The assault on Alfredo Misuri was a politically directed attack on a Fascist dissident after he challenged Benito Mussolini’s government in Parliament. Its significance lies in the sequence: Misuri invoked constitutional liberties and proposed restoring institutional limits; Mussolini demanded that he be punished; and squadristi attacked him that night. The next day, deputies confirmed confidence in the government, showing how parliamentary procedure could continue alongside intimidation of its critics.

Background and party conflict

Misuri’s position inside Fascism had become precarious through a series of local and organizational shifts. After leading squads in Umbria and founding the Perugia Fasci di Combattimento in January 1921, he moved to the nationalists amid a rivalry with Bastianini, another leader of the Perugia squads. When the nationalists merged with the National Fascist Party, Misuri found himself inside the party again, but its executive council expelled him four days after the merger for his earlier dissidence.

He remained personally devoted to Mussolini, yet announced in advance that he intended to speak in Parliament in opposition to Fascism. Mussolini warned him against doing so and threatened arrest. Misuri answered by appealing to the constitutional statute as a protection between a deputy and the prime minister. The dispute thus concerned not only Misuri’s standing in the party, but whether parliamentary representation and constitutional rights could impose any limit on Fascist authority.

The immediate atmosphere was sharpened by a call for renewed violence. On the morning of May 29, the chamber was crowded with deputies and members of the public awaiting Misuri’s speech. Circulating among them was an issue of Cremona Nuova in which Roberto Farinacci urged another campaign of squadrist violence to complete the revolution and crush dissent. Its article was titled Second Wave. Misuri’s speech would become a direct test of whether such a threat could be answered from within the party’s own institutions.

Misuri’s speech and Mussolini’s response

In the silent chamber, Misuri argued that Fascism was degenerating. He warned that the party’s growth to half a million members had overwhelmed its original core and allowed corrupt newcomers to contaminate public administration. His proposed remedies were institutional: separate the state from the party, incorporate the militia into the army, restore Parliament’s democratic function, and broaden the government’s base to include other national parties.

The speech made a strong impression. Deputies hurried to congratulate Misuri, and several Fascists joined them, including the undersecretary of agriculture, Corgini. Their gestures of support took place in Mussolini’s presence, lending the episode the character of an open challenge rather than a private dispute. Cesare Rossi, leaving the press box, threatened Misuri with consequences that evening.

Mussolini was furious. In the corridors of Montecitorio, surrounded by his inner circle, he called the speech intolerable and insisted that the party punish Misuri immediately and mercilessly. Italo Balbo offered to handle the matter and said that Arconovaldo Bonaccorsi was in Rome. The transition from parliamentary dissent to a proposed punitive response was swift: the account links the leader’s demand to the squadristi who waited for Misuri after the sitting.

The attack in Rome

That evening, Amerigo Dumini sat in a Lancia K with two of Bonaccorsi’s Bolognese squadristi. The car had been found in a courtyard of the Palazzo del Viminale, then under construction. They followed Misuri through the streets around Montecitorio and stopped on Via Due Macelli, where they waited for him to emerge from a public urinal on Vicolo dello Sdrucciolo.

When Misuri came out, Bonaccorsi approached and struck him with a club. The other squadristi joined the attack, beating and kicking him. Dumini drew a knife and waved it as a patrol of carabinieri arrived; Bonaccorsi asserted his authority as a senior militia officer rather than submit to arrest. Misuri was left on the ground. The attackers’ actions, their prior pursuit, and the sequence following Mussolini’s demand present the assault as organized political intimidation, not an incidental street altercation.

Parliamentary aftermath and significance

On May 30, the Chamber voted on the provisional budget and confirmed confidence in the government by 238 votes to 83. The vote followed immediately after the assault, yet the account records no parliamentary reversal or suspension of that confidence. The contrast is central to the episode: Misuri had called for the state to stand apart from the party and for the militia to be brought under the army, but the attack demonstrated the force available to punish such proposals outside the chamber.

The assault also belongs to a wider setting in which the liberal state had already sought Fascist assistance against revolutionary movements. A confidential government circular had urged Fascist collaboration in maintaining public order, including violent repression, if Fascists accepted official command. In the countryside, meanwhile, newly formed Fascist sections could be organized chiefly to oppose socialists and supported by agrarian interests. These circumstances help explain how a movement could present itself as a force for order while relying on extra-parliamentary violence and local networks of support.

Misuri’s challenge briefly made the possibility of internal opposition visible: fellow deputies, including Fascists, congratulated him, and his proposals named clear boundaries between party, state, militia, and Parliament. The assault answered that challenge through force; the confidence vote then registered the government’s continued parliamentary support. The episode therefore exposes the tension between constitutional language and the coercive practices used to discipline dissent within Fascism.