Antonio Gramsci supported fascism in its early days

When Benito Mussolini was a member of the Italian Socialist Party, he gained many followers there. His supporters, such as Antonio Gramsci and Amadeo Bordiga, began to call themselves mussoliniani. Gramsci’s first public appearance in the weekly Il Grido del Popolo was to defend Mussolini from criticism by Angelo Tasca. Tasca criticized Mussolini for his interventionist stance during the First World War. In Gramsci’s view, Mussolini was not wrong, since the policy of revolutionary preparation of the proletariat could take advantage of Italy’s intervention in the war against the Central Empires.
Later, Gramsci would be tempted to collaborate with Mussolini’s newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia, as the syndicalist Mario Guarnieri would accuse him in 1921, on the occasion of the founding of the Communist Party of Italy.
For this reason, it is no surprise that Mussolini was generous with Gramsci, placing him under house arrest, where he was able to calmly write his Prison Notebooks, which gave rise to the cultural Marxism so often discussed today.
REFERENCES:
https://www.corriere.it/unita-....italia-150/recension
https://www.libertaepersona.or....g/wordpress/2011/10/