DOVEVA MORIRE? L'ATTENTATO DI ZANIBONI A MUSSOLINI: FRA VERITà E MENZOGNE

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the political weakness of the socialist party in the face of fascism, its compliance and inability to organize a real opposition, left to individual initiative, easy to control and exploit. To this end, we focus on Zaniboni's attack on Mussolini, an isolated and desperate gesture that highlighted the lack of a true opposition policy. The present essay then analyzes both the pacification pact of 1921 signed by fascists and socialists and the genesis of the attack and its organization are analyzed. This attack was the first of four, all in 1926. From the beginning it appeared so anomalous that the international press spoke of a farce; in fact it was soon learned that the security services knew everything, indeed they had partly facilitated it. Mussolini was very skilled in managing the attack, useful both to demonstrate the need for restrictive measures, and to demonstrate the political irrelevance of the opposition, which even reached terrorism: the same night the unitary socialist party and the invisible Masonic Lodges were dissolved. to Mussolini. In the conclusions, thanks to the documents recovered in the state archive, the figure of the bomber is resized: not a man who lives his detention with pride, without the shadow of a doubt or an afterthought, but a man left alone, grateful to the Duce for the financial help given to his daughter, to make her follow her studies. For this reason he said he was ready to “make himself available”.