Second Wave

Second Wave names the threatened escalation of Fascist violence and, as the book’s recurring image, the expectation that a first victory will be followed by a more thorough assault on dissent. It appears first as the title of Roberto Farinacci’s call for renewed squad violence, then as a danger anticipated in Parliament and invoked again during the crisis following Giacomo Matteotti’s murder. The phrase makes violence sound like an approaching historical force; the episodes attached to it show political actors using that expectation to intimidate opponents, discipline institutions, and present coercion as the route to national renewal.

Origins in a politics of renewal

The expression took shape within a wider postwar story of decline and rebirth. In the book’s opening account, Europe is a stage emptied by mass death, while millions of returning veterans press against the old political order. The anticipated future is divided between those who belonged to the past and those who will inherit what follows. In this atmosphere, the possibility of renewed conflict is not treated as an exception to peace but as something still on the agenda. Second Wave later gives that expectation a more immediate political form: not simply another conflict, but an anticipated intensification of Fascist action against those who resist it.

The book places this language beside the competing promise of a new beginning. In his address to the legionnaires at Fiume, Gabriele D’Annunzio casts 1919 as a year of passion rather than peace negotiations, and Fiume as a place of youth, light, life, and a future carried forward by the dead and the not-yet-born. The contrast matters: the language of renewal could make rupture seem creative and redemptive, while Second Wave gives that same forward motion a threatening political edge. By 1922, Benito Mussolini’s program for the National Fascist Party joins national unification and imperial ambition to an explicit claim that violence has buried earlier political methods. The imagery of rebirth therefore accompanies, rather than displaces, coercion.

From headline to parliamentary warning

The phrase becomes explicit on May 29, when the Chamber of Deputies gathers to hear Alfredo Misuri criticize Fascism from within its own ranks. The day’s edition of a newspaper circulates among the benches with Farinacci’s argument that another campaign of squad violence is needed to complete the revolution and crush dissent. Its headline is Second Wave. The occasion gives the phrase a concrete political function: it is not merely an image of future upheaval, but a public threat made as a deputy prepares to challenge the movement’s direction.

Misuri’s speech calls for a separation between party and state, the incorporation of the militia into the army, the restoration of Parliament’s democratic role, and a broader government base. Its reception is striking: deputies, including several Fascists, congratulate him, even as Mussolini watches from the government benches. The scene places a possible alternative beside the threat. Parliament can still register opposition, but the headline circulating there advertises the violence that might follow if that opposition becomes effective.

The warning soon becomes a condition of parliamentary debate over the electoral law. In July 1923, deputies consider Giacomo Acerbo’s proposal to give two-thirds of the seats to the list with a relative majority. The book presents the vote as a possible last barrier: if Parliament does not reject the measure, the next election could be the last. Outside the chamber, Fascist leaders threaten another wave of violence in the event of defeat; inside, deputies watch black-shirted squad members in the galleries. The expression turns an electoral decision into a test conducted under intimidation, making the threatened consequences part of the political calculation itself.

Opposition, documentation, and institutional strain

Second Wave also names a danger that Giacomo Matteotti believes his own political allies are failing to recognize. He argues that the March on Rome marked the beginning of dictatorship, not the end of conflict, while socialists inclined toward collaboration hope that Mussolini’s past and apparent normalization may yield gains for workers. As Farinacci invokes the second wave openly, Matteotti treats it not as remote possibility but as a development already overtaking those who expect catastrophe only in the future.

For months, Matteotti assembles a record of Fascist violence for a book intended for publication at the end of the year. His tally reaches 42 killings, 1,112 cases of clubbing, beating, and injury, 184 destructions of buildings and homes, and 24 newspaper fires. Yet this work isolates him further: even Filippo Turati urges him to abandon the project, accusing him of hostility toward more moderate colleagues. The sequence gives the looming wave an evidentiary counterpoint. Against the broad, almost natural image of an approaching surge, Matteotti sets a painstaking account of distinct acts; the growing record also exposes how little consensus there is among his political allies about confronting them.

The government’s efforts to contain the armed movement further reveal the weakness of ordinary state authority. In December, Prime Minister Bonomi issues a circular restricting the use of clubs and treating Fascist paramilitary groups as illegal formations. Michele Bianchi responds by declaring party sections and combat squads inseparable, and the directive is published in Mussolini’s newspaper. The state does not arrest those who openly claim to have formed an armed militia; Bonomi instead issues another circular complaining that his public-order orders have not been obeyed. In this context, the threatened wave is backed by an organization able to challenge state restrictions and by institutions unable, or unwilling, to enforce them.

Revival during the Matteotti crisis

After Matteotti’s abduction and murder, the phrase returns as a possibility with immediate stakes. On June 19, 1924, Leandro Arpinati has assembled thousands of squad members despite being bedridden after a car accident; three days later, he brings 50,000 blackshirts from across Emilia into the streets. Mussolini also directs prefects in provincial capitals to organize rallies in support of the government. These actions do not by themselves establish that one centrally directed campaign called the Second Wave has begun. They do show the renewed mobilization of Fascist force while the murder investigation advances and the government faces mounting opposition.

The threat becomes explicit again in Mussolini’s public language. At a meeting of coal miners on August 31, he dismisses socialist protest as impotent and warns of what would happen if opponents moved from words to action. A few days later, squad members attack Piero Gobetti in Turin; demonstrations and destruction recur elsewhere, and the escalation culminates in the killing of Fascist unionist Armando Casalini on a Rome tram. From Cremona, Farinacci calls for a still harsher response to the opposition, while Fascist newspapers demand internment for leaders of the Aventine boycott and provincial squad members appeal to Mussolini to release them to act. The book describes the second wave as seeming inevitable, incipient, and to some a historical necessity, but its account also shows the phrase functioning as a demand: militants press for permission, while political violence and counter-violence make the demand appear more plausible.

The meaning of the recurring image

The book preserves a tension between the image’s apparent inevitability and the political choices made in its name. Fascist rhetoric presents violence as the force that will restore order, unify the nation, and usher in a new era. Yet the evidence is specific and contingent: threats are issued around parliamentary votes; efforts to restrict armed groups go unenforced; rallies are organized to support a government under pressure; and attacks resume amid an escalating political crisis. Second Wave makes these actions sound like an impersonal tide, but the narrative repeatedly identifies the people, institutions, and decisions that give the threat its power.

Its recurrence also sharpens the contrast between promised national rebirth and the actual narrowing of political life. The language of youth, resurrection, and expansion accompanies a movement that treats dissent as something to crush and presents armed force as a means of completing its revolution. By the autumn of 1924, Fascism is besieged by public repudiation, political defections, and an advancing judicial investigation; the expected wave remains a threat, not a settled outcome. As an expression, Second Wave captures both the regime’s capacity to summon violence and the instability of a political order that must repeatedly threaten escalation to maintain control.