The trap of ’23. Thus liberals and the left gave the government to Mussolini

Acerbo’s electoral law was born in a kind of bicameral, representative of all political forces. It was a suicide. The elections of ’24 were the last, then the dictatorship. Who had made him do it? The truth is that many thought they could tame the fascists: they were wrong

“It was we who gave the victory to fascism”: so writes the socialist leader Filippo Turati to his partner Anna Kuliscioff in commenting on the outcome of the discussions and votes in the summer of 1923 that led to the approval of the new electoral law. When you say “we” you obviously mean the left, your socialist party split into a hundred segments even before the communist split, but also, indeed above all, the center, the liberals, the Catholics.