Birth of Fascism

The Black Shirts were a paramilitary squad organized in Italy by dictator Benito Mussolini in 1919.

When the war ended in November 1918, Mussolini was at loose ends politically. His sympathies lay with the nation’s hundreds of thousands of war veterans, many unemployed and, most of all, disaffected with the liberal Italian state. With an eye on galvanizing their support, in March 1919 he founded a political movement called the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Leagues), whose members became known as Fascists. At first Mussolini organized young Fascists into armed squads in order to defend Fascist rallies. But soon these black-shirted squads were to attack and disrupt the rallies of rival political factions, especially the socialists. Mussolini thus introduced wartime tactics into peacetime politics.

In speeches and rallies Mussolini denounced inept politicians and incited nationalist fervor, hoping to seize the initiative from traditional opposition parties, notably the socialists. However, when Mussolini ran for parliament later that year—promising to replace the parliamentary monarchy with a republic, tax war profits, divide up the large estates for landless farmers, and grant women the vote—he failed miserably.