Mussolini in camicia [Mussolini in a Nightshirt]. New York: Edizioni Libertarie, 1927.
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Armando Borghi’s unflattering biography of Mussolini, Mussolini in camicia, was too dangerous (to author, publisher or printer) to be released in Italy: soon after Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922, publishing a work criticizing him or the Fascist Party became impossible. Simply for speaking in the Italian Parliament in June 1924 against fraud (and violence) employed by Mussolini in the recent election, United Socialist Party chief Giacomo Matteotti was within days thereafter murdered by the fascists, a politically explosive development that became a rallying cry of anti-fascists for many years. In 1925, measures that gave the government powers to gag the press were passed. Emergency laws in 1926 suppressed every political party and every newspaper other than those of the fascists.
It was in that context that anarcho-syndicalist Borghi arrived in the U.S. in or about November 1926, where he was joined by his lover, Virgilia D’Andrea (see her works in the collection).
Shortly thereafter, in 1927 Borghi published Mussolini in camicia in Italian in the only safe place to do so at the time, New York, where it would also gain traction. In fact, this work became internationally popular: it was translated into French and published in Paris (1932), in Amsterdam in Dutch (1933), and then translated into English from the French edition, not the Italian original, and published in London (1935). Mussolini in camicia was again published in America, but in English, in 1938 using the same British translation, by the Freie Arbeiter Stimme (a Yiddish anarchist newspaper in New York) and was not published in Italy until 1947, not long after the war’s end and Mussolini’s demise.
All of these editions are in the collection, including 1947 and 1961 editions published in Italy, the latter attesting to the continuing importance of Borghi's work years after the war's end.
In Italy, Borghi ranked second only to the legendary Errico Malatesta as its most important anarchist, so that when he arrived in the U.S., Borghi expected to be the foremost Italian anarchist there (Galleani having been deported some years before, in 1919). However, Carlo Tresca, who as a fellow “organization” anarchist might otherwise have been his natural ally, was in the way, and Borghi surprisingly thus aligned himself with the anti-organizational anarchist Galleanisti and their L’Adunata dei Refrattari, a move that he eventually came to regret. Like the Galleanisti, Borghi attacked Tresca not only on ideological grounds but also on personal ones.
When it first appeared in New York, in its original Italian, Mussolini in camicia was published and promoted by three anarchist clubs, Gruppo Anarchico di South Brooklyn, Circolo Volontà, and Circolo Operaio di Cultura Sociale. Such clubs existed to advance culture, knowledge and a working-class consciousness among Italian immigrants, and formed the intellectual nucleus of the movement, as well as being centers for education, recruitment and propaganda. See Marcella Bencivenni, Italian Immigrant Radical Culture, 52-54.The circoli also provided access to literature through their own “librerie rosse,” i.e., red bookstores, whose works are well represented in the collection.
In this work, Borghi traces Mussolini’s rise in his native Romagna, whence Borghi also hailed.
Describing Mussolini’s transformation from young socialist, Borghi explains in Mussolini in camicia why Mussolini disowned socialism, how he allied himself with military politics, and answers the question of whether he saved Italy from revolution. “Should he be classed among the heroes or the scoundrels, the charlatans or the idealists . . . ?”
It’s clear where Borghi came out on those questions, which explains why the work could not be published in Italy while Mussolini was in power.
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