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Mussolini founded the fascist movement on March 23, 1919 at a meeting in Milan's Piazza San Sepolcro. Among the founding members were the revolutionary syndicalist leaders Agostino Lanzillo and Michele Bianchi.
In 1921, the fascists developed a program that called for:
As the movement evolved, several of these initial ideas were abandoned and rejected.
Mussolini's fascist state was established nearly a decade before Hitler's rise to power. Both a movement and a historical phenomenon, Italian Fascism was, in many respects, an adverse reaction to both the apparent failure of laissez-faire economics and fear of the Left. Trends in intellectual history, such as the breakdown of positivism and the general fatalism of postwar Europe, were also a concern.
Fascism was, to an extent, a product of a general feeling of anxiety and fear among the middle class of postwar Italy. This fear arose from a convergence of interrelated economic, political, and cultural pressures. Under the banner of this authoritarian and nationalistic ideology, Mussolini was able to exploit fears regarding the survival of capitalism in an era in which postwar depression, the rise of a more militant left, and a feeling of national shame and humiliation stemming from Italy's 'mutilated victory' at the hands of the World War I postwar peace treaties seemed to converge. Such unfulfilled nationalistic aspirations tainted the reputation of liberalism and constitutionalism among many sectors of the Italian population. In addition, such democratic institutions had never grown to become firmly rooted in the young nation-state.
This same postwar depression heightened the allure of Marxism among an urban proletariat who were even more disenfranchised than their continental counterparts. But fear of the growing strength of trade unionism, Communism, and socialism proliferated among the elite and the middle class. In a way, Benito Mussolini filled a political vacuum. Fascism emerged as a "third way" — as Italy's last hope to avoid imminent collapse of the 'weak' Italian liberalism, and Communist revolution.
While failing to outline a coherent program, fascism evolved into a new political and economic system that combined corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and anti-Communism in a state designed to bind all classes together under a capitalist system. This was a new capitalist system, however, one in which the state seized control of the organization of vital industries. Under the banners of nationalism and state power, Fascism seemed to synthesize the glorious Roman past with a futuristic utopia.
The appeal of this movement, the promise of a more orderly capitalism during an era of interwar depression, however, was not isolated to Italy, or even Europe. For example, a decade later, the Great Depression led to a sharp economic downturn of the Brazilian economy. A sort of quasi-fascism emerged as a reaction to Brazil's own socio-economic problems and nationalistic consciousness of its peripheral status in the global economy. The regime of Getulio Vargas adopted extensive fascist influence and entered into an alliance with Integralism, Brazil's local fascist movement.
Founded as a nationalist association (the Fasci di Combattimento) of World War I veterans in Milan on March 23, 1919, Mussolini's fascist movement converted itself into a national party (the Partito Nazionale Fascista) after winning 35 seats in the parliamentary elections of May 1921. Initially combining ideological elements of both left and right, it aligned itself with the forces of conservatism by opposing the September 1920 factory occupations.
Despite the themes of social and economic reform in the initial Fascist manifesto of June 1919, the movement came to be supported by sections of the middle class fearful of socialism and communism. Industrialists and landowners supported the movement as a defence against labour militancy. Under threat of a fascist March on Rome, in October 1922, Mussolini assumed the premiership of a right-wing coalition Cabinet initially including members of the pro-church Partito Popolare (People's Party) .
The transition to outright dictatorship was more gradual than in Germany a decade later, though in July 1923 a new electoral law all but assured a Fascist parliamentary majority. The murder of the Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti eleven months later showed the limits of political opposition. By 1926, opposition movements had been outlawed, and in 1928, election to parliament was restricted to fascist-approved candidates.
The regime's most lasting political achievement was perhaps the Lateran Treaty of February 1929 between the Italian state and the Holy See. Under this treaty, the Papacy was granted temporal sovereignty over the Vatican City and guaranteed the free exercise of Catholicism as the sole state religion throughout Italy in return for its acceptance of Italian sovereignty over the Pope's former dominions.
Trade unions and employers' associations were reorganized by 1934 into 22 fascist corporations combining workers and employers by economic sector, whose representatives in 1938 replaced the parliament as the "Chamber of Corporations". Power continued to be vested in the Fascist Grand Council, the ruling body of the movement.
In the 1930s, Italy recovered from the Great Depression, and achieved economic growth in part by developing domestic substitutes for imports ( Autarchia). The draining of the malaria-infested Pontine Marshes south of Rome was one of the regime's proudest boasts. But growth was undermined by international sanctions following Italy's October 1935 invasion of Ethiopia (the Abyssinia crisis), and by the government's costly military support for Franco's Nationalists in Spain.
International isolation and their common involvement in Spain brought about increasing diplomatic collaboration between Italy and Nazi Germany. This was reflected also in the Fascist regime's domestic policies as the first anti-semitic laws were passed in 1938.
Italy's intervention ( June 10th 1940) as Germany's ally in World War II brought military disaster, and resulted in the loss of her north and east African colonies and the American- British- Canadian invasion of Sicily in July 1943 and southern Italy in September 1943.
Mussolini was dismissed as prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel III on July 25th 1943, and subsequently arrested. He was freed in September by German paratroopers and installed as head of a puppet " Italian Social Republic" at Salo in German-occupied northern Italy. His association with the German occupation regime eroded much of what little support remained to him. His summary execution on April 28th 1945 during the war's violent closing stages by the northern partisans was widely seen as a fitting end to his regime.
After the war, the remnants of Italian fascism largely regrouped under the banner of the neo-Fascist " Italian Social Movement" (MSI). The MSI merged in 1994 with conservative former Christian Democrats to form the "National Alliance" (AN), which proclaims its commitment to constitutionalism, parliamentary government and political pluralism.
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