1st Congress of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento

According to official data, the congress was attended by representatives of 137 groups for a total of 40,385 members, figures that the historian Renzo De Felice considers "very inflated for obvious propaganda purposes".^[2] In fact, in the subsequent congress of Rome in 1921, the representation was retrospectively reduced to 56 bundles with about 17,000 members.^[3]

Among the most important speeches: Umberto Fabbri of Rome, who presented the program of the movement, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who developed a violently anti-clerical discourse tending to impose "the expulsion of the papacy" from Italy (a goal that Marinetti defined as svaticanization), Giacomo Francia, delegate of Trani who addressed the problems of southern Italy, and Michele Bianchi, who supported the opportunity to maintain freedom of action in the electoral alliances (the majority instead supported the need to join only blocks of leftist interventionists).^[1][2]

Mussolini developed a very optimistic discourse, declaring that he had no prejudices either royalist or republican, he overshadowed the threat of an insurrection but at the same time declared that D'Annunzio's occupation of Fiume would be resolved positively without the need for a revolutionary uprising. He called for the abolition of press censorship, for future general elections he identified a coalition of leftist interventionists as the only possible alliance. He attacked the Nitti government and covertly the monarchy that supported it.

At the conclusion of the intervention, Mussolini proposed four agendas which were approved:

• Adherence to the movement of economic liberation and autonomy of the working class
• Abolition of censorship
• Support for Gabriele D'Annunzio
• Electoral alliances