ABSTRACT
Fascism eventually came to power because the Italian state as embodied in the old liberal order was unable to capitalize on the victory and to become the unimpeachable custodian of the values held so passionately by those who can loosely be called the Vittorio Veneters. Mussolini's tiny Fasci di Combattimento languished for much of the biennio rosso. Much of the movement was in practice nothing at all to do with him, except that he was a prominent Vittorio Veneter. The Genoese fascios founding document merely stated that it stood for: defence of the last National war to the bitter end, for the exploitation of the victory, for the resistance and opposition to the theoretical and practical degeneration of politicizing socialism. This was the basic programme of the Vittorio Veneters and even its anti-socialism was couched in terms not of socialists representing a threat to the established order but that they had supposedly betrayed the Italian war effort.
