Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria

The Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria (translatable into English as "Fasces of Revolutionary Action"; figuratively "League of Revolutionary Action") was an Italian political movement founded in 1914 by Benito Mussolini, and active mainly in 1915. Sponsored by Alceste De Ambris, Mussolini, and Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, it was a pro-war movement aiming to promote Italian entry into World War I. It was connected to the world of revolutionary interventionists and inspired by the programmatic manifesto of the Fascio Rivoluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista, dated 5 October 1914. The movement achieved its primary goal when Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in May 1915, and most of the movement's members joined the army. After the war, almost all of them met in 1919 in Piazza San Sepolcro for the foundation of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, which preceded the National Fascist Party founded in 1921. The Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria was founded on 11 December 1914 and held its first meeting on 24 January 1915. The First World War had begun in July 1914, but Italy remained neutral, and public opinion as well as the political majority in parliament supported continued neutrality and non-involvement in the war. In this context, the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria was created as an umbrella organization for pro-war activists led by Benito Mussolini, who were called interventionists because they wished for Italy to intervene in the war. At the meeting in January 1915, a motion was passed which stated that national problems - including the issue of national borders - needed to be resolved in Italy and elsewhere "for the ideals of justice and liberty for which oppressed peoples must acquire the right to belong to those national communities from which they descended." Mussolini asserted on this occasion that Italy should join the war "for the liberation of the unredeemed peoples of Trentino and Istria", which implied territorial claims over regions inhabited by ethnic Italians.