Avanti! (newspaper)

Avanti! (meaning "Forward!" in English) is an Italian daily newspaper, born as the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party, published since 25 December 1896. It took its name from its German counterpart Vorwärts, the party-newspaper of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In the mid-nineties of the 19th century, the Italian Socialist Party owned numerous newspapers and periodical journals published in various parts of the Italian Kingdom, but those had limited runs, and they were funded by the same militants of the Party. However, PSI (the Italian-language abbreviation of the Italian Socialist Party) obtained an important standing in the elections of 1895, and during the IVth Socialist Congress of Florence in July 1896, programs for the editorial development were promoted along with the origination of a nationwide newspaper. The first number of Avanti! was published on 25 December 1896, on Christmas, because the new newspaper sought to represent Italian socialism as intended as "a new voice that does not descend from the airy high sky, but it lifts up from workshops and fields and predicts the peace to men of good will" or their own rendition of what they considered a "holy birth". After all, Jesus Christ was referred to as the "first socialist in history" in the contemporary socialist iconography. The first director was Leonida Bissolati, with Ivanoe Bonomi, Walter Mocchi, Alessandro Schiavi, Oddino Morgari and Gabriele Galantara as editors. The last one was a designer and satirical cartoonist who drew the logo for the newspapers, characterized by an italic font and the exclamation point at the end with the typical liberty style of the end of the 19th century. Along with Guido Podrecca, Galantara was also the founder in 1892 of L'Asino, an important satirical journal. Avanti! was inspired by the newspaper of the Social Democratic Party of Germany called Vorwärts. Previously, other newspapers had been founded with the same title: on 30 April 1881 Andrea Costa founded the Avanti! and philosopher Antonio Labriola launched Avanti (without exclamation mark) in May 1896, on which the libertarian socialist Francesco Saverio Merlino wrote.