Already in February 1921 he was denounced by the judiciary for certain violence of language used during a rally in the Piazza Garibaldi in Pistoia. On the basis of his frenetic activity and, above the events at Empoli, he became one of the principal targets of the nascent fascist reaction in Tuscany, where he had been organising during those months. On May 10 while returning from a rally held on behalf of the candidate of the Communist Party of Italy in the elections in the village of Corbezzi, he was detained by the fascists who took him to their offices in the city. Here they tried to beat him into renouncing his "Bolshevik" ideas. Failing in their first objective, he was transferred to their headquarters at Piazza Ottaviani in Florence. He was sent to Dumini with the proposal: "You should disappear for the entire period of the electoral campaign or hide yourself in a villa in Fiesole or remain in Florence under continual surveillance." Rejecting these proposals, he was held in Dumini throughout the general strike; a protest erupted into violence in Pistoia on his release. Renewing contacts with the party and overcoming the reserve of the comrades, he decided to return to Pistoia where he remained in order to continue the task of agitation. On the return trip, made by car under the escort of a certain number of armed comrades, he encountered a squadron of fascists on the road from Pioppo to Caiano. This encounter resulted in the death of a fascist and the wounding of two others. Damen was sentenced to three years confinement in the Murate in Florence. Given what took place en route from Pioppo to Caiano and the subsequent incarceration, the leadership of the party decided to send him to France as a part of their "political bureau" to represent the party and to preside over the organisation of groups of exiled comrades, coordinating their political activity as the director of the weekly L'humanité in Italian. Later, upon his clandestine re-entry in the country in 1924, the party presented him as a candidate in the elections and in spite of the strong opposition of the fascists was elected as a deputy on the city council of Florence. Meanwhile, within the PCdI, the rupture between the direction imposed by Moscow and the left continued to delineate itself more clearly. Bordiga, who enjoyed widespread support within