Concluding Thoughts

A wide range of supporters defend Mussolini and maintain that he was extraneous to Matteotti’s murder. There are those who affirm that he merely gave the order to administer a lesson to the Socialist deputy, which ended tragically due to a botched execution. Others are convinced that the crime was carried out without his knowledge, for unknown reasons, by some of his unfaithful collaborators. There are also those who are still convinced that the crime was the result of a tragic misunderstanding, of a misinterpretation by some collaborators of Mussolini’s verbal outbursts against Matteotti, which they understood as an actual order to kill him. Finally, some place Mussolini’s responsibility in the moral sphere only. They contend that Mussolini did not order the crime, but they are willing to admit that it arose within a climate of violence that he was instrumental in creating.