aly in 1883. His father was a blacksmith with revolutionary socialist ideas who taught his son that socialism was "an open and violent rebellion against our inhuman state of things" (Leeds 10). Mussolini grew up believing that only violent force could change the world. During his education he read the works of thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Georges Sorel who "despised weakness and praised force" (Leeds 10). At first Mussolini became a school teacher but he hated the job and soon became a journalist instead. He was a member of the Socialist party and worked for the party's newspaper Avanti. But he was expelled from the party for urging Italy to join World War I one the side of France and Britain. The party believed the country should remain neutral and Mussolini found that they were not as interested in violent change as his father had believed.
Mussolini began his own paper, Il Popolo d'Italia in Milan. This paper served as the basis for the foun
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