Giovanni Amendola

Giovanni Amendola (15 April 1882 in Napoli – 7 April 1926 in Cannes) was an Italian journalist and politician, noted as an opponent of Fascism.

Amendola was born in Salerno. After he graduated with a degree in philosophy, he collaborated with some newspapers, among them being Il Leonardo of Giovanni Papini and La Voce of Giuseppe Prezzolini. After that, he obtained the chair of theoretical philosophy at the University of Pisa.

Attracted by the 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, he was nominated minister by Prime Minister Francesco Saverio Nitti.

His critical positions while confronting the right-wing extremism cost him a series of aggressions from the Fascist hired killers. In 1924 Amendola refused to adhere to the "Listone Mussolini", and attempted to become Prime Minister, as 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.