National Fascist Party

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National Fascist Party
Partito Nazionale Fascista

Former Italian National Party
Political ideology	Fascism
Official Newspaper	Il Popolo d'Italia
See also	Politics of Italy Political parties in Italy Elections in Italy

The National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista; PNF) was an Italian party, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of Fascism (previously represented by groups known as Fasci; see also Italian fascism). The party ruled Italy for twenty-one years from 1922 to 1943 under a totalitarian model of government.

It is currently the only party whose reformation is explicitly banned by the Constitution of Italy, "under any form" (twelfth temporary disposition). In practice, several small fascist parties exist in Italy, whose existence is not currently disputed.

Founded in Rome on November 7, 1921, it marked the transformation of the paramilitary Fasci Italiani di Combattimento into a more coherent political group (the Fasci di Combattimento had been founded by Mussolini in Milan's Piazza San Sepolcro, on March 23, 1919).

The PNF was instrumental in directing and popularizing support for Mussolini's ideology. In the early years, groups within the PNF called Blackshirts built a base of power by violently attacking socialists and their institutions in the rural Po Valley thereby gaining the support of landowners.

The was the main agent of an attempted coup d'état on October 28, 1922, the March on Rome. Even though the coup failed in giving power directly to the PNF, it nontheless resulted in a parallel agreement between Mussolini and King Victor Emmanuel III that made Mussolini the head of the Italian government.

After the drastic modifying of electoral legislation (the Acerbo Law), the PNF clearly won the highly controversial elections of April 1924. Legislation passed in 1928 made it the only legal party of the country, a situation which lasted until 1943.

The party was dissolved upon the arrest of Mussolini after the coup inside the Grand Fascist Council, led by Dino Grandi on July 24 1943. It was officially banned by Pietro Badoglio's government on July 27.

After the Nazi-engineered Unternehmen Eiche liberated Mussolini in September, the PNF was revived as the Republican Fascist Party (Partito Fascista Repubblicano - PFR; September 13), as the single party of the Northern and Nazi-protected Italian Social Republic (the Salò Republic). Its secretary was Alessandro Pavolini. The PFR did not outlast Mussolini's execution and the disappearance of the Salò state in April 1945.