One hundred years after the march on Rome, Altaforte gives voice to the main actor of those events, Benito Mussolini. What did the black shirts really want? What were they fighting for? What were their dreams and aspirations? What was the context in which they acted? These are the questions he tries to answer “1922: my march. Writings and speeches of the Fascist Revolution” (pp. 186, 15 euros). Valerio Benedetti writes in the essay accompanying the anthology: “Exactly one hundred years have passed since the famous march on Rome, when tens of thousands of fascists took the road to the capital to conquer power. Yet, despite the fact that a century has now passed, in all of them the semi-cultivated environments of Italy continue to circulate deformed or even mocking interpretations of those events. And the most popular reading is the one that describes the march on Rome as something halfway between a Sunday walk and a mere drama. that things are not like that at all “. This anthology of texts helps to understand why the victory of the black shirts did not come by chance. “The key to reading Mussolini’s intentions is largely precisely in his writings – writes Fabrizio Vincenti in the introduction of Altaforte’s book – On closer inspection, his project, following his prose, appears to be traceable even as early as 1919. he truly syncopated epilogue of the March on Rome, in the public releases – and it can be read in many of the articles reported in the volume – Mussolini oscillates between the legalitarian and the revolutionary way. He hopes for the former, but never excludes the latter in a game well thought-out psychological. Threat and flattery. He professes himself intransigent and soon afterward malleable. He excludes nothing. In fact, displacing his opponents and often also his friends. He listens to everyone and decides himself; he opens channels with many exponents of the now decaying democratic regime, He demonstrates the skill of a consummate poker player, making fun of all his main rivals, from Giolitti to Salandra, from Nitti to Facta, for king with Orlando “.” From his point of view, Mussolini was right: without the insurrection, the coup would not have been possible – continues Benedetti’s essay – It was precisely the armed mobilization of the Blackshirts to provide a force disruptive contract to the negotiations that the Duce was conducting from Milan. This is the original feature of the march on Rome in the long history of coups d’etat: a revolution that unfolds on the double track of negotiation and sedition. One needed the other, necessarily: without the 300,000 black shirts that had taken over central-northern Italy, the negotiations would not have been so effective; without the ‘legal’ negotiations with the king and the ruling class, the fear nurtured for the armed masses of fascists would perhaps have pushed the authorities to a backlash dictated by desperation “.