Fascist martyrs or Martyrs of the Fascist Revolution or Martyrs of Fascism (Italian: Martiri fascisti) were called during Fascism those who fell for the Fascist cause beginning with the founding of the Fasci Italiani di combattimento in 1919.
Fascist martyrs or Martyrs of the Fascist Revolution or Martyrs of Fascism (Italian: Martiri fascisti) were called during Fascism those who fell for the Fascist cause beginning with the founding of the Fasci Italiani di combattimento in 1919.
During the birth and spread of the fascist movement, its theoreticians argued that a civil war was underway, for which the responsibility would derive from the anti-national drift of the proletariat during Biennio Rosso. [1] The breakdown of legality, by the successful holding of the March on Rome, would have confirmed the revolutionary nature of the advent of fascism, qualifying as martyrdom the deaths of its adherents during the previous period of turmoil: in fact, during the two-year legalitarian period (1922–1924), precisely because he was President of the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom of Italy according to the statutory order, Benito Mussolini endorsed the rhetoric of "martyrs" to keep alive the pseudo-revolutionary narrative of his coming to power. [2] [3]
Therefore, on 30 November 1922, only a month after Benito Mussolini seized power after the March on Rome, it was decreed that each city or town should establish an avenue or park of Remembrance, with a new tree for each fallen in the town during the Great War: shortly afterwards the number was extended to all "fascist martyrs," and by 1925 they amounted to about 400 names. [4] [5] Nevertheless, the "myth of three thousand dead Fascists that Fascism began to spread in the fall of 1924" was intended to counterbalance the traumatic effect of the Matteotti murder on public opinion, according to the motto "one Matteotti is not worth 3000 dead". [6]
In 1925, in the regime's declarations, there were 45 dead and 285 wounded for the fascist cause, while in 1933 it was reported that the Voluntary Militia for National Security had over four hundred dead in addition to thousands of maimed and wounded for the fascist cause since its founding in 1923. Family members of the fallen, maimed and wounded were ex officio members of the Fascist Association of Families of the Fallen, Maimed and Wounded for the Revolution. [7]
During the Regime, it was said that the Fascist Revolution had cost three thousand deaths, but it was a number emphasized by the same propaganda. [8] [9] The Opera Nazionale Balilla remembered these three thousand deaths in the first article of the Balilla Catechism in the Balilla Oath: [10]
In the name of God and Italy I swear to carry out the orders of the DUCE and to serve with all my strength and, if necessary, with my blood, the Cause of the Fascist Revolution. The Fascist who swears no longer belongs to himself but to the DUCE and the cause of the Fascist Revolution, just as the three thousand Fascist martyrs died for the DUCE and the Revolution.
During a speech at Palazzo Venezia on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome on 17 October 1932, Mussolini before 25,000 hierarchs remembered the Fascist Martyrs with these words, "Of all the insurrections of modern times, the bloodiest was ours. A few dozen required the storming of the Bastille...the Russian one cost but a few dozen victims. Ours, which lasted three years, required vast sacrifice of young blood." [11]
On 24 May 1933, on the occasion of the ceremony of the entry into the war in World War I, the governor of Rome Francesco Boncompagni Ludovisi together with the vice-governor laid laurel wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and at the Altar of the Fascist Fallen on the Capitol; then the president of the Senate of the Kingdom Luigi Federzoni laid a laurel wreath on the Altar of the Fascist Fallen on behalf of Parliament. [12]
In 1932 on the occasion of the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution, the Fascist Martyrs' Memorial was inaugurated, but the catalogue merely stated that there had been "hundreds and hundreds". [13]
On 5 December 1932, to close the decennial events, the President of the Senate of the Kingdom Luigi Federzoni along with all senators paid their respects at the Fascist Martyrs' Chapel at the Palazzo del Littorio, then the headquarters of the National Fascist Party. [14]
Giacomo Matteotti was an Italian socialist politician. On 30 May 1924, he openly spoke in the Italian Parliament alleging the Italian fascists committed fraud in the 1924 Italian general election, and denounced the violence they used to gain votes. Eleven days later, he was kidnapped and killed by Fascists.
"The Doctrine of Fascism" is an essay attributed to Benito Mussolini. In truth, the first part of the essay, entitled "Idee Fondamentali", was written by the Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile, while only the second part "Dottrina politica e sociale" is the work of Mussolini himself.
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.
Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB) was an Italian Fascist youth organization functioning between 1926 and 1937, when it was absorbed into the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (GIL), a youth section of the National Fascist Party.
Italian fascism, also classical fascism and Fascism, is the original fascist ideology, which Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini developed in Italy. The ideology of Italian Fascism is associated with a series of political parties led by Mussolini: the National Fascist Party (PNF), which governed the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, and the Republican Fascist Party (PFR), which governed the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. Italian fascism also is associated with the post–war Italian Social Movement (MSI) and later Italian neo-fascist political organisations.
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 "Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals", by the actualist philosopher Giovanni Gentile in 1925, formally established the political and ideologic foundations of Italian Fascism. It justifies the political violence of the Blackshirt paramilitaries of the National Fascist Party, in the revolutionary realisation of Italian Fascism as the authoritarian and totalitarian rėgime of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy as Il Duce, from 1922 to 1943.
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. It was succeeded, in the territories under the control of the Italian Social Republic, by the Republican Fascist Party, ultimately dissolved at the end of World War II.
Luigi Federzoni was an Italian nationalist and later Fascist politician.
Ettore Ovazza was an Italian Jewish banker. He was an early financer of Benito Mussolini, of whom he was a personal friend, and Italian fascism, which he supported until the Italian racial laws of 1938. He founded the journal La nostra bandiera. Believing that his position would be restored after the war, Ovazza stayed on after the Germans marched into Italy. Together with his wife and children, shortly after the Fall of Fascism and Mussolini's government during World War II, he was executed near the Swiss border by SS troops in 1943.
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian dictator who founded and led the National Fascist Party (PNF). He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 1943, as well as Duce of Italian fascism from the establishment of the Italian Fasces of Combat in 1919 until his summary execution in 1945 by Italian partisans. As dictator of Italy and principal founder of fascism, Mussolini inspired and supported the international spread of fascist movements during the inter-war period.
The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution was an art exhibition held in Rome at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni from 1932 to 1934. It was opened by Benito Mussolini on 28 October 1932 and was the longest-lasting exhibition ever mounted by the Fascist regime. Nearly four million people attended the exhibition in its two years. Intended to commemorate the revolutionaries who had taken part in the rise to power of Italian fascism, the Exhibition was supposed to be, in Mussolini's own words, "an offering of faith which the old comrades hand down to the new ones so that, enlightened by our martyrs and heroes, they may continue the heavy task."
The Gioventù Italiana del Littorio(GIL) (English: Italian Youth of the Lictor) was the consolidated youth movement of the National Fascist Party of Italy that was established in 1937, to replace the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB). It was created to supervise and influence the minds of all youths, that was effectively directed against the influence of the Catholic Church on youths.
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.
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!
Ines Donati was a political activist and a supporter of the first wave of Italy's Fascist movement.
The Sandro Italico Mussolini School of Fascist Mysticism was established in Milan, Italy in 1930 by Niccolò Giani. Its primary goal was to train the future leaders of Italy's National Fascist Party. The school curriculum promoted Fascist mysticism based on the philosophy of Fideism, the belief that faith and reason were incompatible; Fascist mythology was to be accepted as a "metareality". In 1932, Mussolini described Fascism as "a religious concept of life", saying that Fascists formed a "spiritual community".
The Democratic Fascist Party was a clandestine Italian fascist political party. The party is known mainly because its founder and some other members stole the dead body of Benito Mussolini from the Cimitero Maggiore in Milan.
The following events occurred in October 1932:
Events from the year 1932 in Italy.