Giovanni Amendola

Italy state institutions Liberalism and republicanism 1882–1926 ✕ Died after a Fascist beating

Liberal anti-fascist who led the Aventine Secession and coined the notion of totalitarianism

Born in Naples, he studied philosophy, held the chair of theoretical philosophy at Pisa and wrote for the Corriere della Sera. Elected three times as deputy for Salerno, he followed a democratic liberalism opposed to Giolitti and was a minister under Nitti. He co-founded the daily Il Mondo in 1922 and in 1923 defined Italian Fascism as a "totalitarian" system fundamentally different from conventional dictatorships. In 1924 he led the Aventine Secession, and on 27 December he published the Rossi testimony implicating Mussolini in the murder of Matteotti. Beaten with clubs by fifteen Blackshirts in July 1925, he died of his injuries at Cannes in 1926.