The Fascist Ceka

The Ceka—a centralized, repressive, criminal organization that already existed during the two-year “legalitarian” period (1922–1924)—reveals Mussolini’s early propensity to use systemic, unscrupulous violence to impose his totalitarian power on the country. He naturally always denied having founded the Ceka. In a speech on January 3, 1925, he stated: “It has been said that I founded a Ceka. Where? When? In what way? No one can say!” But he then asserted,