Marcela Salafia

Margherita Sarfatti is presented as both a personal counsellor to Benito Mussolini and an editor at the center of his political publishing project. The evidence gives her a brief but consequential presence: she steadies him in a moment of private uncertainty and is entrusted with the direction of Gerarchia, the official fascist journal.

Counsel at a Moment of Success

After Mussolini’s election, he regards his new elegant office with mistrust and rancor. Sarfatti’s voice answers that hesitation with the counsel, “We must be men, youth sows, manhood reaps.” Her words frame success as a harvest arriving after years of effort, while the surrounding account stresses Mussolini’s urgency: he is approaching forty and believes that the time to reap and win is short. Sarfatti thus appears as a source of encouragement at the point when his political ascent is becoming personal triumph.

Editorial Role and Political Outlook

At the beginning of 1922, Mussolini founded Gerarchia, the official fascist journal, as a journal of political thought and appointed Sarfatti editor-in-chief. The appointment placed her in a position of responsibility within the publication, though the account identifies Mussolini, not Sarfatti, as the author of its inaugural article, “Which Way is the World Headed?” In it, he declared that the world was moving to the right and portrayed democratic exuberance as exhausted. Sarfatti’s editorial role therefore connects her to the journal’s public articulation of that political outlook, while the evidence does not specify her own contribution to the article or her independent views.