As early as 1919, university students began to join the nascent movement of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, forming action squads made up of goliards in numerous cities.
The Party will thus pay attention to its organization and to the education of this youth which, according to Benito Mussolini, will have to shape "the future ruling class" of Italy.
He believes that the GUF "were in fact a veritable breeding ground for anti-fascist intellectual energies, masked and to a certain extent tolerated."
The direct testimony of the director Turi Vasile is also similar, according to which, thanks also to the "indulgence that was reserved at that time, for rhetoric or excess of security, to the youth", within the GUF they took advantage of this situation "to free us from any ideological conditioning".
According to the few historians who have dealt with it and other direct witnesses of the GUF (among the former, Mirella Serri and Simone Duranti, among the latter, Nino Tripodi, Davide Lajolo), the adherents of the GUF were, instead, fanatical fascists, often anti-Semites, supporters of the most extremist wing of the regime, criticizing its excessive moderation and the loss of the revolutionary thrust of the early days.