Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Arditi del Popolo
Summary
The Arditi del Popolo (The People's Daring Ones) was an Italian militant anti-fascist group founded at the end of June 1921 to resist the rise of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party and the violence of the Blackshirts (squadristi) paramilitaries. It grouped revolutionary trade-unionists, socialists, communists, anarchists, republicans, anti-capitalists, as well as some former military officers, and was co-founded by Giuseppe Mingrino, Argo Secondari and Gino Lucetti – who tried to assassinate Mussolini on 11 September 1926 – the deputy Guido Picelli and others. The Arditi del Popolo were an offshoot of the Arditi elite troops, who had previously occupied Fiume in 1919 behind the poet Gabriele d'Annunzio, who proclaimed the Italian Regency of Carnaro. Those who split to form the Arditi del Popolo were close to the anarchist Argo Secondari and were supported by Mario Carli. The formazioni di difesa proletaria (Proletarian Defense Formations) later merged with them. The Arditi del Popolo gathered approximately 20,000 members in summer 1921.
Composed of socialists, anarchists and communists, the Arditi del Popolo were not supported by leftist parties (neither by the Italian Socialist Party, PSI, nor by the Communist Party of Italy, PCd'I). The Arditi were criticized by the socialist newspaper Avanti! on 7 July 1921, following a demonstration in Rome the previous day.
On 10 July 1921, Pravda announced the demonstration and Vladimir Lenin wrote an article the next month praising the Arditi del Popolo as a unified action of the 'entire proletariat' against fascism and criticizing the Bordigan tendency of the PCd'I. On 3 August 1921 the PSI signed a "pacification pact" (patto di pacificazione) with Mussolini and his Fasces of Combat on 3 August 1921, while the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and the PSI refused to officially recognize the anti-fascist militia. Furthermore, the PCd'I ordered its members to quit the organization because of the presence of non-communists in its ranks.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.