Neue Freie Presse
- Dictatorship or Democracy!
- Revolver Attack on Mussolini in Bologna.
- Ban on the Opposition Press.
The front page placed a Viennese editorial on the Social Democrats' party congress beside telegrams from Italy. The editorial, "Dictatorship or Democracy!", accused the congress of camouflage. It said speakers had muted their talk of force and subjugation, and it seized on Max Adler's statement that Otto Bauer's guiding ideas treated democracy as merely a means of class rule that could also be a path of violence. From Bologna the paper reported that an unknown man fired a revolver at Mussolini as he drove to the station, tearing his uniform coat. According to the report, Mussolini was unhurt and the crowd lynched the attacker. A short item added that the Italian government had banned the opposition press until further notice.
Translation
Dictatorship or Democracy!
Camouflage is the watchword. The prevailing feeling was evidently that one must not tell too many tales out of school, and that the incessant play with the notions of force and subjugation is anything but useful. Nevertheless, not all the speakers spoke with the party-issued mute on, and one of the most eminent theorists, Max Adler, proclaimed with a candor for which every honest person must thank him: "The ideas that Otto Bauer has made his guiding ones have been the following: democracy is merely a means for class rule, and democracy, too, can be a path of violence."
Revolver Attack on Mussolini in Bologna.
This evening, as Prime Minister Mussolini was driving by car to the railway station after opening the Congress for the Advancement of the Sciences, an unknown man fired a revolver shot at him. The bullet tore Mussolini's coat (he was wearing the uniform of the commander-in-chief of the Fascist militia), ripping the ribbon of the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Maurice at chest height as well as a piece of the coat itself, and also pierced the sleeve of the coat of the mayor of Bologna, who was accompanying Mussolini. Mussolini, who was unhurt, did not lose his composure for a moment. In the great tumult that broke out immediately after the attempt, the assassin was lynched by the enraged crowd. Mussolini drove…
Ban on the Opposition Press.
For reasons of security, the government has generally prohibited the publication of the opposition press until further notice.
Context
The Bologna shooting and the boy who was lynched
The excerpt translated here names no attacker. It calls him only "an unknown man" and "the assassin", and it says the enraged crowd lynched him. Later accounts identify the person lynched as Anteo Zamboni, a 15-year-old boy, who was killed after a shot was fired at Mussolini as he rode in an open car through Bologna on 31 October 1926. The terrorism specialist J. Bowyer Bell wrote that the boy was likely innocent and that the affair was either a put-up job or a plot between Fascists. The paper's flat statement that the shooter was the man the crowd lynched therefore reflects the first reports from Bologna, and later research casts serious doubt on it. The Bologna shot was also the latest in a run of attempts that year. In April 1926 Violet Gibson fired a pistol at Mussolini and grazed his nose, and in September the anarchist marble worker Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at his car at Porta Pia in Rome, injuring four other people.
From the assassination attempt to the press ban and the exceptional laws
The short notice beside the Bologna report shows the Italian government shutting down the opposition press "for reasons of security" right after the attempt. This followed an established pattern. After the Zaniboni plot of November 1925, laws enacted in late 1925 allowed the regime to suppress any opposition political organization. The so-called leggi fascistissime, passed in 1925 and 1926, suppressed newspapers that lacked a responsible editor recognized by the state and placed the entire press under control. The same body of laws introduced police confinement for anti-fascists and set up the secret police OVRA and a special tribunal for state security. Historians link the Bologna attempt directly to the laws that created Mussolini's secret police. The paper describes the ban as lasting only "until further notice". The laws that followed it, however, placed the entire Italian press under state control.
The Linz congress and its sentence on "dictatorship"
The editorial appeared on 2 November 1926, while the Social Democratic Workers' Party was still holding its congress. The party adopted its new programme in Linz on 3 November, so the paper was judging the debates before the final vote. Otto Bauer, Max Adler and Karl Renner drafted the programme. Its most famous passage said that if the bourgeoisie resisted through the planned suppression of economic life, violent rebellion or conspiracy with foreign counter-revolutionary forces, the working class would be forced to break that resistance by means of dictatorship. In practice the party stayed reformist and insisted on reaching its goals by democratic means, through elections and a majority in parliament. The House of Austrian History's account says the sentence was formulated as a defence but still aggravated the domestic political climate of the First Republic. The editorial's title, "Dictatorship or Democracy!", takes up exactly this debate, and its charge of "camouflage" casts the party's defensive wording as cover for an aim of rule by force.
Max Adler's view of political and social democracy
The editorial presents Adler's remark as a rare honest admission at a congress otherwise speaking with a "mute". Adler was himself one of the programme's drafters and a leading theorist of Austromarxism. In his disputes with Hans Kelsen and Hermann Heller he distinguished between political democracy, which he saw as an expression of bourgeois hegemony, and a social democracy in which oppression would disappear along with social differences. He published a book titled Politische und soziale Demokratie in Berlin in 1926, the year of the congress. Seen against this background, the statement the paper quotes, that democracy is only a means for class rule, matches an argument Adler had long made about the limits of parliamentary democracy under capitalism. The excerpt, however, gives only the newspaper's rendering of his words. The paper used that rendering to argue that the party leadership, Otto Bauer included, regarded democracy as merely a tool.
The Neue Freie Presse and its bourgeois readership
The Neue Freie Presse was a Viennese daily founded in 1864 by Adolf Werthner with the journalists Max Friedländer and Michael Etienne. Stefan Zweig, who wrote feuilletons for it, recalled that for the entire Viennese bourgeoisie the works that counted were those praised in its pages. The Linz programme's dictatorship clause was aimed at exactly these readers, the "bourgeoisie" whose resistance the working class would supposedly have to break. That explains the editorial's emphasis. By thanking Adler for his candour and calling the rest of the congress camouflage, the paper told its middle-class readers that the Social Democrats' commitment to democracy was only tactical. This is the paper's own reading of the congress, written while the debates were still under way. The later assessment that the sentence worsened Austria's political climate comes from historians, not from the paper.
Original
Diktatur oder Demokratie!
Camouflage ist die Losung. Die Empfindung war offenbar vorherrschend, daß man nicht zu viel aus der Schule schwätzen dürfe; daß das ununterbrochene Spiel mit den Begriffen Gewalt und Unterjochung alles eher denn nützlich ist. Trotzdem, nicht alle Redner haben mit der parteiamtlichen Sordine gesprochen und einer der hervorragendsten Theoretiker, Max Adler, verkündete mit einer Aufrichtigkeit, für die ihm jeder Ehrliche danken muß: Die Ideen, die Otto Bauer zu seinen tragenden gemacht hat, sind folgende gewesen: Die Demokratie ist nur ein Mittel für die Klassenherrschaft und auch Demokratie kann ein Weg der Gewalt sein.
Revolverattentat auf Mussolini in Bologna.
Während Ministerpräsident Mussolini heute abend nach Eröffnung des Kongresses für die Förderung der Wissenschaften im Automobil zum Bahnhof fuhr, hat ein Unbekannter einen Revolverschuß gegen ihn abgefeuert. Die Kugel hat den Rock Mussolinis, der die Uniform des Oberkommandierenden der fascistischen Miliz trug, das Band des Großkreuzes des Mauritius-Ordens in der Höhe der Brust und auch ein Stück des Rockes selbst zerrissen sowie auch den Aermel des Rockes des Bürgermeisters von Bologna, der Mussolini begleitete, durchbohrt. Mussolini, der unverletzt blieb, hatte keinen Augenblick die Fassung verloren. In dem großen Tumult, der sofort nach dem Attentat entstand, wurde der Mörder von der aufgebrachten Menge gelyncht. Mussolini fuhr
Verbot der Oppositionspresse.
Die Regierung hat aus Gründen der Sicherheit das Erscheinen der Oppositionspresse im allgemeinen bis auf weiteres untersagt.