Ernesto Rossi was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 politician

Politician

A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

, journalist and anti-fascist

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 activist. His ideas contributed to the Partito d'Azione

Partito d'Azione

-History:It was an anti-fascist political party in the tradition of Giuseppe Mazzini and the Risorgimento. Founded in July 1942 by former militants of Giustizia e Libertà , liberal socialists, democrats...

, and subsequently the Partito Radicale

Partito Radicale

The Radical Party was a political party in Italy. For decades it was a bastion of liberalism and radicalism in Italy and proposed itself as the strongest opposition to the Italian political establishment, which was seen as corrupt and conservative...

co-authur of the Ventotene Manifesto

Ventotene Manifesto

The Ventotene Manifesto is a political statement written by Altiero Spinelli and by Ernesto Rossi while they were prisoners on the Italian island of Ventotene during World War II. Completed in June 1941, the Manifesto was circulated within the Italian Resistance, and it soon became the programme...

. Rossi was born in Caserta

Caserta

Caserta is the capital of the province of Caserta in the Campania region of Italy. It is an important agricultural, commercial and industrial comune and city. Caserta is located on the edge of the Campanian plain at the foot of the Campanian Subapennine mountain range...

.

Not yet nineteen years old, he voluntarily enlisted and fought in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. 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 (directed by Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

), a newspaper with which he collaborated from 1919 to 1922.

During that time, however, he met Gaetano Salvemini

Gaetano Salvemini

Gaetano Salvemini was an Italian anti-fascist politician, historian and writer.- Biography :Salvemini was born in Molfetta, Apulia....

, 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.