Blackshirts

Giovanni must have been aware of the mistrust, even fear, many of his workers felt towards Mussolini.

His black shirts rampaged through cities in the early 1920s, burning union halls, beating socialists, murdering people, suppressing left-wing labour movements.

Mussolini was a former journalist and army veteran who had seized on the chaos of the early 1920s to pursue a fascist agenda.

His paramilitary force, the Black Shirts, had fought left-wing and other groups who'd also attempted to take control after the war.

Mussolini's nationalist agenda had gained traction with Italians who felt they had been cheated in the post-war settlement.

Italy had been on the winning side, but despite more than a million people killed or wounded, the territorial gains promised by Italy's allies had not materialised.

Um, which I...

Yes, Fascismo, as it's said in Italy, in, in Italian, which I act- I actually mentioned it in our Rise of the Nazis episode, that, um, Hitler's Brownshirts paramilitary force was literally just like Mussolini's Camicie Nere, which is the Blackshirts.

Now, Adolf described Benito as a great man, and Mussolini fancied the pants off Hitler, uh, or at least in this fanfic I'm writing, he does.

So they got together as these lovely, lovely bl- bunch of lads in a meeting in September 1940, because they're so alike in so many ways, and surely if you're alike in all those ways, then you really should get together and kind of formalize it in some capacity.

Much like everything this administration does, there are parallels to past times of the rise of dictators, authoritarianism, and fascism.

Back in the early 1920s, before Mussolini had even consolidated full power in Italy, his Blackshirts, the Squadristi, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, beat socialists, trade unionists, journalists, and political opponents at rallies and in public spaces.

Police stood by and watched, and in many towns they enabled it.

Historians have long said that the violence is not a side effect of fascism.

Anything except the fanatics, the, the basically the, uh-

The Blackshirts

...

the Mussolini youth.

Okay.

So c- they get access to three of them.

They do not get the Blackshirt option.

Correct.

Mm-hmm

... was ac- was actually, uh, a Blackshirt.

What's a Blackshirt?

So a Blackshirt was basically a, a Nazi supporter.

Oh.

Whoa.

There were stabbings and pretty serious, you know, violence breaking out in the halls of the Japanese parliament building.

It sounds like the yakuza are f- are doing some of the-- well, performing some of the roles that, you know, the Black Shirts are playing in Europe, Mussolini and Hitler's sort of street fighters are doing in Europe at the same time.

Yes, that's absolutely right.

Uh, one of the biggest mistakes that Japan made in the first half of the, the 20th century was they were taking their lead from the West, and they fatally chose to take their lead from Italy and Germany.

But there was a Japanese equivalent to the, the squadristi, the, the Black Shirts of Mussolini, and it was led by a yakuza boss.

His name was Sakai Eizo.

He was originally a, a gambler and a, a labor boss from Osaka.

But by the 1920s, he'd set up this enormous organization, at least 100,000, uh, members.

Landless peasants demanded reform.

Into this chaos marched Benito Mussolini, a former socialist turned nationalist, with his Blackshirts and his rhetoric of strength, unity, and rebirth.

In 1922, his march on Rome brought him to power as prime minister.

Soon, Italy became the first fascist state, a model that would inspire others, including a young German veteran named Adolf Hitler.

A fiery speaker, he had once supported socialism, but by the end of the war, he reinvented himself as a prophet of national rebirth.

In 1919, he founded the Fasci di Combattimento, the Fascist movement, named after the fasces, the ancient Roman symbol of authority.

His followers, known as Blackshirts, were ex-soldiers, disillusioned youths, and thugs who marched through towns, breaking strikes, attacking socialists, and parading with military discipline.

To some, they looked like saviors.