Mussolini, Sacco-Vanzetti, and the Anarchists: The ... - Libcom

Mussolini, Sacco-Vanzetti, and the Anarchists 61
Political calculation and diplomatic tact had caused Mussolini to vary the
intensity of his public support for Sacco and Vanzetti. Between 1920 and
1922, he saw their plight as a useful weapon in his struggle against the
socialists and the communists, and when he saw the potential for making them
a nationalist symbol, he appropriated their cause. After coming into office, he
believed that support for Sacco and Vanzetti would help to bind Italian-
American loyalties to the Fascist regime, which claimed to act as the protector
of Italian emigrants abroad.' 12 Yet once in power, Mussolini felt unable to act
as decisively as he wished because the case could potentially hinder efforts to
establish good relations with the United States and hurt chances for American
loans and a more favorable immigration policy. 13 A more strident approach,
he feared, would elicit the ire of U.S. authorities, including Governor Fuller,
whose presidential aspirations had come to his attention." 14 Even the
anarchists recognized his delicate position,"15 and Mussolini himself was
embittered by his dilemma."16
But raison d'etat alone does not explain why Mussolini, even while
cracking down on the anarchists at home, strained his ideological credibility
as a Fascist and put his prestige at risk by making personal appeals on behalf
of Sacco and Vanzetti. The evidence also suggests that a lingering, if perverse,
nostalgia for what he identified as his own youthful anarchist impulses
remained imbedded in his psyche. His propensity for violence and direct
action, along with his inclination to see himself as a rebel who lived in
defiance of bourgeois morality, led him to feel a spiritual kinship with the anarchists.l17
The anti-Fascist writer Giuseppe A. Borgese explained Mussolini
this way: "He said. . . that every anarchist is a dictator who failed. His road
his closely watched apartment in Rome, he wrote to a friend, "I was convinced that
Sacco and Vanzetti, if not freed, would at least not be killed; the blow has struck me
terribly." See Malatesta to Virgilia D'Andrea, September 1927, in Errico Malatesta,
Epistolario (n. 85 above), p. 259.
112 De Felice, "Alcuni temi per la storia dell'emigrazione italiana" (n. 13 above),
p.7.
113 Burton (n. 8 above), p. 68.
"14 When the journalist Edward H. Jones interviewed Mussolini in 1928, Mussolini
asked him, "Do you think that Fuller will be the next president of the United States?"
See Creighton Hill, "Alvan T. Fuller-Failure," Lantern (July-August 1928), pp. 7-8;
and "Cio che narra un americano che visit6 Mussolini per il caso Sacco e Vanzetti,"
In Progresso Italo-Americano (August 1, 1928).
115 Schiavina (n. 9 above), p. 108.
116 "I am no longer," Mussolini exclaimed in 1934, "the head of government who,
between 1925 and 1927, had to limit himself to asking for the salvation of Sacco and
Vanzetti. I no longer have American creditors who impose their will. Now I have my
hands free." De Begnac, Taccuini (n. 3 above), p. 376.
117
Gentile, Le origini dell'ideologia fascista (n. 25 above), pp. 2-6, 133, 136.