Italian politician, born in Salerno, Campania, SW Italy. He became a deputy in 1919 and was opposed to right-wing nationalism. Colonial-office minister in the Facta cabinet in 1922, he led the parliamentary opposition. Following Giacomo Matteotti's murder in 1924, he initiated the Aventine secession, when the opposition parties suspended parliamentary activity in protest. He died after being attacked by Fascists in Montecatini.
Giovanni Amendola (April 15, 1882, Salerno—April 1, 1926, Cannes) was an Italian journalist and politician, noted as an opponent of Fascism.
After he graduated philosophy, he collaborated with some newspapers, among them being Il Leonardo of Giovanni Papini and La voce of Giuseppe Prezzolini.
Attracted by the politics, he was elected three times to the Italian Chamber of Deputies for Salerno.
His critical positions while confronting the right-wing extremism costed 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 elections.
Resented by Benito Mussolini for his prominent activism, Amendola was, together with the United Socialist Party deputy Giacomo Matteotti and the popular priest don Giovanni Minzoni, one of the régime's earliest victims: he died in agony from violence inflicted by Blackshirts.
His son, Giorgio Amendola, was an important communist writer and politician.
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