#government + #history

So to start matters, Franklin was writing not as a subject being asked to cede his liberty to government, but in his capacity as a legislator being asked to renounce his power to tax lands notionally under his jurisdiction. In other words, the “essential liberty” to which Franklin referred was thus not what we would think of today as civil liberties but, rather, the right of self-governance of a legislature in the interests of collective security. What's more the “purchase [of] a little temporary safety” of which Franklin complains was not the ceding of power to a government Leviathan in exchange for some promise of protection from external threat; for in Franklin’s letter, the word “purchase” does not appear to have been a metaphor. The governor was accusing the Assembly of stalling on appropriating money for frontier defense by insisting on including the Penn lands in its taxes--and thus triggering his intervention. And the Penn family later offered cash to fund defense of the frontier--as long as the Assembly would acknowledge that it lacked the power to tax the family’s lands. Franklin was thus complaining of the choice facing the legislature between being able to make funds available for frontier defense and maintaining its right of self-governance--and he was criticizing the governor for suggesting it should be willing to give up the latter to ensure the former.

In short, Franklin was not describing some tension between government power and individual liberty. He was describing, rather, effective self-government in the service of security as the very liberty it would be contemptible to trade. Notwithstanding the way the quotation has come down to us, Franklin saw the liberty and security interests of Pennsylvanians as aligned.

In March 1919, Benito Mussolini founded the first Italian Fasces of Combat (FIC) at the beginning of the so-called Red Biennium, a two-year long social conflict between the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the liberal and conservative ruling class. Mussolini's Fascists suffered a defeat in the election of November 1919, winning no seats in the Italian parliament.

During the "two red years", there were numerous strikes, protests against rises in the cost of living, occupations of factories and land by industrial workers or agricultural laborers, and other types of clashes between socialists on one side and landowners and business owners on the other side.

Local elites felt themselves vulnerable and established an alliance with the small Fascist movement, which contained many veterans of World War I and had a reputation for violence, in the hope of using Fascist paramilitary squads to destroy socialist organizations.

Since 1919, Fascist militias, known as squadristi or "Blackshirts" due to their uniforms, had frequently attacked socialist politicians and militants. In August 1920, the Blackshirt militia was used to break the general strike which originated at the Alfa Romeo factory in Milan

Local elections in 1920 were won by the socialists in many towns, cities and villages across Italy, and in response Fascist militias attacked union organizers and municipal administrators, making it difficult for local governments to function.

A local deputy from the town of Budrio sent a telegram to the prime minister in October 1921 to report that the Fascists had effectively taken over, that "unions and socialist clubs [were] ordered to dissolve themselves within 48 hours or face physical destruction" and that the "life of the town is paralysed, authorities impotent".

within the National Blocs of Giovanni Giolitti, an anti-socialist coalition of liberals, conservatives and fascists. The Fascists won 35 seats and Mussolini was elected in the Parliament for the first time.

After a few weeks, Mussolini withdrew his support for Giolitti and his Italian Liberal Party (Partito Liberale Italiano, PLI) and attempted to work out a temporary truce with the Socialists by signing the so-called "Pact of Pacification" in the summer of 1921.

the Pact with the Socialists was nullified during the Third Fascist Congress on 7–10 November 1921, during which Mussolini promoted a nationalist program and renamed his movement National Fascist Party (PNF), which enrolled 320,000 members by late 1921.

In August 1922, an anti-fascist general strike was organized throughout the country by the socialists. Mussolini declared that the Fascists would suppress the strike themselves if the government did not immediately intervene to stop it, which enabled him to position the Fascist Party as a defender of law and order.[13] On 2 August, in Ancona, Fascist squads moved in from the countryside and razed all buildings occupied by socialists.[13] This was then repeated in Genoa and other cities.[13]

Then, with the support of local business owners, they took over local government and expelled the elected socialist administration from the town hall

The Italian national government in Rome did nothing to react to these developments, and its inaction prompted Mussolini to plan a march on Rome.[13] From their new power base in Milan, the Fascists gathered the financial support of large companies who were determined to fight against "strikes, bolshevism and nationalization".

Also a few days before the march, Mussolini consulted with the U.S. Ambassador Richard Washburn Child about whether the U.S. government would object to Fascist participation in a future Italian government and Child gave him American support.

Squadrismo (Italian: [skwaˈdrizmo]) was the movement of squadre d'azione (English: action squads), the fascist militias that were organised outside the authority of the Italian state and led by local leaders called ras (a noble Ethiopian title). The militia originally consisted of farmers and middle-class people, who created their own defence from revolutionary socialists. Squadrismo became an important asset for the rise of the National Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini, and systematically used violence to eliminate any political parties that were opposed to Italian fascism.

The violence was not only an instrument in politics but also a vital component of squadrismo identity, which made it difficult for the movement to be tamed. That was shown in the various attempts by Mussolini to control squadrismo violence with the Pact of Pacification and later the Consolidated Public Safety Act. Squadrismo, which ultimately became the Blackshirts, served as a source of inspiration for Adolf Hitler's Sturmabteilung.

The Blackshirts, formally established as the Squadrismo in 1919, comprised numerous disgruntled demobilized soldiers. It was given the task of leading fights against their bitter enemies—the Socialists.