Whoever is not with us is against us

“Whoever is not with us is against us” is a political expression that reduces disagreement to a choice between allegiance and enmity. In the book, its force lies not only in the exclusion it demands but in its reversal: a rule invoked to bind others eventually becomes a test of Benito Mussolini himself. The phrase moves from managing dissent within the Fascist movement to a warning that the movement’s own uncompromising logic may be used against its leader.

Form and Meaning

The expression makes no allowance for neutrality, hesitation, or a position between the two sides. Its grammar is bluntly categorical: “Whoever is not with us is against us.” Rather than answer an opponent’s particular objection, it defines the terms in which any objection will be heard. Once agreement is the sole marker of belonging, a disagreement ceases to be a difference within the political camp and becomes evidence of hostility to it.

The formulation’s compactness helps it work as more than an argument. It can be repeated as a rule, carried from one dispute to another, and applied without having to establish what an opponent has actually done. The book sets the maxim beside a wider politics of alignment. In its account of returning veterans and a Europe without the old political generation, the future is divided between “those who were and those who will be”; later, the language of Fascist renewal imagines a nation made unified and a multitude moving toward the state. Against that background, the expression turns political belonging into a stark division between inside and outside, not an open-ended negotiation over policy.

Application to Fascist Dissent

One of the phrase’s early appearances comes amid Benito Mussolini’s concern about dissent within Fascism. Cesare Forni, a prominent local Fascist leader, threatened to present an autonomous electoral list in the Mortara district. His objections belonged to a wider complaint about a revolution allegedly betrayed by profiteers in Rome and an appeal to the movement’s original purity. The account also notes a personal antagonism between Forni and Francesco Giunta, but presents the threatened electoral break as a political problem with potentially broader consequences for provincial and Milanese Fascism.

Cesare Rossi summoned Forni to Rome in an effort to persuade him to withdraw. The proposed inducement was a post supervising colonial troops in Somalia; Forni refused. In this setting, Mussolini repeatedly addressed Rossi with the maxim. Its immediate function was to make the dispute legible as a test of loyalty rather than as a conflict over the movement’s direction. The demand that members choose sides answered the threat of an autonomous list by making independence itself appear equivalent to opposition. The later assessment that a secessionist movement could threaten Fascist power in Milan and the provinces gives the slogan a practical context: it accompanied a struggle over who could organize and speak for Fascism.

From Maxim to Public Formula

The expression then appears in a more explicit public formulation. In a passage dated March 15, 1924, Benito Mussolini declares: “One must be either for or against. Either fascism or antifascism. Whoever is not with us is against us.” The sequence progressively narrows the available positions. It begins with a general opposition, names Fascism and antifascism as its only alternatives, and closes with the compact maxim. The line thus does not simply distinguish supporters from opponents; it presents that distinction as exhaustive.

The book also places the formulation beside a speech commemorating the foundation of the Fasci di Combattimento, delivered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on March 24, 1924. In this public setting, the language of the slogan belongs to a politics that seeks not merely to win a disagreement but to define the field on which political disagreement can occur. Its appeal is forceful because it is easy to remember and repeat; its consequence is that any independent position risks being redescribed as an enemy position. The phrase’s apparent simplicity therefore carries a demanding political claim: unity is not a condition to be achieved through debate but a boundary that dissenters are made to cross.

The Slogan Turned Back

By the end of the year, the same formula returns with a changed target. The account describes Benito Mussolini’s office as orderly while newspapers and political pressure register disorder outside it. Liberal papers demand his resignation, socialist papers attack him, and extremist Fascists threaten him. Roberto Farinacci calls for the truncheon to be kept close at hand, while Curzio Malaparte invokes the maxim in his journal, La conquista dello Stato, against the man who coined it. Malaparte’s argument is that the rule also applies to Benito Mussolini: even he must answer to the uncompromising Fascism he has proclaimed.

That reversal is the expression’s decisive development. The provincial Fascists, as represented in the account, insist that the revolution continue despite compromise and are prepared to continue it without Benito Mussolini. On the last day of the year, thirty-three militia consuls arrive separately and gather in small groups at Galleria Colonna, opposite Palazzo Chigi. They enter his office in a formation around his desk, led by Enzo Galbiati and Aldo Tarabella. Their arrival gives the slogan’s inward turn a concrete political setting: a movement organized around absolute alignment can demand alignment from its own leader.

The expression therefore binds and threatens at once. Initially it helps cast an electoral challenge as disloyalty; later, its own logic supplies a standard by which the leader can be condemned for failing the movement. Its repetition links public declarations, local disputes, and pressure from within Fascism. What begins as a demand that no one stand apart ends as a reminder that the speaker, too, may be judged by the division he has made authoritative.