Benito Mussolini: a dictator for all seasons?

[Zaune]

The Guardian

Pasquale Moretti pulls the latest Benito Mussolini calendar off the shelf at his Rome cafe and flips it open to a photo of the pouting, strutting dictator taking part in a grain harvest.

"I was born in that era and he put bread on the table," said the 78-year-old. "I cannot betray my culture."
Mussolini calendar A 2012 calendar. This year will bring a new crop featuring the dictator.

Every year, around this time, Mussolini calendars appear in newspaper kiosks up and down Italy, offering a year's supply of photos of the fascist leader.

They are often tucked away with the specialist magazines, but according to the manager of one firm that prints them, they are much in demand.

"We are selling more than we did 10 years ago," said Renato Circi, the head of Rome printer Gamma 3000. "I didn't think it was still a phenomenon, but young people are now buying them too."

Sixty-eight years after the fascist dictator was strung up with piano wire from a petrol station in Milan following his crushing of Italian democracy, his racist laws and his disastrous alliance with Adolf Hitler, Mussolini has quietly taken his place as an icon for many Italians.

Among his adherents today are the masked, neo-fascist youths who mounted raids on Rome schools this autumn to protest against education cuts, lobbing smoke bombs in corridors and yelling "Viva Il Duce".

A masked mob that ambushed Spurs fans drinking in a Rome pub in November, was also suspected of neo-fascist sympathies. When Spurs played Lazio the following night, Lazio fans chanted "Juden Tottenham", using the German word for Jews in reference to the club's Jewish heritage.

But the cult of Il Duce has also slipped into the mainstream. The decision by a town south of Rome to spend €127,000 (£100,000) of public funds this year on a tomb for Rodolfo Graziani, one of Mussolini's most blood-thirsty generals, was met with widespread indifference.

Other more mundane examples include the leading businessman who proposed renaming Forli airport in Emilia Romagna – the region of northern Italy where the dictator was born – as Mussolini airport, or the headmaster in Ascoli Piceno who tried to hang a portrait of the dictator in his school.

The man who gets some credit for dusting off Mussolini's reputation is Silvio Berlusconi, who famously described the dictator's exiling of his foes to remote villages as sending them on holiday.

Berlusconi's subtle rehabilitation of Mussolini came as he brought Italy's post-fascists, led by Gianfranco Fini, into his governing coalition in 1994 and 2001, following the "years of lead" in the 1970s and early 80s, when neo-fascists and communist sympathisers battled in the streets.

"Today, Mussolini's racial laws against Jews remain an embarrassment, but people don't care about his hunting down anti-fascists," said Maria Laura Rodotà, a journalist at Italy's Corriere della Sera. "That became one of Berlusconi's jokes."

Admiration for Mussolini is common in Berlusconi's circle. Showbusiness agent Lele Mora, who is now on trial for allegedly pimping for the former prime minister, downloaded an Italian fascist song as his mobile ring tone, while Berlusconi's long-time friend, the senator Marcello Dell'Utri, has described Mussolini as an "extraordinary man of great culture".

After Mussolini's murder by partisans in 1945 – as the Allies pushed up through Italy – the country did not exorcise the ghosts of fascism, as Germany sought to. A 1952 law forbidding fascist parties or the veneration of fascism has never been seriously enforced.

"It was not used partly because banning parties was potentially anti-constitutional, and also due to a sneaking admiration for fascism," said James Walston, professor of politics at the American University of Rome.

Decades on, the memory of Mussolini as the strong man who put a post office in every piazza and made the trains run on time has been decoupled from the ideology of fascism, said writer Angelo Meloni.

"He is now a pop icon, an arch-Italian, a personality whose legend is linked to the years of consensus in Italy," he said. "Just as people who don't go to church like Padre Pio, so 90% of those who buy Mussolini calendars will never have voted for a fascist party," he said.

Gamma 3000 promotes Mussolini calendars on its website alongside ones featuring the Catholic saint and mystic Padre Pio, guerrilla leader Che Guevara, topless models and cute kittens.

But for Italy's modern neo-fascist groups, including CasaPound, Il Duce is still very much about ideology.

"Whoever buys the calendar admires his work – the two things cannot be separated," said the group's vice-president, Simone di Stefano.

"There is a need today for his politics, for someone who will put the banks and finance at the service of Italy," he said. "Youngsters who come to us already see Mussolini as the father of this country."

CasaPound's student offshoot organisation, Blocco Studentesco, is a mainstay in Rome youth politics, polling 11,000 votes in school council elections in 2009 and even enrolling the mayor of Rome's 17-year-old son, who was photographed on holiday in 2012 giving a straight-armed fascist salute with friends.

The well-to-do streets around Piazza Ponte Milvio, north of Rome's football stadium, are today plastered with posters and graffiti by numerous neo-fascist groups, including CasaPound, and the local bars have become a hangout for gangs of rightwing lads in regulation Fred Perry shirts and Ray-Ban Wayfarers.

"Many teenagers now avoid Ponte Milvio since the people who go there have shifted further to the right," said Rodotà.

Further down the road, the entrance to the stadium is marked by a massive fascist-era obelisk, still standing, with "Mussolini" written in huge letters down the front. Nearby, the bar run by Pasquale Moretti, where Lazio fans meet before games, contains a mini-supermarket of fascist memorabilia, from bottles of wine with Mussolini's portrait on the label, to fascist flags and T-shirts, and oil portraits of Il Duce.

"He built housing for workers, something no Roman emperor did," said Moretti. "How can I not respect that?"

Well, I suppose anyone would look good by comparison after seventeen years of Berlusconi.

[Thanas]

The hell?

[Welf]

What is difficult to understand? Italy is right now in economic decline, and has a corrupt and incompetent political class. The only thing Rome can do right now is execute foreign demands to cut and slash, and that deepens the economic crisis. It makes a lot of sense to glorify a past of perceived national strength. For one it gives hope that something better is possible, and second it gives a rallying point to build up a alternative to the current political system. Of course that won't work, since it most likely will bring a douchebag like Berlusconi back to power, who screwed up Italy in the first place.

[CaptHawkeye]

Gotta love it when tight finances cause people to start embracing political extremism.

I might not have enough spare money this week to buy an extra 6 pack of Honey Brown. The life of a white westerner is sooooo hard.

[Irbis]

Well, Italy is famous for their wines. Including this one

[Lolpah]

Gotta love it when tight finances cause people to start embracing political extremism.

I might not have enough spare money this week to buy an extra 6 pack of Honey Brown. The life of a white westerner is sooooo hard.

Except that many people in the hardest hit European countries are really struggling to put food on the table at the same time as paying their bills and rent. Do you think people in Spain are digging trashcans for nothing?

Admittedly, the situation in Italy is a lot better, but many people, particularly the unemployed (and youth unemployment is high) and pensioners are still struggling to cope.

The majority of people won't turn to extremist ideologies out of simple inconvenience, but rather legitimate hardship or fear of future one.

[CaptHawkeye]

I guess that's just the price the west pays for devotion to the free market status quo for so many years. At the end of the day westerners have no one to blame but themselves for their hardships. They'll just blame brown people or the Chinese as usual. It's been the trend for 500 years after all. Why should it change now?

Ideally the European Union should be taking a more active stance in combating these issues, but is meeting opposition from nationalist organizations be they the government or others. Presumably the majorities of Italy and Greece are for EU support as well, and are not in fact interested in turning to fascism as a solution. Their really shouldn't even be a relative minority for groups like the Golden Dawn though. Fascists don't need majority support to start causing serious problems. Once they receive a modicum of legitimate representation then it's all downhill from there.

But I can't wait for this topic to turn into internet-tough guy posturing about casually banning members of the EU like you'd ban trolls on a forum.

[Iron Bridge]

They have a half a point. Maybe a quarter. In Italy and especially in Spain, the problem is huge and avoidable unemployment. The way to avoid it is to leave the Eurozone and adopt expansionary monetary policy. The problem essentially is one of too-internationalist foreign policy. It's doubtful these parties see it in those terms however.

Anyway, I'm not sure what you mean by "price paid for devotion to free markets". What's preferable? The near-identical socialist nutters who rather than impoverishing the country to hurt foreigners, would impoverish the country to hurt rich people? The optimum response is surely to stick to free market policies despite temporary recessions.

[CaptHawkeye]

I would think the example set by Germany would be an ideal nations in the EU would try to move towards. For all I know they have been, but are being held back by corrupt leadership and nostalgia. Guys like Berlusconi and Putin certainly seem to be at the core of that issue.

Italians, Greeks and Spaniards may also feel that they don't have access to the same resources Germans do, but how great could the difference in access possibly be? They're all on the same continent and have been neighbors for a millennium. The EU was literally created to end the economic divides of Europe. But it's been held back by paranoia and fear of encroachment. In the end, this still just leaves Europeans with no one to blame but themselves.

[Stark]

How ignorant of European politics and economics are we talking, here?

[Zaune]

Anyway, I'm not sure what you mean by "price paid for devotion to free markets". What's preferable? The near-identical socialist nutters who rather than impoverishing the country to hurt foreigners, would impoverish the country to hurt rich people? The optimum response is surely to stick to free market policies despite temporary recessions.

Market forces are a good servant but a poor master. And this "temporary recession" of which you speak has already resulted in several days of the worst mass riots for fifty years in my country's capital and may yet drive us over the brink into organised rebellion, so I hope you'll forgive me if writing the present circumstances off as a temporary aberration that will pass if we just carry on as before is not a very attractive prospect.

[Stark]

Armchair theorists like easy axiomatic answers regardless of practical concerns because they're easy.

[Iron Bridge]

I would think the example set by Germany would be an ideal nations in the EU would try to move towards. For all I know they have been, but are being held back by corrupt leadership and nostalgia. Guys like Berlusconi and Putin certainly seem to be at the core of that issue.

I agree Germany is one of the best, and should be a model for others. But this is where the Eurozone comes in. If each country had its own currency, Germany would set comparatively high interest rates and Italy and Spain would set low rates. They probably would also engage in large scale quantitative easing. But they don't, and the ECB's actual policy is much closer to what is best for Germany than what is best for Spain and Italy. This is a major, possibly the sole cause of excessive unemployment particularly in Spain.

This is not really a problem that can be solved within the framework of the Eurozone: either Germany has to essentially subsidise an unnecessary recession in the southern periphery for the sake of European unification, or the periphery countries have to leave the Eurozone. The current problems in the Eurozone are primarily concerned with which course to take, since no one really wants either.

Italians, Greeks and Spaniards may also feel that they don't have access to the same resources Germans do, but how great could the difference in access possibly be? They're all on the same continent and have been neighbors for a millennium. The EU was literally created to end the economic divides of Europe. But it's been held back by paranoia and fear of encroachment. In the end, this still just leaves Europeans with no one to blame but themselves.

I think the EU was created to end political divides. At the moment, it seems they are willing to exacerbate economic divides in order to close political divides.

Market forces are a good servant but a poor master. And this "temporary recession" of which you speak has already resulted in several days of the worst mass riots for fifty years in my country's capital and may yet drive us over the brink into organised rebellion, so I hope you'll forgive me if writing the present circumstances off as a temporary aberration that will pass if we just carry on as before is not a very attractive prospect.

Then perhaps you should indeed vote for Mussolini. He'll get rid of the rioters, and after all, he made the trains run on time.

[Thanas]

Iron Bridge, one more such smarmy comment about how people who do not goggle FREE MARKET FREE MARKET dick like you for a living are Nazis and I shall smack you into the HoS.

[Melchior]

He'll get rid of the rioters, and after all, he made the trains run on time.

This is a myth, by the way; it didn't actually happen, he just boasted about it.
A undercurrent of nostalgics of fascism has persisted for decades in Italy, paraphernalia like busts, that wine, calendars, etc. are either expression of that or pop culture re-elaborations of regime imagery, not indicative of any significant political phenomenon (populist unrest is channeled by Berlusconi and Grillo, not by the old-style fascists).

[Iron Bridge]

I know, but then, that comment wasn't wholly serious...

Iron Bridge, one more such smarmy comment about how people who do not goggle FREE MARKET FREE MARKET dick like you for a living are Nazis and I shall smack you into the HoS.

Is not "I guess that's just the price the west pays for devotion to the free market status quo for so many years." also a smarmy comment? Or is it only pro-market smarm that is banned?

My point was not even really that markets are the solution to this - state central banks aren't exactly market institutions after all - just that radically changing Italy's institutions against markets isn't going to do a thing about the recession while making its underlying economic performance worse.

[Thanas]

I'll not entertain discussion about how you comparing people to nazis is worse or better than other comments. The threat has been made and will stand as issued.

[Iron Bridge]

I think you are letting your personal beliefs cloud your judgment on this issue. Nonetheless I will withdraw from the discussion.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

No, Thanas, you don't get it. It's the FREE MARKET. It is FREEDOM. Therefore, you are against FREEDOM, therefore a fascist. You wouldn't believe how often I've seen this.

Perhaps the only thing comparable to religion's hijack of morality is capitalism's hijack of freedom.

[Malivotti]

Just my .02 but the attraction towards the extreme right wing views whither fascist, ultra-nationalist, or evangelical neo-con flavours seems to be at the core that you are a victim of the scary Others out there that are after your job/freedom/children etc. The idea that it's not your fault is a powerfully insidious message.

With all problems the past 4 years have had to the world's economies, the growing wealth gap, the shift in politics from the people to the money it is understandable that to some people the bad old days don't seem that bad. However once people start down that old road it is very hard to stop. Far better to never start down the road at all. Sure maybe an ultra right wing movement in Italy, Greece and Spain might work this time, turn things around, but looking into history's dismal record I really doubt it.

[Thanas]

I think you are letting your personal beliefs cloud your judgment on this issue. Nonetheless I will withdraw from the discussion.

Enjoy your warning under AR3.

Have a nice day.

[Carinthium]

No, Thanas, you don't get it. It's the FREE MARKET. It is FREEDOM. Therefore, you are against FREEDOM, therefore a fascist. You wouldn't believe how often I've seen this.

Perhaps the only thing comparable to religion's hijack of morality is capitalism's hijack of freedom.

Capitalism 'hijacking' freedom is like anarchy 'hijacking' freedom- for all capitalism's faults, the two of them have equally legitimate claims to represent freedom.

[Simon_Jester]

Anarchy is freedom taken to the theoretical limiting case. "What would happen if we were absolutely free, if there were no limits on our actions at all?"

Capitalism is a special type of freedom taken to the theoretical limiting case. If we go full laissez-faire fundamentalist, people have certain rights. But no one is allowed types of freedom that conflict with the exercise of those rights. The right to control property ends up taking precedence over almost all other rights, if the two happen to conflict.

So no, I would not say the two have equal claims to represent freedom.
_________________

It is also ironic that the greatest champions of capitalism (i.e. the capitalists themselves) were pretty happy to operate under fascism. As a form of dictatorship, fascism ensures plenty of opportunities for friendly, corrupt private-public alliances. It mostly oppresses minorities, whose fate is largely irrelevant to the capitalist economy. And it isn't ideologically hostile to owners the way communism is.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

No, Thanas, you don't get it. It's the FREE MARKET. It is FREEDOM. Therefore, you are against FREEDOM, therefore a fascist. You wouldn't believe how often I've seen this.

Perhaps the only thing comparable to religion's hijack of morality is capitalism's hijack of freedom.

Capitalism 'hijacking' freedom is like anarchy 'hijacking' freedom- for all capitalism's faults, the two of them have equally legitimate claims to represent freedom.

And a religious person would claim that religion has a valid claim on morality, I guess. But there are many kinds of freedom that have little to do with capitalism. What does capitalism have to do with gay marriage, with equal rights for both sexes, or with free speech? The only freedoms capitalism truly looks after are the freedom of owning property and that of economic enterprise, which is understandable since it's an economic system. This is why Iron Bridge is stupid for calling Zaune a fascist when his precious free market gets bashed.

[Carinthium]

1- Anarchy and capitalism are basically the same thing- pure freedom with all it's flaws within a specific context. Capitalism's context is narrower, but the case is just as unambigious. Come to think of it I did mispeak, but only slightly- capitalism advocates for near-absolute freedom within it's context, whilst anarchy advocates for absolute freedom within its context.

2- Except for freedom in the sense of 'positive rights' (and positive rights always create obligations on the part of others and thus restrict freedom, hence illustrating my point), capitalism restricts no freedom except the freedom to use other people's property.

3- Religion does have a claim on morality of a sort. In theory, if a completely amoral person were to ask 'Why be moral' religion has a very clear answer.

4- Incidentally, 'Facist' might not be fair of Iron Bridge, but if he used 'Tyrant' instead I would understand where he was coming from and sympathise.