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A historian tabulated 16 rival groups who, earlier in 1919, had been using the word fascio to describe themselves. Ranging from anarchists to restless bourgeois university students, these ‘fascists’ had nothing in common except their name.

— R.J.B. Bosworth Mussolini (2002)

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More quotes by R.J.B. Bosworth

Mussolini exhibited a cynical skill at rewarding his enemies and rebuking his friends.

Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945 (2005)

Whatever else he was, Mussolini was no Hitler impelled by a credo to act in one way and one way only.

Mussolini (2002)

In 1919 a nationalist general concluded bitterly that, when confronted by the ‘test of war’, Italy had demonstrated that ‘no one governed it.’

Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945 (2005)

In 1914, by almost every index, Italy was the least of the great powers. Nor, despite huffing and puffing about imperial conquest and racial prowess, would that ranking be much altered during the Fascist years.

Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945 (2005)

Whereas once the movement had flirted with feminism, now Mussolini required that female organizations focus on charity, ‘to the exclusion of any political action which must be left exclusively to the party.

Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945 (2005)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: R.J.B. Bosworth (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.