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Concept
Squadrismo
Summary
Squadrismo (skwaˈdrizmo) was the movement of squadre d'azione (English: action squads), the fascist militias that were organised outside the authority of the Italian state and led by local leaders called ras (a title given to Abyssinian headmen). The militia originally consisted of farmers and middle-class people, who created their own defence from revolutionary socialists. Squadrismo became an important asset for the rise of the National Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini, and systematically used violence to eliminate any political parties that opposed to Italian Fascism.
The violence was not only an instrument in politics but also a vital component of squadrismo identity, which made it difficult for the movement to be tamed. That was shown in the various attempts by Mussolini to control squadrismo violence with the Pact of Pacification and later the Consolidated Public Safety Act. Squadrismo, which ultimately became the Blackshirts, served as a source of inspiration for Adolf Hitler's SA.
After World War I, there was a general feeling of disillusion. Diffused poverty, economic fractures and a social and moral political upheaval generated by the mobilisation of the war contributed to the unstable climate proceeding the armistice. That enabled an excess of violence to be present. Furthermore, (new) farmers were opposed to the new rural trade unions which wanted to control the agrarian economy. The middle class decided that it required to fend itself from the socialists because the government could not contain them. As a result, a series of middle-class defence leagues were formed. The first squadrismo was thus nationalist and founded on the traditions of the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria, a phenomenon of citizens.
In that context emerged the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, founded 23 March 1919 by Benito Mussolini during a meeting in the San Sepolcro Square, in Milan. Squadrismo was a movement that expanded instantly afterward, and by spring 1920, the fascists installed a political militia of squadre in various parts of Northern Italy, mostly in Trieste.
Official source
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