Ernesto Rossi

Who was Ernesto Rossi?

Ernesto Rossi was an Italian politician, journalist and anti-fascist activist. His ideas contributed to the Partito d'Azione, and subsequently the Partito Radicale. He was co-author of the Ventotene Manifesto.

Rossi was born in Caserta. Not yet nineteen years old, he voluntarily enlisted and fought in World War I. After the war, moved by opposition to the socialists' attitude of hostility towards war veterans and their sacrifices and by contempt of the incapable political class of bounding idealists, he approached the nationalists of the People of Italy, a newspaper with which he collaborated from 1919 to 1922.

During that time, however, he met Gaetano Salvemini, with whom he formed a long-lasting bond of respect and friendship, and he moved definitively and radically further from the positions they were bringing to the fascist ideology.

He died in Rome in 1967.