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Paramilitary Violence in Italian Fascism: A Discussion
This article derives from my doctoral thesis, written under the supervision of Professor Carlo Fumian of the University of Padua. Earlier versions of the article were presented as papers at seminars organised by the Association for the Study of Modern Italy (Bristol, June 2011) and at workshops held by the Società Italiana per lo Studio della Storia Contemporanea (Forlë, September 2011). I should like to thank the anonymous reviewers of Contemporary European History for their useful comments on the first draft of this article. My warmest thanks go to Dr Giulia Albanese (University of Padua) and Dr Martin Conway (University of Oxford) for their advice and encouragement. Without them, this article would never have been written. Finally, heartfelt thanks go to Professor Silvio Lanaro, who left us on June 23, 2013, because from the earliest years he believed in me, teaching me this craft.
I.
'Hostile to all forms of authority'?
'The violent ones? I need them as well!'1Benito Mussolini said this to a senator, Ettore Conti, the day after the elections of 6 April 1924. Who were these violent ones? It became clear a few weeks later, when Giacomo Matteotti was brutally murdered by a gang of ex-squadristi.
Matteotti's murder and the outrages committed by blackshirt 'action squads' caused considerable embarrassment to Mussolini and the National Fascist Party (the PNF), but the Duce's words to Conti show his awareness that squadrista violence was an essential prop to his personal power and to Fascism itself. They also point to a much more complex historical question: how important was the paramilitary component inside political movements that resorted largely to political violence? The very considerable degree of autonomy that the paramilitaries seem to have enjoyed within Fascist movements could prove a double-edged weapon, however: it was indispensable in the struggle to gain power, but dangerously de-stabilising once power had been gained. The practice of violence is not without its long-term consequences.
However aware of its usefulness, many Fascists considered that violence was no more than a tool for attaining a political end - a temporary one at that, and one not to be over-used. In 1921 Mussolini talked in terms...