Giovanni Amendola (15 April 1882 – 7 April 1926) was an Italian journalist, professor, and politician. He is noted as an opponent of Italian fascism. Biography Early life and education Amendola was born in Naples on 15 April 1882. He moved to Rome, where he obtained the middle school diploma. At fifteen he joined the socialist youth. The following year he was an apprentice to the newspaper of the Italian Radical Party "La Capitale." He graduated with a degree in philosophy, he collaborated with such publications as Leonardo of Giovanni Papini and La Voce of Giuseppe Prezzolini. After that, he obtained the chair of theoretical philosophy at the University of Pisa. Between 1912 and 1914 Amendola was the editor of the Bologna-based daily Il Resto del Carlino. He worked for Corriere della Sera from 1914 to 1920. Political career Attracted by politics, he was elected three times to the Italian Chamber of Deputies for Salerno. In the 1910s, Amendola supported the Italian liberal movement, but he was completely against the ideology of Giovanni Giolitti. During World War I, he adopted a position of democratic irredentism and, at the end of the war, was nominated minister by Prime Minister Francesco Saverio Nitti. His critical positions while confronting the right-wing extremism cost him a series of attacks by hired Fascist hitmen. In 1924 Amendola refused to adhere to the "Listone Mussolini", and attempted to become Prime Minister, at the head of a liberal coalition which ran in the elections. He was defeated, but continued the democratic battle by writing columns for the Il Mondo, a new daily newspaper which he founded together with other intellectuals in 1922. During the height of the Matteotti Crisis, Amendola published the Rossi Testimony in one of his newspapers, on 27 December 1924. The document directly implicated Prime Minister Mussolini in the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, the leader of the Socialist PSU party, on the 10 June 1924. In the same document, Amendola also declared that Mussolini was behind the reign of terror which led up to the April 6th, 1924 general elections. Resented by Mussolini for his prominent activism, Amendola was, together with the Unitary Socialist Party deputy Giacomo Matteotti and the popular priest Don Giovanni Minzoni, one of the régime's earliest victims, as he was beaten by 15 Blackshirts with clubs in July, 1925. Amendola formulated the notion of totalitarianism as total political power which