There is growing fascination and nostalgia for dictators, extreme right-wing government in some countries and “illiberal democracy” in others. Why is this? What has happened to permit such a distortion of memory? How do myths replace reality?
The elections are the first to occur after a referendum slashed the number of seats in parliament and happen when war rages in Europe, poverty increases, the climate crisis deepens. The descendent of Mussolini’s Fascist Party is the frontrunner.
For almost two decades before 1939, Alfredo Cecchetti worked as a cameraman documenting the rise of the Fascist Party in Italy and its leader Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. Alfredo C. helped to immortalize the great machine of the Italian Fascist Regime – both in Italy covering countless public appearances of Mussolini and after 1939, the Italian invasion of Albania, as he followed the Italian troops and then filmed the new Italian settlers. Embedded in the archive are many films that were part of the Italian Fascist propaganda machine.
Reality doesn’t conform to the theory of the rational, calculating despot who can play the long game.
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Ruth Ben-Ghiat delivers a superb examination of how close the US came to fascism – and how it has propped it up before.
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Not long before Mussolini and Hitler came to power, much of the US press believed that power would "moderate" them, or considered them something of a joke. Are we seeing similar mistakes today?
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