A Biography Re-Examines Mussolini

[jbor]

Paul wrote:

> If not already mentioned there's a favorable review of the Bosworth book
> in today's New York Times.
> 
> P.
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/21/books/review/21STILLET.html?pagewanted=2

Thanks, Paul. As I mentioned, I'm sure it's an excellent book. The Italian
example after WWI is a case in point about "the Left's" inability to get its
act together and win popular support. Mussolini was opportunistic and
charismatic. And popular. But it's also interesting to see how easily his
extreme left stance at the beginning of his political career, through the
addition of just a touch of nationalism, could morph into fascist
dictatorship.

Both d'Annunzio (mentioned in _V._ as one of the lady V's consorts) and the
Futurists were young, headstrong and idealistic. Neither gained real power
nor committed atrocities, and so a "moral" judgement against them can't
legitimately be made. D'Annunzio, after serving in the Italian Air Force in
WWI, spent much of the time of his siege holed up in his tower and showering
the main square in Fiume with poetic and propagandistic pamphlets. Many of
the most energetic of the Futurists lost their lives in WWI - recall that
Italy came into the War in 1915 *against* Germany, A-H and Turkey - which
effectively ended that particular aesthetico-ideological movement. But what
these two gave to Mussolini was the *nationalist* impetus, which is always
going to win hands down with the masses over arid and interminable Marxist
proselytising, and a "modern" iconography.

Imperialist and domestic brutality did figure after 1922, but that was
pretty much par for the course with European regimes in those times, left,
right or indifferent. Look at what happened to the Russian royal family in
1918, colonial atrocities in the Belgian Congo, Sudwest etc etc.

best