I don’t give a damn!

“I don’t give a damn!” is a defiant expression that links the unruly atmosphere of Fiume to the culture of the fascist squads. It functions as more than a declaration of personal indifference: the book presents it as a learned response to constraint, one that energizes rebellion but becomes difficult to reconcile with the demand for discipline.

A slogan in Fiume

During Benito Mussolini’s first visit to Fiume, the city’s walls bear the graffiti “I don’t give a damn!” The phrase appears amid a public culture of military pageantry, Arditi vows, and unconventional dress. In that setting it belongs to a broader atmosphere of revolt against ordinary restraints, as the city draws in young people shaped by the war and resistant to a simple return to established routines.

The slogan’s surroundings matter. Fiume is presented as a place charged with claims of youth and renewal, set against the exhausted political order associated with the postwar settlement. Gabriele D’Annunzio’s vision of Fiume as a new beginning gives the city an expansive symbolic role; the graffiti condenses that mood into a blunt refusal rather than a program or argument.

Learned by the squads

The expression returns as a practiced answer within the fascist squads. Italo Balbo had taught his men to answer “I don’t give a damn,” to celebrate rebellion, and to live by the logic of gang warfare. The phrase is therefore not merely spontaneous bravado: in the account, it is part of a political style that has been cultivated and passed on.

That training creates a problem when Balbo later tries to organize and normalize the movement’s militia. He calls on fascists to “stride and act,” but the men he is attempting to direct have been taught to reject restraint. With inadequate equipment and discipline, and leaders increasingly in conflict with one another, the movement cannot readily turn its language of defiance into an orderly chain of command. The slogan’s force is also its liability: it releases action from limits that a centralized organization needs to impose.

Defiance and the promise of order

The phrase sits within a wider political language that opposes the old order and celebrates a new national beginning. The book describes returning veterans as a mass that would overrun the old political class, while later fascist rhetoric promises to replace regional divisions with a single Italian identity. The movement thus draws on the energy of refusal even as it claims the authority to unify and direct the people.

This tension sharpens around the image of the “new man,” opposed to the “antediluvians” and associated with rebirth after decline. At a later commemorative gathering, Mussolini contrasts the movement’s earlier small groups with the legions it has become, presenting its volunteers as a body ready for sacrifice and national expansion. In this changed register, the earlier defiance has not simply vanished; it has been absorbed into a collective identity that asks for commitment and obedience. The expression consequently marks both the movement’s insurgent beginnings and the difficulty of converting rebellion into rule.