Italian politician who founded fascism, took power through the March on Rome, and ruled Italy as Il Duce from 1922 to 1943 — creating the first fascist state and the model that Hitler and Franco partially emulated — before his disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany and ignominious execution.
Created fascism as a political movement and regime — the combination of ultranationalism, paramilitary violence, charismatic leadership, hostility to both liberalism and Marxism, and the theatrical politics of mass mobilization that Mussolini developed defined the fascist template that dominated European politics in the 1930s.
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