Fascismo e stampa nel Salento: il caso de L'Ordine e de La Provincia di Lecce (1921-1926)

The essay examines two of the most important press organs of the first post-war period: L'Ordine, an expression of the Catholics of the diocese of Lecce, and La provincia di Lecce, an expression of democratic liberalism, and follows its parallel path by analyzing the attitude held in confrontations with the fascist movement first, and, subsequently, with the first acts of the Mussolini government. From this, emerges a convergent positive evaluation of the anti-Bolshevik objectives of fascism, of which however they criticized the excessive use of the method of violence by their adherents, except for diverging, over the months following the march on Rome, on the evaluation of the first acts of the regime. La Provincia will be forced to close due to his increasingly critical positions towards the fascism; L'Ordine will become one of the most solid pillars of the regime in the province of Lecce.