The Matteotti Crisis
The Matteotti Crisis
The Birth of Italy's Fascist Dictatorship
Since attention has been on Italy recently, I thought I’d write about one of the key moments in the creation of Mussolini’s regime: the political crisis brought on by the assassination of Socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti in 1924.
“Normalization” is one of the big buzzwords of our era: we are constantly told we mustn’t normalize this or that. With the election of Donald Trump, liberals fretted that he would become normalized, but it’s interesting to note that the liberal and conservative strategy for dealing with Benito Mussolini after he became prime minister in 1922 was to normalize him. In fact, one could say that normalization was how Mussolini gained power in the first place: King Victor Emmanuel summoned him to form a government to avoid a violent coup during the March on Rome. The belief was that by channelling the Fascists into the constitutional system they would abandon violence and serve a constructive role.
The old elite also thought they could use this stratagem to sideline the most fascist Fascists, the squadristi who often came from a “national syndicalist” background and envisioned for a social revolution along with a political takeover. While they may have hoped for a revolution, the squadristi beat up and killed Socialists and trades unionists at the behest of landowners and industrialists, so the establishment may be forgiven for thinking Fascism was really on the side of social order. The establishment’s plan was to absorb or transform Fascism, rather than defeat it head on. This appeared plausible since Mussolini was so equivocal and unclear about his true goals: there seemed to be little ideological consistency at all among the Fascists; they could be useful in a number of different ways.
Rather than being a sign of Mussolini’s pliability, this ambiguity was tactical: he was more than happy to appear cooperative with the system so long as it further entrenched his personal power and legitimacy. But as he grew closer to the establishment, his own party grew openly dissatisfied. They wanted a violent break with the old regime, a triumphant new order and they seemed to have gotten more of the parliamentary trucking-and-bartering they so despised. The provincial ras, the squadrist chieftains, had their own power bases, even their own propaganda with which to pressure Mussolini for more precipitous action. These rowdies frightened and aggravated Mussolini’s conservative allies, but he could not dispense with them: he still needed their muscle to intimidate the opposition. Instead, Mussolini attempted normalization: the creation of a national militia that would put the squads under a centralized command. Conservatives went along: this would be a path to curb lawless violence; they were perhaps not fully cognizant of the fact that they were further institutionalizing Fascist rule.
A similar process took place with the adoption of electoral reform, the Acerbo Law, which stipulated that the party that got the most votes—so long as it was greater than 25%—would receive two-thirds of the seats in parliament. Again, large sections of the political elite decided that by giving Mussolini a parliamentary majority they would effectively have normalized Fascism and removed the threat to the constitution, ignoring the fact that they were in essence helping to undo the constitutional system themselves. But the division within the Fascist party between the constitutional normalizers and the ultras was reaching crisis proportions, and they reasoned they could permanently split the movement along this axis.
Whatever resistance to electoral politics the squadristi may have felt, that did not prevent them from turning out for Mussolini to intimidate voters and engage in widespread fraud in the April 6 1924 elections. The National List, which included the Fascists, as well as their liberal and conservative allies, got a “landslide” and 355 of the 535 seats in parliament.
A tiny, fractured opposition in parliament remained: Antonio Gramsci was elected as a Communist deputy, the Socialists remained as well as the Italian Republican Party. There was also a new party, the Unitary Socialist Party, a reformist socialist group lead by Giacomo Matteotti.
Matteotti had made a name for himself in politics as an honest and highly competent technocrat, as rare a beast in Italian politics then as now. But with the rise of the Fascists he took on the role of uncompromising defender of democracy. He wrote tirelessly against Fascist abuses, culminating in his 1924 book The Fascisti Exposed: A Year of Fascist Domination, that meticulously documented the fraud, violence and open corruption of the Fascists. On May 30 1924, Matteotti rose in parliament to denounce the Acerbo Law and the recent elections, giving a fiery and passionate speech over heckling of Fascist deputies. Mussolini flew into a rage, and whether or not he gave direct order, he made it clear that Matteotti was to be dealt with harshly.
On June 10, the day before Matteotti was supposed to give another speech that reportedly would outline a corrupt deal between members of Mussolini’s inner circle and the Sinclair Oil company, he was shoved into the back of a car while taking a morning walk on the banks of the Tiber in Rome. The perpetrators were not provincial Fascist ultras, but members of Mussolini’s personal coterie. Matteotti’s body would not be discovered for months, but it was clear what had happened. The country plunged into a political crisis; public opinion appeared to shift decisively against the Fascists. The usually agile Mussolini appeared paralyzed, thrown into a depression by the sudden reversal of fortune. The Fascist government looked like it was on the brink of collapse. “Moderate” Fascists handed in their party membership cards and stopped attending meetings. The extremist Fascists, like our friend Curzio Malaparte, was calling for a “second wave” of violence, openly criticizing Mussolini in the press, and hinting at a possible coup against Il Duce.
In the midst of the crisis, most of the opposition decided to quit parliament and assemble on the Aventine Hill, an act that would become known as the “Aventine Seccession.” This was done in reference to the ancient Roman tradition of the secession of the plebs, when the common people of Rome would leave the city and go to the Aventine Hill to protest abuses by the patrician class. A closer analogy to that precedent would’ve been a general strike and mass uprising, which was exactly the course of action suggested by Gramsci and the Communists. But most of the Aventine deputies preferred a legalistic strategy: public opinion would now turn and the King would withdraw confidence in Mussolini.
The conservatives saw another opportunity: Mussolini was weakened, isolated from his Fascist base, he needed his allies more than ever; they could press him for more concessions in return for their continued support. Besides, the establishment preferred the Fascists to the extreme left, which might recover in the wake of a Fascist downfall. Here was the path to yet more normalization. They helped downplay Mussolini’s responsibility for the murder of Matteotti. Still, the crisis dragged on for six months, and it was unclear if the conservatives might finally break with Mussolini. For his part, Mussolini had to deal with his restive party, sending mixed messages that he was on the one hand against normalization but also that the violent, revolutionary phase of Fascism was over and the squadristi must submit to party discipline. On New Years Eve 1924, the party bosses showed up at Mussolini’s office and gave an ultimatum: do something now.
Mussolini once again managed to thread the needle. He had not lost parliamentary support, and on January 3 1925 he gave a boastful, defiant speech that took “moral responsibility” for the murder of Matteotti and challenged the opposition to remove him if they could: “‘I declare...that I, and I alone, assume the political, moral and historical responsibility for all that has happened.... If Fascism has been a criminal association, if all the acts of violence have been the result of a certain historical, political and moral climate the responsibility for this is mine.” This tough talk placated and reassured the extremist faction. Mussolini had also prepared a wave of repression: the Aventine opposition would be barred from returning to their seats in parliament, the police were ordered to shut down “subversive organizations,” and hundreds were arbitrarily arrested. The militia was called up assist the cops: for the first time blackshirts were acting officially as auxiliaries of the state. Not long after, opposition parties would be banned. Italy had tipped over from a hybrid regime into full dictatorship.
It’s important to note that Mussolini’s success was not guaranteed at any point along the way. Any number of things could have gone differently: the King might have withdrawn his mandate, his parliamentary allies could have fled, the opposition might have adopted a more muscular strategy, or the Fascist ultras may have launched a coup that justified governmental suppression of the Fascists in response. Mussolini took advantage of the disorganization of his opponents and the craven opportunism of his allies. It was the sort of tactical victory he had become expert in, riding out the storms while just managing to keep his coalition together. The killing of Giacomo Matteotti may have been reckless in that it created an unstable situation and threatened his rule, but ultimately it proved to be “the right move:” Mussolini removed an opponent of extraordinary courage and moral authority and created the conditions for consolidating control.