My autobiography

by Benito Mussolini

I speak of movement and not of party, because my conception always was that Fascism must assume the characteristics of being anti-party. It was not to be tied to old or new schools of any kind. The name Italian Fighting Fascisti was lucky. It was most appropriate to a political action that had to face all the old parasites and programmes that had tried to deprave Italy. I felt that it was not only the anti-socialist battle we had to fight; this was only a battle on the way. There was a lot more to do. All the conceptions of the so-called historical parties seemed to be dresses out of measure, shape, style, usefulness. They had grown tawdry and insufficient—unable to keep pace with the rising tide of unexpected political exigencies, unable to adjust to the formation of new history and new conditions of modern life.

The old parties clung in vain to the rattling programmes. These parties had to make pitiful repairs and tinkerings in an attempt to adapt their theories as best they could to the new days. It was therefore not sufficient to create—as some have said superficially—an anti-altar to the altar of socialism. It was necessary to imagine a wholly new political conception, adequate to the living reality of the twentieth century, overcoming at the same time the ideological worship of liberalism, the limited horizons of various spent and exhausted democracies, and finally the violently Utopian spirit of Bolshevism.

In a word, I felt the deep necessity of an original conception capable of placing in a new period of history a more fruitful rhythm of human life.

It was necessary to lay the foundation of a new civilization.

To this end—through every day’s observation of events and change, morning and evening, in vigor and in weariness—I aimed all my strength. I had a perfect and sure consciousness of the end I was driving at. This was my problem—to find the way, to find the moment, to find the form.

Those discussions over which I presided and dominated strengthened some of my conceptions that still conserve to-day the freshness of the original idea. Later, in this review of my life until now, I shall take up some of the details of the evolution of our plans. At our meetings there were present various elements—syndicalists, old interventionists, demobilized officers still in uniform, and many arditi, those brave grenade-and-knife shock troops of the war.

The Italian arditi were a creation of the war. The idea was born in Garibaldi’s impetuous, fighting vigor and dash, and finds its remote origin in the heroic city militias that flourished in many parts of Italy at the happy time of the townships—the communes. The arditi rendered first-class service during the war. They were our troops of assault, of the first rush. They threw themselves into the battle with bombs in hands, with daggers in the teeth, with a supreme contempt for death, singing their magnificent war hymns. There was in them not only the sense of heroism but an indomitable will.

This typically Italian formation lived on after the war. The first fighting Fascisti were formed mostly of decided men. They were full of will and courage. In the first years of the anti-socialist, anti-communist struggle, the arditi war veterans played an important role. I was several times nominated their chief and still hold the title of honorary president of the Arditi association, which has assumed now a purely relief character, with the idea of maintaining intact its spirit of civic and military virtues.

Those who came to the meeting for the constitution of the Italian Fascisti of Combat used few words. They did not exhaust themselves by laying out dreams. Their aim seemed clear and straight-lined. It was to defend the victory at any price, to maintain intact the sacred memory of the dead, and the admiration not only for those who fell and for the families of those who were dead but for the mutilated, for the invalids, for all those who had fought. The prevalent note, however, was of anti-socialist character, and as a political aspiration, it was hoped a new Italy would be created that would know how to give value to the victory and to fight with all its strength against treason and corruption, against decay within and intrigue and avarice from without.

There are some who profess not to understand what Fascismo had as its intent, and some who believe that it grew without a gardener. I was certain at the time that it was necessary to fix, without any possibility of equivocation, the essential brand of the new movement. For this reason I made three planks for our platform. The first was the following: