GRAMSCI: Fascism has not managed to completely absorb all the parties into its organization. With freemasonry it has employed the political tactic of noyautage, then the terrorist system of burning lodges, and finally it employs legislative action, through which certain persons of the company boards and the high bureaucracy will end up giving in to the masters so as not to lose their jobs, but the fascist government will have to come to a compromise with freemasonry. What do you do when your enemy is strong? First, you break his legs, then you make a compromise from a condition of obvious superiority.
MUSSOLINI: First you break his ribs, then you imprison him, as you have done in Russia! You have taken your prisoners and you hold them, and you need to! [Noises]
GRAMSCI: Taking prisoners means exactly making compromises: thus we say that in reality the law is especially made against workers' organizations. We ask why for many months without the Communist Party being declared illegal, the carabinieri have arrested our comrades every time they find them in a meeting of at least three ...
MUSSOLINI: We are doing what you do in Russia.
GRAMSCI: In Russia there are laws which are obeyed: you have your own laws ...
MUSSOLINI: You have big round-ups? You do well to! [Laughter].
GRAMSCI: In reality the police apparatus of the state already considers the Communist Party a secret organization.
MUSSOLINI: That is not true!
GRAMSCI: In so far as anyone, accused of no specific offence, found in a meeting of three persons, is jailed, just because they are communist.
MUSSOLINI: But they are soon released. How many are in jail? We pick them up just to find out who they are!
GRAMSCI: It is a form of systematic persecution which precedes and will justify the application of the new law. Fascism is adopting the same systems as the government of Giolotti. You are doing as the Giolotti goons did in the Mezzogiorno when they arrested opposition voters ...to find out who they were.
A VOICE: There was only one case of it. You do not know the South.
GRAMSCI: I am from the South!
MUSSOLINI: With respect to electoral violence I remind you of an article by Bordiga which fully justifies it!
GRECO PAOLO: You, Honourable Gramsci, have not read this article.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/1925/05/speech.htm