Posted on 03/23/2005 7:34:39 AM PST by kellynla
Benito Mussolini, an Italian World War I veteran and publisher of Socialist newspapers, breaks with the Italian Socialists and establishes the nationalist Fasci di Combattimento, named after the Italian peasant revolutionaries, or "Fighting Bands," from the 19th century. Commonly known as the Fascist Party, Mussolini's new right-wing organization advocated Italian nationalism, had black shirts for uniforms, and launched a program of terrorism and intimidation against its leftist opponents.
In October 1922, Mussolini led the Fascists on a march on Rome, and King Emmanuel III, who had little faith in Italy's parliamentary government, asked Mussolini to form a new government. Initially, Mussolini, who was appointed prime minister at the head of a three-member Fascist cabinet, cooperated with the Italian parliament, but aided by his brutal police organization he soon became the effective dictator of Italy. In 1924, a Socialist backlash was suppressed, and in January 1925 a Fascist state was officially proclaimed, with Mussolini as Il Duce, or "The Leader."
Mussolini appealed to Italy's former Western allies for new treaties, but his brutal 1935 invasion of Ethiopia ended all hope of alliance with the Western democracies. In 1936, Mussolini joined Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his support of Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, prompting the signing of a treaty of cooperation in foreign policy between Italy and Nazi Germany in 1937. Although Adolf Hitler's Nazi revolution was modeled after the rise of Mussolini and the Italian Fascist Party, Fascist Italy and Il Duce proved overwhelmingly the weaker partner in the Berlin-Rome Axis during World War II.
In July 1943, the failure of the Italian war effort and the imminent invasion of the Italian mainland by the Allies led to a rebellion within the Fascist Party. Two days after the fall of Palermo on July 24, the Fascist Grand Council rejected the policy dictated by Hitler through Mussolini, and on July 25 Il Duce was arrested. Fascist Marshal Pietro Badoglio took over the reins of the Italian government, and in September Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. Eight days later, German commandos freed Mussolini from his prison in the Abruzzi Mountains, and he was later made the puppet leader of German-controlled northern Italy. With the collapse of Nazi Germany in April 1945, Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans and on April 29 was executed by firing squad with his mistress, Clara Petacci, after a brief court-martial. Their bodies, brought to Milan, were hanged by the feet in a public square for all the world to see.
Wow. On this day my Mother would have been exactly a week old. Quite a coincidence.
(1) He was wounded by his own incompetence in training camp and sent home. He was not a WWI veteran.
(2) He was an editor of a Communist paper and a member of the Italian Communist Party, not just a socialist.
And on March 23, 1944
Germans slaughter Italian civilians
On this day, German occupiers shoot more than 300 Italian civilians as a reprisal for an Italian partisan attack on an SS unit.
Since the Italian surrender in the summer of 1943, German troops had occupied wider swaths of the peninsula to prevent the Allies from using Italy as a base of operations against German strongholds elsewhere, such as the Balkans. An Allied occupation of Italy would also put into their hands Italian airbases, further threatening German air power.
Italian partisans (antifascist guerrilla fighters) aided the Allied battle against the Germans. The Italian Resistance had been fighting underground against the fascist government of Mussolini long before its surrender, and now it fought against German fascism. The main weapon of a guerrilla, defined roughly as a member of a small-scale "irregular" fighting force that relies on limited and quick engagements of a conventional fighting force, is sabotage. Aside from killing enemy soldiers, the destruction of communication lines, transportation centers, and supply lines are essential guerrilla tactics.
On March 23, 1944, Italian partisans operating in Rome threw a bomb at an SS unit, killing 33 soldiers. The very next day, the Germans rounded up 335 Italian civilians and took them to the Adeatine caves. They were all shot dead as revenge for the SS soldiers. Of the civilian victims, 253 were Catholic, 70 were Jewish and the remaining 12 were unidentified.
Despite such setbacks, the partisans proved extremely effective in aiding the Allies; by the summer of 1944, resistance fighters had immobilized eight of the 26 German divisions in northern Italy. By war's end, Italian guerrillas controlled Venice, Milan, and Genoa, but at considerable cost. All told, the Resistance lost some 50,000 fighters-but won its republic
I wouldn't be surprised if the libs at "Air America" have a commemorative little party marking this occasion.
"The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature's plans."
"If classical liberalism spells individualism," Mussolini continued, "Fascism spells government."
I'm not sure why this publisher of Socialist newspapers is considered right-wing. If anyone wants to take issue with that (and defend the categorization of Mussolini as right-wing), I would ask that they define "socialism" as a starting point, and demonstrate why Mussolini wasn't one.
Mussolini's new right-wing organization ?
Facists or socialist both were left wing, am I correct?
I wonder if my husband is aware of this..........today is his 50th b'day.
In 1932 Mussolini wrote (with the help of Giovanni Gentile) and entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html
Yup.
They lost me right there.
Modern Leftism as Recycled Fascism
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1181490/posts
Once you cut through the propaganda, the vast degree of falsehood that is tolerated and promoted in this country becomes apparent.
Beware the "right wing" socialists.
IMO, Right and Left should be, in modern times, considered endwings of a particular authoritarian/totalitarian scale. Advocates of individual liberty are not about the median of that scale but on a separate scale.
For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State....
"collectivism" "century of the State"
Sounds like he was a lefty to me
What you say is correct, but I think it needs some explanatory words. The word "corporate" refers to the economic policy of corporatism. It has nothing to do with Capitalist industrial corporations. Mussolini established a "corporate state" meaning that economic activities were coordinated through state-organized "corporations". The quote above might be taken as a statement that national operations were turned over to Big Business. Quite the opposite was true.
Mussolini considered himself a collectivist and therefore should be placed on the Left of the political spectrum.
Not only was my Mom just born, my Dad grew up to fight in WWII. He was part of the Poe (Po?) Valley campaign. Interesting coincidence! Happy birthday to your sweetie and give him some insulting gift for the significance of this day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kind of a whitewash, taking the socialism out of the story. He struggled against the communists, but was a socialist himself.
And they leave out the influence of Antonio Gramsci, the inventor of Fascism, or Gramscian Socialism.
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