's victory in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. The position was held by Mussolini until 1943, when he was removed from office by the King and the position of Duce was dismantled, while Marshal Pietro Badoglio, 1st Duke of Addis Abeba was appointed Presidente del Consiglio.
Fascio is an Italian word literally meaning "a bundle" or "a sheaf", and figuratively "league", and which was used in the late 19th century to refer to political groups of many different orientations. A number of nationalist fasci later evolved into the 20th century Fasci movement, which became known as fascism.
Italian irredentism was a political movement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Italy with irredentist goals which promoted the unification of geographic areas in which indigenous peoples were considered to be ethnic Italians. At the beginning, the movement promoted the annexation to Italy of territories where Italians formed the absolute majority of the population, but retained by the Austrian Empire after the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866.
Renzo De Felice was an Italian historian, who specialized in the Fascist era, writing, among other works, a 6000-page biography of Mussolini. He argued that Mussolini was a revolutionary modernizer in domestic issues but a pragmatist in foreign policy who continued the Realpolitik policies of Italy from 1861 to 1922. Historian of Italy Philip Morgan has called De Felice's biography of Mussolini "a very controversial, influential and at the same time problematic re-reading of Mussolini and Fascism" and rejected the contention that his work rose above politics to "scientific objectivity", as claimed by the author and his defenders.
The Fasci Italiani di Combattimento was an Italian fascist organisation created by Benito Mussolini in 1919. It was the successor of the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria, being notably further right than its predecessor. The Fasci Italiani di Combattimento was reorganised into the National Fascist Party in 1921.
Ida Irene Dalser was the first wife of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
Squadrismo was the movement of squadre d'azione, the fascist militias that were organised outside the authority of the Italian state and led by local leaders called ras. The militia originally consisted of farmers and middle-class people, who created their own defence from revolutionary socialists. Squadrismo became an important asset for the rise of the National Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini, and systematically used violence to eliminate any political parties that were opposed to Italian Fascism.
The National Fascist Party was a political party in Italy, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of Italian fascism and as a reorganisation of the previous Italian Fasces of Combat. The party ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 when Fascists took power with the March on Rome until the fall of the Fascist regime in 1943, when Mussolini was deposed by the Grand Council of Fascism. The National Fascist Party was succeeded by the Republican Fascist Party in the territories under the control of the Italian Social Republic, and it was ultimately dissolved at the end of World War II.
Angelo Oliviero Olivetti was an Italian lawyer, journalist, and political activist.
Cesare Rossi was an Italian fascist leader who later became estranged from the regime.
Italian nationalism is a movement which believes that the Italians are a nation with a single homogeneous identity, and therefrom seeks to promote the cultural unity of Italy as a country. From an Italian nationalist perspective, Italianness is defined as claiming cultural and ethnic descent from the Latins, an Italic tribe which originally dwelt in Latium and came to dominate the Italian peninsula and much of Europe. Because of that, Italian nationalism has also historically adhered to imperialist theories. The romantic version of such views is known as Italian patriotism, while their integral version is known as Italian fascism.
Filippo Corridoni was an Italian trade unionist and syndicalist. Born in Pausula, today Corridonia, he was a friend of future Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Between 24 and 25 January 1915, the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria were founded in the presence of Corridoni and Mussolini, among others. That same year, numerous left-interventionists were called up, including Corridoni and Mussolini themselves. In October 1915, Corridoni died during the Great War, being hit in the head by an Austrian-Hungarian Army bullet at the Trincea delle Frasche in San Martino del Carso. Between 1914 and 1915, he had been part of the left-interventionism movement that supported the Kingdom of Italy entry into the Great War, and was pictured taking part to a 1915 interventionist demonstration in Milan. This stance costed him, among others, the expulsion from the Unione Sindacale Italiana, whose Milanese section he was leading. These went on to join with Futurist interventionism, which was already creating unrest in the squares with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Umberto Boccioni.
This is a list of words, terms, concepts, and slogans in the Italian language and Latin language which were specifically used in Fascist Italian monarchy and Italian Social Republic.
The Fascio Rivoluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista was a political movement that advocated Italy's participation in World War I on the side of the Triple Entente against the Central Powers. The movement's manifesto was drawn up on 5 October 1914 by revolutionary syndicalists and left interventionists former members of the Unione Sindacale Italiana. The usefulness of the First World War was asserted as an indispensable historical moment for developing more advanced societies in a political-social sense. The manifesto inspired the formation of the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria.
Sansepolcrismo is a term used to refer to the movement led by Benito Mussolini that preceded Fascism. The Sansepolcrismo takes its name from the rally organized by Mussolini at Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan on March 23, 1919, where he proclaimed the principles of Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, and then published them in Il Popolo d'Italia, on June 6, 1919, the newspaper he co-founded in November 1914 after leaving Avanti!
The Piazza San Sepolcro is a piazza in the center of Milan not far from the Piazza del Duomo.
Left-interventionism was the part of the progressive interventionist movement of various left-wing matrices, such as those of Mazzinian, social reformist, democratic socialist, dissident socialist, reformist socialist, and revolutionary socialist persuasions, that saw in the Great War the historical opportunity for the completion of unification of Italy, and for those who later became part of the Italian fascist movement, such as Benito Mussolini, as the palingenesis of the Italian political system and the organization of the economic, legal, and social system, and therefore a profound change.
The proprietary corporation is a concept proposed during Italian fascism by fascist political philosopher Ugo Spirito, in which a corporation, akin to a guild, assumes ownership of a company in which its members operate. This was proposed as a class-collaborative means to end the dualism between capital and labor via the transfer of the means of production to the corporation.
The 1st Congress of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento was held in Florence on 9 and 10 October 1919, following the proclamation of the Sansepolcro program on 23 March of the same year by Benito Mussolini.