Catholic Popular Party outcompeted socialist unions among Italian peasants.
Evidence
The Popular Party was founded by Luigi Sturzo and others in January 1919. Based on sociaUchristian ideas current throughout Europe at the time, it was encouraged initially by the Papacy (as a political movement directed outwards, and not towards reform of the Church itself like Modernism). It grew swiftly— especially in the agricultural areas of North and Central Italy, where it set up “white” unions whose strength among the small peasants often outstripped that of their “red” rivals. After vacillating in its attitude towards fascism between 1921-25 (Sturzo was not prepared to accept Papal pressure for an accommodation), it was suppressed in 1925 26 like the other opposition parties. After the fall of fascism, it re-emerged as the Christian Democrat Party. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1885
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s broader analysis of subaltern classes, populism, and how the Church anchored conservative mass politics in Italy — relevant to later Islamophobia readings on religion as hegemonic infrastructure.