ABSTRACT
When, on 23 March 1919 in Milan, around 100 people attended a meeting at which Benito Mussolini officially launched fascism, those present could not have imagined that they were coining what would become one of the twentieth century’s most used concepts.1 Yet it is here that we must begin, as part of the ideological and political character of the founding group gave identifying traits to a ‘generic fascism’ that appeared throughout Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. The ‘revolutionary’, ‘anti-capitalist’ and radical nationalist discourse; the ‘militarized party’, the anti-communism and the radical critique of liberal democracy; the electoral tactics and the political violence – all of these became regular features of fascism, irrespective of its national variations.2
