Capitalism in Decay

In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, middle-class liberals condemned general strikes as unpatriotic, economically disruptive, and politically divisive acts that threatened the potential for industrial recovery and national unity in Italy.

Though there was disagreement among the liberal middle classes about the merits of the workers’ reasons for striking, they were unanimous in their criticism of workers’ demonstrations as harmful to the Italian patria (fatherland).

With the 1920 factory occupations and the concurrent emergence of workers’ self-defense groups, the liberal middle classes began associating workers’ demonstrations with physical and ideological violence.

Finally, during the biennio nero, middle-class liberals blamed workers’ demonstrations for the continuing armament of the fasci and the increasingly popular appeal of fascism. Some even expressed explicitly philofascist sympathies, citing the fascists’ successful suppression of disruptive and divisive workers’ demonstrations.

The persistency of general strikes, factory occupations, and workers’ self-defense groups over the 1919–1922 thus turned Italian middle-class liberals increasingly sympathetic to fascism.

Though the liberal middle classes were not unanimous in their philofascist sentiments in the months just before Mussolini’s March on Rome, the writer Renato Simoni was accurate in the declaration he made in his summer 1922 column for the newspaper L’Illustrazione italiana: “the [workers’ demonstration], which was supposed to be a large protest against fascism, has enabled fascism to demonstrate its merits.”¹⁵

Not all middle-class liberals were convinced by these merits—that is, by the way fascists violently challenged the radical labor activity and ceaseless workers’ demonstrations of the biennio rosso—but some certainly were.

[…]

La Stampa emphasized the combativeness of some of the workers who were present; for example, the royal guards had no choice but to arrest “the most quarrelsome and hotheaded” of the demonstrators.⁷²

Additionally, while describing instances of violence involving “a young man struck with a blow to the head falling to the ground” or “a manual laborer struck and [with] his hands on his bloody head,” the newspaper employed the passive voice and thus obscured the direct agency of the policemen and fascist squadristi in the events. It even characterized such incidents as “scuffles” and “skirmishes” rather than as obvious acts of police and fascist violence against demonstrating workers.⁷³

In this way, La Stampa underlined that violence was present at yet another workers’ demonstration while absolving the perpetrating policemen and fascists of their responsibility in that violence. As it had done in its coverage of worker demonstrations in prior years, it presented the outbreak of violence as inherent to the strike rather than the direct consequence of the state and fasci’s violence toward workers.

[…]

La Stampa also held the arditi del popolo at least partially responsible for the fascists’ refusal to immediately disarm. The newspaper asserted that “that which is boiling up, the formation of antifascist forces that took place in Rome a few days ago, and the simultaneous debut of the « Arditi del Popolo », have offered fascism a motive to cry provocation and interrupt their attempts” at peace and disarmament.”

The public exercises of the arditi del popolo in Rome had thus frustrated and angered the fasci into continued armament, which they might have considered stopping had it not been for the 6 July demonstration.⁷⁷

[…]

According to Tasca, despite the fundamentally liberal rhetoric used by the secret action committee in their proclamation of the strikes, the fascists received support from liberal newspapers, many of which had originally “blamed the fascists for contributing towards socialist participation by their excesses.”

However, at this point in what had become a de facto civil war, “the conservative and ‘liberal’ press,” along with the Italian bourgeoisie more generally, “congratulated the fascists who were containing and extending, in the name of the state, the work of destruction” and suppression of workers’ strikes.⁸⁴

[…]

L’Illustrazione, however, went beyond criticizing the striking workers and condemning the economic disruptiveness and violence of the strike, using that criticism as justification for its praise of the actions taken by fascists against the strikes. Explaining how the “the fascist reaction [to the general strike in Milan] produced a broad and immediate consensus in public opinion” that was sympathetic to the fascists, the issue included an entire page favorably depicting “blackshirts [replacing] workers on train platforms and other public services.”⁸⁶

The publication thus not only offered an account of increasing public advocacy for the fascist response to the general strike but itself expressed support for the fascists. It also provided an analysis of the Italian public’s philofascist turn to the Right, declaring that “fascism has protected our right to feel Italian” and that, while “we, the masses, we, the tranquil population […] are threatened with thirst and hunger by the activity of the red organizations […] the fascists focus only on responding to those who cause it.”

Thus, in L’Illustrazione’s conception, with the proclamation of the general strike on the evening of July 31st, “the public [was] called to judge [between] the two disagreeing parties […] the fascists and the socialists”; since “there [was] no government” left to resolve the people’s problems, the public ended up siding with the fascists, who emerged as the ones “who [helped] us, [defended] us” from the industrial sabotage perpetrated by the working-class movement.⁸⁷

The workers’ demonstration, which in the summer of 1921 was perpetuating fascist violence by merely giving existing fascists further reason to be violent, was in August 1922 turning middle-class liberals into explicit supporters of fascism.