Matteotti, Giacomo

(1885–1924)

   A socialist martyr, Giacomo Matteotti’s murder by the Fascists led to the definitive end of liberal Italy and the advent of Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship. Matteotti was born in Rovigo, near Venice, the son of a lower middleclass family. He studied law and seemed embarked on a career as a jurist, but his socialist sympathies led him toward political activism and journalism. He opposed World War I but was nevertheless called up and served in the army for three years. In 1919, he was elected to Parliament as a deputy for the Partito Socialista Italiano/Italian Socialist Party (PSI). Matteotti belonged to the reformist wing of the PSI, however, and in 1922 he joined Filippo Turati in forming the Partito Socialista Unitaria/United Socialist Party (PSU), becoming its secretary and chief organizer.

   In 1923, Matteotti published a searing condemnation of Fascism’s intellectual and economic pretensions, Un anno di dominazione fascista (A Year of Fascist Domination), and, in May 1924, he made a historic speech in the Chamber of Deputies denouncing the electoral frauds and acts of intimidation that had falsified the 1924 elections throughout Italy. On 10 June, five Fascist squadristi kidnapped him as he walked along the banks of the Tiber in Rome. His body was found two months later.

   Matteotti’s murder provoked the liberal and democratic opposition to walk out of Parliament on 13 June, and the widespread disgust with the violence and illegality of the Fascist militias might have brought Mussolini down. In the end, however, the delitto Matteotti (the Matteotti crime) served to consolidate Mussolini’s power. After Mussolini was directly accused (December 1924) of having ordered Matteotti’s murder, he accepted political responsibility for the killing in a bold speech in January 1925. This was a prelude to the widespread closings of “subversive” publications and organizations, indiscriminate arrests of critics, and the abolition of competitive elections. Together, these measures—given the proven illegalities of the action squads—ended all remnants of liberal democracy in Italy.

   See also Aventine Secession.