Avanti! (Italian newspaper)

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Avanti! ("Forward!") is an Italian daily newspaper, born as the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party, published since December 25 1896. It took its name from its German counterpart Vorwärts.

History

First housed on Rome, its direction moved to Milan in 1911. While it advocated neutrality on the wake of World War I (which it viewed as an imperialist conflict), the paper was becoming infused with the militarist and irredentist attitudes of its editor at the time, future Fascist leader Benito Mussolini (who had risen to prominence as an opponent of Filippo Turati during the Italo-Turkish War). Mussolini's dissent caused his ousting from the party, Avanti!'s direction being taken over by Giacinto Menotti Serrati, Mussolini then started his own paper Il Popolo D'Italia with Syndicalist and Republican dissidents from the Socialist Party.

The paper quarters were set on fire by Mussolini's Blackshirts on April 15 1919, and it was banned by the government in 1926. From that point on, Avanti! was had to be issued as a weekly, and in exile (in Paris and then Zürich).

With Mussolini's first fall in 1943, the paper returned to Italy. However, its circulation was drastically curtailed due to changes in political options after World War II. It was to keep a certain notoriety, notably increased in the 1980s - with the analytical editorials of Bettino Craxi (which he signed with the pen name Ghino di Tacco).

With the final Party crisis in 1993, Avanti! came to an end. A version of it is in circulation as a paper close to the Socialist Party New PSI.

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