“We are an army, not a swarm”

“We are an army, not a swarm” names a political ideal of cohesion: collective action should be organized, directed, and answerable to command rather than left to an uncontrolled crowd. The book repeatedly sets that ideal against scenes in which Fascist power depends on spontaneous mobilization, local patronage, and violence, showing that the distinction between disciplined force and a violent multitude is both a claim to authority and a practical problem.

Discipline and the crowd

The phrase’s contrast is illuminated by the demonstration in Milan on April 15, 1919. Thousands of socialist marchers gathered at the arena; in the early afternoon, several thousand broke away without a prior plan and headed toward the cathedral square. There, opposing groups assembled on either side of a cordon of Carabinieri. Women led the socialist column with a portrait of Lenin and a red flag, while the smaller counter-demonstration included officers, Arditi, and Futurists. When the cordon opened, the encounter escalated within about a minute: stones and clubs came from the socialist side, and the counter-demonstrators fired first into the air and then at the marchers. The scene makes a political distinction visible in bodies and formations, but it also shows how quickly a gathering can turn into an armed confrontation.

A different kind of assembly appears at a Fascist gathering in Milan. A flare used in wartime to illuminate no man’s land arced above the piazza and served as the signal for the meeting to begin. Ferruccio Vecchi then spoke to the crowd in the language of combat and collective action. The flare, borrowed from the battlefield, gave the gathering a cue and a shared focus; the scene presents mobilization as something staged and directed, even as its emotional force depended on the crowd’s response.

Organization, authority, and resources

In July 1919, Benito Mussolini worked to make the Fascist groups useful to the institutions whose authority they challenged. Michele Bianchi, acting on Mussolini’s instructions, had reached an agreement with Milan’s prefect to make the groups available for maintaining public order. A confidential government circular urged Fascist collaboration in suppressing revolutionary attempts, including by force, provided the groups accepted command by the authorities. The arrangement gave the movement an opening into state-backed action, while making discipline a condition of its cooperation.

The aftermath of the massacre described in the province of Bologna shows how violence also generated new organization beyond the Fascist movement. After eight people were killed and about thirty injured, the Chamber of Labor called a three-day general strike. Local farmers, manufacturers, merchants, professionals, public employees, and homeowners then organized the Bolognese Association of Social Defense, whose delegation told Prime Minister Nitti that it was prepared to replace the state in the name of self-defense. The sequence shows how the perceived failure of public authority could produce rival claims to organized force.

In Ferrara, formal organization expanded faster than ideological unity. After the Castello Estense massacre, many new sections appeared in the province within a month. An inspector sent by Mussolini reported that they lacked political and ideological content and existed chiefly to oppose the socialists. Agrarian supporters supplied material assistance; leading landowners joined as supporting members and registered their children as squad members, while 20,000 lire had entered the Fascist coffers by December 20. The local organization could present itself as a disciplined body, but its expansion rested on alliances with economic interests and on a common enemy more than on a settled program.

The strain between principle and practice

The movement’s effort to appear politically coherent met explicit resistance. In April 1921, Corriere della Sera argued that liberals could not remain a credible party if they became morally entangled with people who affirmed and practiced violence as a principle of social struggle. La Stampa likewise warned liberals against joining a bloc with the Fascists. These objections expose the stakes of the phrase’s distinction: organized force might claim to serve public order, but its opponents regarded the use of violence as incompatible with legitimate political association.

In October 1922, Mussolini’s dealings with Lombard industrialists showed another means by which command and resources could be brought together. While the Fascist uprising was under way, he spoke to the delegation in a measured manner about the exchange rate, government bonds, and Italy’s credit abroad. After the industrialists left, the Banking Association deposited two million lire into the account of Giovanni Marinelli, administrator of the National Fascist Party. The episode places an image of controlled political leadership beside a substantial transfer of funds: the movement’s capacity to act as an organized force depended not only on its militants but also on relationships with powerful supporters.

The hierarchy became still more consequential in the clandestine apparatus around Giacomo Matteotti’s case. Giovanni Marinelli protected his position as head of the Cheka, a role assigned by Mussolini and shared with Cesare Rossi. After Matteotti’s parliamentary speech, Mussolini summoned Marinelli for private meetings on June 1 and again on June 2, 1924. The episode associates command not only with public discipline but with a secret organization whose leadership was closely connected to the government. The ideal of an army thus carried an unresolved question: what kind of actions did the chain of command organize, and who could hold it accountable?

Ritual unity and the limits of the image

The book also connects collective discipline with political ritual. Five days before the Fascist gathering in Rome described in the narrative, the Unknown Soldier was buried in a ceremony that drew cheering crowds along the route of a special train. The chosen body represented the war dead collectively, and the marble coffin became an altar around which the nation could assemble. Fascist leaders later knelt before the tomb for more than half an hour. This solemn, synchronized gesture offered a powerful image of a unified political community, one in which shared remembrance could bind participants together.

That unity did not eliminate disorder or competing loyalties. While the party’s founders prayed at the tomb, squadristi from the North, having escaped the command of political leaders, provoked brawls in Rome’s popular districts. The contrast is direct: ritual discipline at the center coexisted with violence beyond its control. The phrase’s demand for an army rather than a swarm therefore reads less as a description of an achieved condition than as a standard the movement repeatedly invoked and struggled to meet.

After Matteotti’s body was returned to the earth for a second time, on August 21, 1924, his funeral took place in Fratta Polesine at the wishes of his wife, Velia. Crowds of peasants, laborers, and railway workers gathered along the route and at the funeral, calling for vengeance, justice, and liberty. The mass assembly carried its own shared symbols and demands, but it was not a Fascist formation under Fascist command. Set against the movement’s ceremonies and organizations, the funeral underscores that collective action could create forms of solidarity beyond the political order seeking to discipline it.