Yea................... not a leftist........"During a period of freedom in 1909, he fell in love with 16-year-old Rachele Guidi, the younger of the two daughters of his father’s widowed mistress; she went to live with him in a damp, cramped apartment in Forlì and later married him. Soon after the marriage, Mussolini was imprisoned for the fifth time; but by then Comrade Mussolini had become recognized as one of the most gifted and dangerous of Italy’s younger socialists. After writing in a wide variety of socialist papers, he founded a newspaper of his own, La Lotta di Classe (“The Class Struggle”). So successful was this paper that in 1912 he was appointed editor of the official Socialist newspaper, Avanti! (“Forward!”), whose circulation he soon doubled; and as its antimilitarist, antinationalist, and anti-imperialist editor, he thunderously opposed Italy’s intervention in World War I." (Britannica Bio) The problem with the term "Fascist" is it is kind of a generic term, like ice cream, many flavors like communism, socialism, democratic socialism, leftist, Marxism, etc,etc... (btw anyone who quotes Wiki as a source needs their head examined. Try using them as a source in any higher education school and see what happens LOL!)