Mussolini coined the name "Fascist".
He was also a renowned member of the socialist party.
Early in his career he was.
Italian Socialist Party - Wikipedia
Rise of fascism[edit]
World War I tore the party apart as orthodox socialists were challenged by advocates of
national syndicalism that advocated a revolutionary war to liberate Italian territories from
Austrian control and to force the government by threat of violence to adopt changes that would create a
corporatiststate. The national syndicalists intended to support Italian republicans in overthrowing the monarchy if such reforms were not made and if Italy did not enter the war. The dominant internationalist and pacifist wing of the party remained committed to avoiding what it called a "bourgeois war".
The PSI's refusal to support the war led to its national syndicalist faction either leaving or being purged from the party, such as Mussolini who had begun to show sympathy to the national syndicalist cause. A number of the national syndicalists expelled from the PSI would have become members of Benito Mussolini's Fascist Revolutionary Party in 1915 and later in 1921 to his newly named
National Fascist Party.
After the
Russian Revolution of 1917, the PSI quickly aligned itself in support of the communist Bolshevik movement in Russia and supported its call for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. From 1919 to the 1920s,
the Socialists and the Fascists emerged as prominent rival movements in Italy's urban centres, often resorting to political violence in their clashes.
