Benito Mussolini's mugshot, 1903

Mussolini was brought up with steadfast socialist ideals and, as a young man, became a prominent figure in Italian socialist circles. In June 1902, in an effort to avoid recruitment, Mussolini moved to Switzerland where he worked as a bricklayer, majored in journalism, and joined a trade union.

He became active in the Italian socialist movement in Switzerland, working for the newspaper L'Avvenire del Lavoratore, organizing meetings, giving speeches to workers and serving as secretary of the Italian labor union in Lausanne. Were were

In 1903, he was arrested by Bernese police for advocating a violent general strike, spent two weeks in prison, was deported to Italy, freed there, and returned to Switzerland.

In 1904, again arrested in Geneva and expelled for falsifying his papers, he returned to Lausanne, where he attended the Social Sciences Department of the University of Lausanne, following Vilfredo Pareto's lessons. In December 1904, he returned to Italy to take advantage of an amnesty for abandonment, for which he was convicted in absentia.

Since the condition of the pardon was serving in the army, on 30 December 1904, he joined Bursaglieri's corps at Forli. After serving in the army for two years (January 1905 to September 1906), he returned to teaching. After his discharge from the army, Mussolini wrote and edited for several socialist newspapers and was regarded as a rising star of Italy's left.

Benito Mussolini was the son of Alessandro Mussolini, a blacksmith by trade and a devout Catholic, a Republican socialist and ardent anti-Catholic, and a schoolteacher mother. Despite his parents' opposing views on religion, the couple married and fathered three children, Benito being the eldest.

Named after three prominent socialists, Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini helped his father work in the forge and inherited Alessandro's political views – nationalist, socialist and republican.