Diffused poverty, economic fractures and a social and moral political upheaval generated by the mobilisation of the war contributed to the unstable climate proceeding the armistice.
[4] In that context emerged the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, founded 23 March 1919 by Benito Mussolini during a meeting in the San Sepolcro Square, in Milan.
[5] Squadrismo was a movement that expanded instantly afterward,[6] and by spring 1920, the fascists installed a political militia of squadre in various parts of Northern Italy, mostly in Trieste.
The movement grew exponentially from 1920 onwards with the Fasci di Combattimento, which launched assaults in Northern Italy in rural areas and contributed to the suppression of all other political and trade union organisations.
As a result of attempts to discipline them, Mussolini decided to use their violence to his advantage by converting the movement into an organised party[15] by a national congress, which met in Rome from 7 to 10 November 1921.
King Victor Emmanuel III proceeded to appoint Mussolini to lead the new administration, but that did not stop squadrismo violence, and thousands of people in black shirts participated in squadrista militancy from 1920 to 1922.
[22] There were secret anti-Mussolini meetings that fixated on "Mussolini's lingering leftist loyalties",[23] which included his leadership of the Italian Socialist Party (1912–1914) and his admiration for Vladimir Lenin.
[24] The historian Richard Pipes stated that during the turbulent times of infighting, "Mussolini would have been glad as late as 1920–21 to take under his wing the Italian Communists, for which he had great affinities".
The action squads were to become identified by their black shirts, a motif that ultimately coined the name Blackshirts and became the inspiration for Adolf Hitler's SA during the Third Reich.
Mussolini and his followers selected the iconic black shirts of labourers in the Italian cities of Romagna and Emilia who had originally "adopted their uniforms from the anarchists".