Speaker 1: What's overthrowing my democratically elected state. I'm Robert Evans. This
Speaker 1: is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the worst people
Speaker 1: in all of history. And we are, of course recording
Speaker 1: in the immediate wake of what I think can fairly
Speaker 1: be called an insurrection by fascist dominated right wing militants um.
Speaker 1: And in the immediate wake of that, I sat down
Speaker 1: with my producer Sophie. Sophie say, hi, Now, not literally
Speaker 1: sit down together because of the plague, but we we
Speaker 1: got on a text chat and I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: this fascist insurrection against the democratically elected government has a
Speaker 1: lot of similarities with other fascist insurrections against democratically elected governments.
Speaker 1: Perhaps we should talk about the history of fascist insurrections
Speaker 1: against democratically elected governments in order to better prepare people
Speaker 1: for what needs to be done in the wake of
Speaker 1: this to stop them from succeeding the next time. And
Speaker 1: of course, once we had that idea, the only person
Speaker 1: we could possibly bring on was our good friend Jason Petty,
Speaker 1: a k A PROP. What what the LICKU read? What's
Speaker 1: up with that failed nation state? How y'all feeling like? Literally?
Speaker 1: I think I text PROP and I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to do this, and like it was like, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: no brainer. It's like they're so like you know, Robert myself,
Speaker 1: anybody else who has like a seventh grade level understanding
Speaker 1: of history has been like kind of flaring their arms
Speaker 1: like the crazy scientists in every movie. That's like, y'all,
Speaker 1: the aliens are coming. Guys, I don't understand how come
Speaker 1: nobody is seeing us telling y'all, we're standing on our
Speaker 1: heads yelling at you like this is point for point,
Speaker 1: like bar for bar, point for point. We've seen this before,
Speaker 1: and I don't understand what you don't understand. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: did this? Because I've been warning about this for quite
Speaker 1: a while and uh that it could happen here, and
Speaker 1: people continuously are like, I can't believe you predicted this,
Speaker 1: and it's like nobody predicted this. Everyone who was paying
Speaker 1: attention was like, oh, this is obviously going to happen
Speaker 1: because thousands of people are promising to do this. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's like the dog. My favorite one, my favorite meme
Speaker 1: going around was one with Ron Burgundy. He was like, wow,
Speaker 1: that estalated slowly over the past ten years, like yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I can't believe these people did exactly what
Speaker 1: they said they was gonna do. This is crazy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very frustrating. Um. And so you know, the
Speaker 1: reason we decided to do the special mini series Behind
Speaker 1: the Insurrections is that I think historically that's what this
Speaker 1: is called. That you're listening to the insurrection, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: and I did a similar thing last year when the
Speaker 1: uprising against the police started, where we kind of talked
Speaker 1: about the history of the police, and I thought that
Speaker 1: was useful to inform people both the context of why
Speaker 1: folks were angry for a lot of folks who maybe
Speaker 1: had never really thought that much about the police and
Speaker 1: didn't understand all the hatred. UM. And I also thought
Speaker 1: it was useful because understanding, you know, the history of
Speaker 1: something that you want to fight, is useful in fighting it. Um,
Speaker 1: whether it's the police state or a fascist insurrection. And
Speaker 1: understanding what other fascists have done throughout history and where
Speaker 1: they've succeeded and failed, and how the people opposing those
Speaker 1: fascists have succeeded or failed is important both for us
Speaker 1: to know what's coming next and to avoid making the
Speaker 1: same mistakes that other people made in the past that
Speaker 1: led to them being ruled by fascists, which I'd like
Speaker 1: to avoid. So naturally we're gonna start with Rome, right yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're gonna be starting with my old friend Benito,
Speaker 1: m Um big Benny as no one has any move
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. The thing that I like, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into this, but like off jump the in
Speaker 1: in my hopes to like, you know, help people figure
Speaker 1: out ways in roads too, you know, their family members
Speaker 1: who have been cooked by this, Like fascist movement is
Speaker 1: like is dig inside of you and understand what it
Speaker 1: feels like to be disenfranchised and what it feels like
Speaker 1: to feel like you've been left behind by those that
Speaker 1: are supposed to take care of you. And if you
Speaker 1: can understand that, you know, coupled with a person having
Speaker 1: really non powerful antennas to know that they're being fed bullshit,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Um, then I feel like
Speaker 1: you're you're like you're you're starting to get on. There's
Speaker 1: manual asked to like how to not let yourself and
Speaker 1: you trying to stop a fascist regime not incensing and
Speaker 1: creating martyrs out of them and confirming their feelings that uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Airby against them. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's just it's a matter of like getting behind that
Speaker 1: and being like, Okay, if this election was stolen, that
Speaker 1: would suck. You're right, that would suck if that was true.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, not though it's not. Yeah, it's not, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I mean, if a bunch of Satan
Speaker 1: worshiping pedophile wizards were eating all of our children, that
Speaker 1: would be a problem. We should fight that. But that's
Speaker 1: not happening. It's just not true. Bro. Yeah, the real
Speaker 1: pedophiles in power are more like the guy you think
Speaker 1: is the second Coming. Um. But yeah, yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about old old Benito Mussolini. Um moves.
Speaker 1: I started thinking about Benito as I was watching live
Speaker 1: stream footage of people breaking through the capital barricades and
Speaker 1: into offices with zip ties and weapons. Um. And I
Speaker 1: know that while this was happening, in the immediate wake
Speaker 1: of it, a lot of people started bringing up historical comparisons,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, I think a ton of those historic comparisons
Speaker 1: were bad. We're the wrong ones. To make a good
Speaker 1: example of this would be a ton of people who
Speaker 1: compared the events of the sixth to Krystal knocked the
Speaker 1: Night of Broken Glass. UM, and I think everyone here
Speaker 1: knows what that is. For those that don't listening, it
Speaker 1: was a pegram, which is a racial amass, racial assault
Speaker 1: like on members of a specific race basically, UM, that
Speaker 1: was instituted by the Nazi government against Jewish people in Germany.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of synagogues and Jewish owned businesses were burnt down
Speaker 1: on the space of a night. UM. Hundreds of people
Speaker 1: were killed. Um. And it was a nationwide racial attack
Speaker 1: carried out at the government's behest right. UM, that's not
Speaker 1: what we saw on the set. It's not this. Yeah
Speaker 1: and yeah, probably the most prominent person to make that
Speaker 1: comparison was our current governor or former governor of California
Speaker 1: and current Arnold Schwartzenegger. Arnold Schwarzenegger UM, whose video otherwise
Speaker 1: had some really good stuff in it about Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, I kind of dig it in the
Speaker 1: sense of, like the way he was talking about the
Speaker 1: remorse of people that was a part of it. I
Speaker 1: think if he was gonna pull the Austria card like
Speaker 1: it would have been a better although miss Leny's a
Speaker 1: better parallel. But yeah, when UM when they burned the
Speaker 1: parliament right before. Yeah, that's a more better comparison, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Then? Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, has a
Speaker 1: great TikTok content. He's got like a pet donkey that
Speaker 1: follows him around. I'm sure he does. I do. He's
Speaker 1: definitely like the like the meme of like, you know,
Speaker 1: when it's heartbreaking that the worst person you know, it's
Speaker 1: an excellent point, makes a really good point. Yeah, great point, bro,
Speaker 1: And I think his best point was just like how
Speaker 1: you know the victims of fascism continued long after the war,
Speaker 1: including the children of Nazis who you know were abused
Speaker 1: by parents and stuff. Great point to make, wrong about
Speaker 1: Christal Knoch. We we're talking about actually good historic comparisons
Speaker 1: and valuable ones to what happened on the sixth in
Speaker 1: d C. There are a few. One of them, as
Speaker 1: you noted, was the burning of the Austrian Parliament, which
Speaker 1: I think we're going to talk about a bit later
Speaker 1: in this series. Um. But and other folks have kind
Speaker 1: of much more aptly I think, compared what happened in
Speaker 1: the sixth to uh the Munich beer Hall push, which
Speaker 1: was Adolf Hitler's first attempt to seize power, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of good reasons to compare that to the sixth.
Speaker 1: It's not really a perfect comparison. None of them are
Speaker 1: um in part because when Hitler tried to overthrow the
Speaker 1: government starting in Munich, he was a political rabble rouser
Speaker 1: with no power who was trying to spark a mass revolution.
Speaker 1: And on January six it was like tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of the president's fans, including a lot of police officers,
Speaker 1: active duty soldiers, and elected leaders, who tried to take
Speaker 1: over the capital. It's a bit different. So if we're
Speaker 1: looking for a better historic parallel to January six, I
Speaker 1: think we might be better served by going back a
Speaker 1: year before the nineteen Beer Hall putch, when a completely
Speaker 1: different fascist, Benito Mussolini lad what came to be known
Speaker 1: as the March on rome Um. A lot of really
Speaker 1: good comparisons to what's happened, a lot of good lessons
Speaker 1: in the March of rome Um. So most people, good
Speaker 1: before you start is just if you could. It's you
Speaker 1: never really want to like reach into the past and
Speaker 1: draw like direct lines, if you will, but if you
Speaker 1: could think to yourself just as a general grid, if
Speaker 1: in the story. You own the side of Mussolini, you
Speaker 1: probably own the wrong side of history. I think we
Speaker 1: can say that completely. So now as you continue think
Speaker 1: about your position in this and you that might be
Speaker 1: able to tell you which side of history you should
Speaker 1: be all right now anyway going and if you're if
Speaker 1: you're rightfully on the side of history that's like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to stand with Mussolini, which I think
Speaker 1: the vast I think the vast majority of people listening
Speaker 1: to this are already there. I think one of the
Speaker 1: things this teaches is why the people who didn't want
Speaker 1: Mussolini to wind up and charge failed, you know, and
Speaker 1: and it's important to know that as well. Right, Um, So,
Speaker 1: most people are probably broadly familiar of Benito Mussolini, but
Speaker 1: because of how history went down, he tends to be
Speaker 1: remembered mostly as like Hitler's ridiculous and kind of sad sidekick,
Speaker 1: like the least threatening dictator on the axis side. Um,
Speaker 1: Mussolini doesn't wind up as like the frightening villain in
Speaker 1: a lot of movies, right, you know, Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: I ever thought of it like that, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's like you're just like, oh, you. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you Hitler light unless you was in unless you was
Speaker 1: in it, unless you was in Italy. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: even then Italy would have been it would have been
Speaker 1: better to be, you know, a Jewish person in Italy
Speaker 1: than in Germany. Not a high bar, you know, the
Speaker 1: lowest bar in history, actually minimal. Yeah, but yes, he
Speaker 1: he gets this kind of reputation of just being like
Speaker 1: incompetent and the junior partner to Hitler and not very frightening.
Speaker 1: And that really misses a lot of the history and
Speaker 1: what what people at the time when Mussolini rose to
Speaker 1: power thought, because Hitler actually in some ways idolized Mussolini
Speaker 1: UM and he patterned his career off of Mussolini's career.
Speaker 1: The Munich Beer Hall Putsch was inspired directly by the
Speaker 1: March on Rome. Mussolini was not just the first um
Speaker 1: like Mussolini was the first fascist dictator. He was the
Speaker 1: man who created fascism as a political ideology that actually
Speaker 1: took power. Right. We talked about Gabrielle de Nunzio, who
Speaker 1: kind of invented a lot of the ideas that became
Speaker 1: fascism as a and who was a contemporary of Mussolini's.
Speaker 1: But Mussolini is the guy who made fascism work for
Speaker 1: the first time. And when I say work, I mean
Speaker 1: actually seized power, not that is a good government or anything. Um.
Speaker 1: He was the first fascist who seized power from a
Speaker 1: functional democracy. So he's he is not an incompetent buffoon
Speaker 1: and you kind of you it behooves you to understand
Speaker 1: how he succeeded in the way that he did. Um.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do a full set episodes on his life
Speaker 1: at some point on Behind the Bastards, but since we're
Speaker 1: just focused on the March on Rome today, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give a little cliffs notes of Benito's life prior to
Speaker 1: him coming to power. So Benito aml car Andrea Mussolini,
Speaker 1: which is quite a name. That is a mafia boss
Speaker 1: right there, except for the Andrea, right, except for that Andrea.
Speaker 1: When he got baptizes Christening, they gave him Andrea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: either that or it's like a boy named Sue situation,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that's actually a bad idea. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: So he was born on July three in a small
Speaker 1: Italian town that I'm not going to try to pronounce
Speaker 1: right now. His father Alessandro was a blacksmith and a socialist.
Speaker 1: He named Benito after Mexican President Benito Warez, who's the
Speaker 1: name sake of Juarez and who was the first indigenous
Speaker 1: president of Mexico. Um and was a famous liberal. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting. I had super interest. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: uh yeah in nineteen o two. So that's like his background.
Speaker 1: He goes a very left wing, right, like, your parents
Speaker 1: are naming you after the liberal indigenous president of Mexico.
Speaker 1: Like that's that's quite a thing. That's a flex right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what a pivot. Yeah, this guy is one of the
Speaker 1: great all time historic pivots, you know. Um. In nineteen
Speaker 1: o two, Benito fled to Switzerland to avoid compulsory military service.
Speaker 1: He became active in the Italian socialist movement from Afar,
Speaker 1: and he grew obsessed with the writing of syndicalist Georges Morel,
Speaker 1: who believed that capitalist democracy needed to be overthrown by
Speaker 1: a combination of general strikes and violent direct action. So
Speaker 1: he's he's a socialist, he's a leftist, but he's a
Speaker 1: fan of these guys who are like, we need a
Speaker 1: revolution and violence is okay in that revolution. Right, that's
Speaker 1: like a big, big chunk of his early ideological upbringing.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o or, Benito returned to Italy under a
Speaker 1: general amnesty for draft dodgers in exchange for which he's
Speaker 1: he had to serve in the military for two years.
Speaker 1: He did his time, he got out, and he became
Speaker 1: a left wing journalist and a firebrand, participating in a
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven riot protesting Italy's imperialist war in Libya. He
Speaker 1: did night or five months in prison for this. So
Speaker 1: not just like a talker, like he puts his skin
Speaker 1: in the game and he does time protesting and imperialist war.
Speaker 1: Dang all right, okay, yeah, yeah he was. He was.
Speaker 1: He was not like wishy washy about this stuff. I
Speaker 1: guess it's the point I'm making. So as a hardcore leftist,
Speaker 1: Mussolini hated the monarchy, which in Italy at the time
Speaker 1: was similar in its kind of power to the British monarchy.
Speaker 1: Italy is a constitutional monarchy at this point, so more
Speaker 1: or less a democracy. But they've got a king and
Speaker 1: he has some power. Um. In nineteen twelve, Mussolini stated
Speaker 1: the king is nothing more than a useless citizen, and
Speaker 1: the Italian flag is fit only for a dung heap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: burn it all down, burn it all down kind of guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very much, very much. Now, it may seem odd that
Speaker 1: the first fascist dictator was a committed left wing activist
Speaker 1: in his youth, but it's really not that strange. This
Speaker 1: is a pattern that we see repeating itself over and
Speaker 1: over throughout the history of fascism. In more recent times,
Speaker 1: just to talk about stuff that's happened in the last
Speaker 1: like four years, Jason Kessler, who's the fascist who planned
Speaker 1: and organized the first Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,
Speaker 1: got his starting political activism and occupy in New York.
Speaker 1: You can find in Unicorn Rights discord jets him talking
Speaker 1: about being very indu occupy at the time. Um Andrew Arenheimer,
Speaker 1: we've who's a neo Nazi hacker and a prominent member
Speaker 1: of the fascist movement in this country, claims to have
Speaker 1: been an organizer at Occupy Wall Street. I found discussions
Speaker 1: in Unicorn Riots archive where we've debates with other Nazis
Speaker 1: who were there about how Occupied could have been handled
Speaker 1: differently and been more successful. And for a lot of
Speaker 1: these Nazis, the failure of the occupy movement to garner
Speaker 1: any real change, and the ease with which the police
Speaker 1: swept it aside were major factors in radicalizing these guys
Speaker 1: to the far right. One fascists that I found in
Speaker 1: a discord conversation said quote, I was at Occupy Wall
Speaker 1: Street in two thousand eleven. It was black pilling as fuck,
Speaker 1: by which he means the experience was so disheartening that
Speaker 1: it pushed him towards fascism. Um. And that's really what
Speaker 1: we see with Mussolini. Um. He's very involved in left
Speaker 1: wing politics. He gets arrested for them, and he sees
Speaker 1: them continue to fail. Right. They don't succeed in overthrowing
Speaker 1: the government, they don't succeed in pushing the changes that
Speaker 1: he believes are necessary, and it starts to embitter him.
Speaker 1: I I often think that like some of that happens
Speaker 1: in the black community with just also like like still
Speaker 1: trying to wrap my brain around Like I saw a
Speaker 1: video Crips for Trump on the on the UH at
Speaker 1: the at the at the at the insurrection earlier. It's
Speaker 1: like Chris for Chump west Side something something in and
Speaker 1: I could not wrap my brain around, Like how does
Speaker 1: will work? But I think it's it. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of it does have to do with the fact that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we've tried so hard, we put our flag
Speaker 1: in the sand with this particular way of approaching, you know,
Speaker 1: political change, and it's not working, that you're like, well
Speaker 1: forget it, you know, and then like, well, maybe this
Speaker 1: will work, Maybe this going this direction speaks more to like,
Speaker 1: since the Empire the machine just met us with might
Speaker 1: and just overpowered us with might because they're just they're
Speaker 1: just more powerful, you'll only recourse is to be like,
Speaker 1: well I need to be more powerful than that. I
Speaker 1: don't know, yes, yes, that's exactly when you when you're
Speaker 1: I think you're really onto something like when you're when
Speaker 1: you're getting your ass kicked. And I think some of
Speaker 1: this is that I think it's probably more common with
Speaker 1: males who are kind of activism, like and you get
Speaker 1: your pride is harm by getting the ship kicked out
Speaker 1: of you repeatedly, by the repeated failure to win, to
Speaker 1: advance by the sheer strength of your opponent. I do
Speaker 1: think that that can have the effect of pushing people
Speaker 1: in that kind of more violent authoritarian direction where you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I just want to win, Like, yeah, I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: surprised if that has if that's a part of what's
Speaker 1: going on, And I think it is for Mussolini, because
Speaker 1: the switch for him really happens as a result of
Speaker 1: World War One. Um. So basically what you've got with
Speaker 1: World War one, Archduke friends Ferdinand get shot Dad along
Speaker 1: with his wife, and it starts this this series of
Speaker 1: events right um, where Austria is going to invade Serbia
Speaker 1: and Russia is going to come in on the side
Speaker 1: of and like it starts this whole domino effect. And
Speaker 1: so there's months between his assassination and the actual outbreak
Speaker 1: of the war where everyone knows that Europe is gearing
Speaker 1: up for a war. And prior to that happening, the
Speaker 1: international left, the communist international, largely had been very anti war,
Speaker 1: very united across national boundaries. But as soon as a
Speaker 1: mass European war becomes a reality, ship starts to splinter.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of folks who had been
Speaker 1: socialist leftist like workers who instead of kind of siding
Speaker 1: with workers Solidarity or like, well, I'm gonna side with
Speaker 1: my country on this um. And you know that's not
Speaker 1: the only thing that's happening. There's also like this, the
Speaker 1: Second International tries to organize like some sort of workers
Speaker 1: strike or something like. There's a couple of ideas about
Speaker 1: how they might stop the war by organizing workers, and
Speaker 1: all of these ideas fail. Um. And you know, all
Speaker 1: of these ideas fail, and Europe lurches towards war. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of like this moment where this big international
Speaker 1: left wing movement shows it that it's toothless in the
Speaker 1: eyes of at least of the eyes of a guy
Speaker 1: like Mussolini. Like we said like this, we weren't going
Speaker 1: to let this kind of thing happen, and now it's happening. Um.
Speaker 1: So that that for one thing as a source of
Speaker 1: frustration to a lot of people. Um. Mussolini is more
Speaker 1: directly enraged by something that happens earlier in nineteen fourteen, UM,
Speaker 1: something called Red Week, which was when a bunch of
Speaker 1: workers there's a big mass workers revolt in Italy that
Speaker 1: was brutally put down by Italian police and the Royal army. UM.
Speaker 1: And this had kind of convinced him that the bourgeoisie
Speaker 1: leaders of left wing political parties, the actual like liberals
Speaker 1: and socialists and government didn't really support revolution and he did,
Speaker 1: so all of this stuff is kind of in the mix,
Speaker 1: leading to him getting kind of black pilled, to use
Speaker 1: the words of that other Nazi. Um And Benito doesn't
Speaker 1: come out as against the war as a result of this. Instead,
Speaker 1: he decides to become incredibly pro war because he thinks
Speaker 1: it's going to accelerate the collapse of the Italian state
Speaker 1: and lead to a revolution, right. Um So, in mid September,
Speaker 1: after Italy announced her neutrality in the war, Benito tells
Speaker 1: the staff of the newspaper he worked at, Avanti, which
Speaker 1: was a socialist paper, that he'd become convinced that war
Speaker 1: alone could bring revolution to Italy. Um So, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: kind of like an acceleration is we need to go
Speaker 1: to war because that's going to force a revolution, is
Speaker 1: the only way? Yeah, yeah, I I yeah. When you
Speaker 1: it's it's a always at least in my head, like
Speaker 1: I've I've kind of let go of the like linear
Speaker 1: swing of like you know, far right far left in
Speaker 1: my brain. I know, we use that because that's how
Speaker 1: we understand the world right now, but like it seems
Speaker 1: much more like circular to where it's like, uh, they
Speaker 1: ended authoritarianism. At the end of the day, they end
Speaker 1: with a with a strong dude like so so it
Speaker 1: was crazy like yeah, so like the further left you go,
Speaker 1: You're still gonna end that a dude overpowering. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I which I was gonna say, which which why
Speaker 1: like I'm now leaning more towards thinking in anarchist ways
Speaker 1: of being, Like, you gotta get off this loop. It's
Speaker 1: just this the whole it's there. We're gonna land in
Speaker 1: the same place at some point, somebody's going to get oppressed,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and what you're so, there's a couple
Speaker 1: of things, a couple of terms that are used a
Speaker 1: lot for the kind of thought process that you just explained.
Speaker 1: One of them is horseshoe theory, which is this idea
Speaker 1: that the left and the right, when you go far enough,
Speaker 1: come around to the same place. And I I don't
Speaker 1: subscribe to that because I don't think that left wing
Speaker 1: ideals and far right ideals are super similar. But I
Speaker 1: do think that what you see that looks like that.
Speaker 1: The reason why the far left and say Soviet Russia
Speaker 1: under Stalin and the totalitarianism of Hitler have a lot
Speaker 1: of similarities and similar body counts. Is because authoritarians always
Speaker 1: trying to say exactly exactly it's the authoritarian left, authoritarian right.
Speaker 1: And Mussolini is always an authoritarian leftist. So it's easy
Speaker 1: to go authoritarian right. If you're anti authoritarian, it's a
Speaker 1: lot harder to wind up at that. We should have
Speaker 1: a dictator place. Sometimes get off the loop, because if
Speaker 1: it ends at authoritarianism, then this is not where I
Speaker 1: need to be. Yeah, exactly, if it ends with like
Speaker 1: all of the we're being in one dude or a
Speaker 1: tiny number of people's hands, yeah, no, that's not what
Speaker 1: I want. It's like somewhere on this horse too, I
Speaker 1: knew that that wasn't a good idea. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, We need to get off the ride. And
Speaker 1: and Mussolini is very much just a guy who's he's
Speaker 1: of that, he's he's always been kind of an authoritarian
Speaker 1: um in part because he is very in love with
Speaker 1: his own ideas and thinking. And that's the same when
Speaker 1: he's on the left as when he's on the right.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's not a clean process of him
Speaker 1: going from socialist to fascist, but it happens over the
Speaker 1: course of not just World War One, but ramping up
Speaker 1: to getting Italy involved in World War One. So Italy had,
Speaker 1: prior to the outbreak of hostilities been allied with the
Speaker 1: Central Powers, so they should have come in the war
Speaker 1: on Germany's side. But they, very intelligently, We're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're not We're not doing this. This does seems like
Speaker 1: a good idea, but and that's why. So they say
Speaker 1: we're not getting involved in the war. And Mussolini becomes
Speaker 1: a pro war activist, trying to force Italy to come
Speaker 1: into the war on the side of the Allies, so
Speaker 1: fighting against the people they've been allied with before. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote now from a write up in nineteen
Speaker 1: fourteen to nineteen eighteen online, which is a World War
Speaker 1: One encyclopedia. It's a very good resource. And all this
Speaker 1: after his late October editorial demanded Italian intervention. Socialist outrage
Speaker 1: prompted Mussolini's resignation. So he's forced to resign from the
Speaker 1: party he had been a member of. When his pro
Speaker 1: interventionalist newspaper will Popolo, the Italia, the Italia, the the
Speaker 1: Italian people. I think it is what it stands for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not appeared in mid November, the party expelled him. Mussolini
Speaker 1: concealed its funding by industrialists, the French, his wealthy lover
Speaker 1: Margharita Saffrati, and possibly Russian agents. For six months, through
Speaker 1: editorials and demonstrations, he promoted the interventionalist movement, Collaborating with
Speaker 1: syndicalist Filippo Corradoni, Mussolini demanded war against Italy's allies Germany
Speaker 1: and Austria Hungary to demolish bulwarks against European Revolution of
Speaker 1: victorious war would forge a national mass movement demanding political change.
Speaker 1: If the government rejected war, Mussolini threatened revolution most Italian's
Speaker 1: favorite piece. But Vittorio Emmanuel, the third King of Italy,
Speaker 1: forced a war declaration on twenty four of May nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of interesting stuff that's happening there.
Speaker 1: One of them is that Mussolini has an ideological reason
Speaker 1: for wanting war, because he thinks it's going to lead
Speaker 1: to revolution. Another is that he's very likely getting paid
Speaker 1: by foreign powers in order to incite Italy to come
Speaker 1: in on their side. Um, kind of like our ad
Speaker 1: sponsors who pay us, you know, who does come in
Speaker 1: sponsored violence against trying to accelerate our wallets. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: accelerate your wallets, accelerate our wallets. There we go. We
Speaker 1: can't we had we landed on it. Here's products. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're back. Um. So yeah, we're talking about Mussolini becomes
Speaker 1: this very much like interventionalist figure, and there's a mix
Speaker 1: of ideology and foreign backing that kind of pushes him
Speaker 1: towards it. And I could talk about websites like the
Speaker 1: Gray Zone and they're weird Russian funding and how they're
Speaker 1: ostensibly left wing but also pro imperialist intervention when some
Speaker 1: countries do it, but I won't because we need to
Speaker 1: move on to the story of Benito Mussolini. But we've
Speaker 1: seen these patterns happen recently as well. So Mussolini was
Speaker 1: obviously just one very prominent voice in favor of war.
Speaker 1: He was a major pro war figure, but he was
Speaker 1: probably was not the only one, and he was probably
Speaker 1: less influential than Gabrielle de Nunzio, who again we covered
Speaker 1: in a two party that I'd recommend people listen to,
Speaker 1: and to his minimal credit, after helping to monger his
Speaker 1: nation into war, Mussolini joined the army and fought as
Speaker 1: a burstiglieri uh, which is like a marksman. It's almost
Speaker 1: like a special forces unit, right, like it's an elite
Speaker 1: military unit. Um, kind of like the Army Rangers, it seems. Um.
Speaker 1: And he was wounded at the front by an exploding
Speaker 1: mortar in one of Italy's many bloody stalemates with Austria.
Speaker 1: Since he'd become a very public face of the pro
Speaker 1: war movement, the king came to visit him twice while
Speaker 1: he was in the hospital. Benito became a bona fide
Speaker 1: celebrity and when the war ended this provided him with
Speaker 1: a great deal of political capital. He moved further and
Speaker 1: further right, pulled in by the spell of Gabrielle de
Speaker 1: Nunzio's proto fascist rhetoric when Italy was screwed over by
Speaker 1: her allies with the spoils of war, because like, Italy
Speaker 1: had come in on the side of the allies, but
Speaker 1: they didn't really get ship at the end of it,
Speaker 1: Like they wanted a lot more territory, more of Austria,
Speaker 1: and they kind of got sucked out of it. Um.
Speaker 1: And that pisss off the Italian right who feel like
Speaker 1: we fought and bled and lost our comrades for this
Speaker 1: and we didn't get anything. And it's because of our
Speaker 1: lay mass left wing government. Um, that's how a lot
Speaker 1: of folks feel. Um And yeah, Mussolini becomes is basically
Speaker 1: by the time the war ins Is is pretty entrenched
Speaker 1: in the growing far right in Italy and he supports
Speaker 1: Gabrielle Benunzio when Denunzio leads an army of Italian Special
Speaker 1: Forces veterans to occupy the city of fume Um and
Speaker 1: this is we again. We talk about this in our
Speaker 1: episodes on de Nunzio. But fume is this city that
Speaker 1: was part of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia gets created at wor World
Speaker 1: War One ends and they get this city that Italy
Speaker 1: thought should be theirs. So Donunzio leads an army of
Speaker 1: retired Special Forces veterans to take it and they turn
Speaker 1: it into this weird it's like this melting pot because
Speaker 1: in you know, nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen, you've got all
Speaker 1: these ideologies that are like still kind of forming. Anarchism
Speaker 1: and communism and fascism are popular in a lot of
Speaker 1: like similar circles of people. There's a lot of interplay
Speaker 1: between them at this period because they're all kind of
Speaker 1: new ideologies being developed and the same kinds of people
Speaker 1: who are interested in radical politics are all hanging out together.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, so Fume is like a big melting pot
Speaker 1: for all these kinds of things and it winds up
Speaker 1: being the place where a lot of what becomes fascism
Speaker 1: gets cooked up. It's like, that's that's the ententy you say,
Speaker 1: because like I do picture it as like this, like yeah,
Speaker 1: like planets for like nebulous balls of gas where it's
Speaker 1: like it's all the same elements and like you know,
Speaker 1: you're it's still like, yeah, all this stuff is still
Speaker 1: kind of coalescing and stuff like that. And but I
Speaker 1: also think this particular moment in history for me is
Speaker 1: is it's it should be very anchoring or or calibrating
Speaker 1: for all of us, because what it tells you is
Speaker 1: that borders are bullshit, like like it's not real. Borders
Speaker 1: aren't real, Like you know what I'm saying, Like somebody
Speaker 1: just decided that fumes in Yugoslavia, Like Yugoslavia came out
Speaker 1: of this plot of land has been here the whole time.
Speaker 1: On sometime I drew a line around, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, So like a large chunk of the city's
Speaker 1: population are Italian, Like yes, yeah, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: they just woke up in another country, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So like that to me, like I need
Speaker 1: everybody remember that when we're talking about our modern politics,
Speaker 1: like the sick came from here and it's made up well,
Speaker 1: and when we're talking about why so many people Because
Speaker 1: one of the things you see in this period is
Speaker 1: a lot of people who were anarchists become fascists, and
Speaker 1: a lot of fascists become anarchists. And it's because, in
Speaker 1: part because when you when you live through a thing
Speaker 1: where suddenly tens of millions of people wake up one
Speaker 1: day in a completely different country than they went to
Speaker 1: sleep in, everything is more malleable, right, Everything is more malleable.
Speaker 1: And it's not obviously like fascism of an anarchism are
Speaker 1: not similar ideologies, but people who are into both may
Speaker 1: be drawn to certain similar things. For example, a major
Speaker 1: aspect of fascism is the cult of action for action's sake,
Speaker 1: the beauty of violence and physical exertion and speed, and
Speaker 1: a lot of anarchists were also into direct action, physical violence,
Speaker 1: fighting like and so if you've got communities that are
Speaker 1: kind of embracing this idea of action for action sake,
Speaker 1: some of them are anarchists, some of them are fascists,
Speaker 1: but a lot of times they're gonna wind up in
Speaker 1: the same fucking places, you know, which is kind of you. Also,
Speaker 1: if you look at Germany prior to Hitler's Rice to Power,
Speaker 1: there were times when the communists and the fascists fought
Speaker 1: alongside each other against the cops. It happened. It's a
Speaker 1: thing that occurred, just this understanding that like, whatever we
Speaker 1: have right now isn't working exactly, like you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like, and so you're all gonna be in
Speaker 1: the same space. Yeah, And a lot of people in
Speaker 1: Fume they're not. They maybe have called themselves a fascist
Speaker 1: and anarchist at the time, where a communist it wasn't
Speaker 1: really settled in their minds. They just knew that what
Speaker 1: they had grown up with was wrong, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: And yeah, So Fume is one of the things that
Speaker 1: comes out of this experiment in Fume is the Italian
Speaker 1: fascist movement gets like solidified in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: But it starts before like there's thinkers pushing it before then,
Speaker 1: and while do Nunzio is off on his adventure and
Speaker 1: fume um, Benito Mussolini forms a fascist party in March
Speaker 1: twenty three of nineteen nineteen. Now, a lot of the
Speaker 1: impetus behind the early fascists in Italy were demilitarized army
Speaker 1: veterans and particularly special forces guys. UM. Most of the
Speaker 1: fighters who accompanied Nuncio to Fume were members of the
Speaker 1: r d T, which is like the Italian equivalent of
Speaker 1: like Special Forces guys. Like. They were very elite soldiers.
Speaker 1: Mussolini had served in an elite unit of Marksman. Um.
Speaker 1: There were a bunch of like the the guys who
Speaker 1: followed de Nunzio, the RDD were like trench like stormers.
Speaker 1: They would do like what the German stormtroopers would do, um,
Speaker 1: and they were terrifying people. They would go into battle
Speaker 1: with like knives in their teeth and grenades in both hands,
Speaker 1: like running directly ahead of artillery barrages and like this
Speaker 1: is where like a lot of that cult of action
Speaker 1: for actions saying these are adrenaline junkies. That's a huge
Speaker 1: part of early fascists in Italy. And Germany. These are
Speaker 1: guys who became addicted to adrenaline during the war and
Speaker 1: can't stop fighting when they get back home. And it's
Speaker 1: a thing that is a factor in our modern fascist movements, right,
Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of vets and cops and
Speaker 1: stuff wind up in that. UM. I'm also interested in
Speaker 1: just the whenever somebody says I started a political party,
Speaker 1: I'm like, logistically, what does that look? Was there like paperwork?
Speaker 1: You file? Like, how do you style? Like? I still
Speaker 1: think like, yeah, we'll start a party. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in just a second. I want to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about some of these demilitarized vets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a form online somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. The r d
Speaker 1: D had been formed in June of nineteen seventeen UM
Speaker 1: as a special forces unit in Italy. UM and they
Speaker 1: were like when they were like sort of um like new.
Speaker 1: One of their commanding officers address the unit, these very
Speaker 1: young men, most of whom came from a peasant background,
Speaker 1: who had gotten to be very good at fighting, extremely
Speaker 1: experienced veterans, and he tells the soldiers, you are the first,
Speaker 1: the best, the future owners of Italy, the new Italian generation.
Speaker 1: Fearless and brilliant. You will prepare the great future of
Speaker 1: Italy the smile of the beautiful Italian woman as your reward.
Speaker 1: You can't tell, you can't tell, no, little like young hungry,
Speaker 1: violent dude. That no, exactly right, Like you see the
Speaker 1: seeds of this, like why so many any of these
Speaker 1: guys become fascists? And as an aside, one of the
Speaker 1: emblems on their uniform that they wore in their hats
Speaker 1: was a skull and crossbones, which is the same basic
Speaker 1: emblem that the Nazi s s, which started as like
Speaker 1: Nazi street fighters before they were a military. And you
Speaker 1: know what they wore, right, Like a lot of the
Speaker 1: same ships happening. These guys. The r d D are
Speaker 1: famous for giving the stiff armed Roman salute the sig
Speaker 1: hile as most people know it. Um like, so a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff again, you see it all cooking
Speaker 1: up in World War One, And by the time the
Speaker 1: war came to an end, the liberal biblical elite in
Speaker 1: Italy knew that these young guys were terrifying that like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, we trained up an entire generation of incredibly
Speaker 1: violent and competent at violence young men, and now we
Speaker 1: have nothing for them to do, like and um that
Speaker 1: they realized this as a problem, they disbanded the r
Speaker 1: d D like immediately after the war ends. It takes
Speaker 1: less than a month. But these guys are still all
Speaker 1: out there and they have no plan for demilitarizing them.
Speaker 1: And again I could again make some comments about what
Speaker 1: happened in Iraq after we dissolved the entire Iraqi army. Yes,
Speaker 1: now it's never a good idea. You have to take
Speaker 1: care of these people afterwards, otherwise they murder people in
Speaker 1: the streets sometime or become the nexus of a fascist
Speaker 1: political party. Um so again. Four months after the armistice
Speaker 1: ended World War One, three months after the r d
Speaker 1: D are disbanded, on March twenty, nineteen nineteen, Benito Mussolini
Speaker 1: puts together a group of one hundred angry young men,
Speaker 1: a mix of Italian war veterans, a lot of them
Speaker 1: special forces type guys, former socialist elected leaders and journalists.
Speaker 1: They meet in Milan and they declare the formation of
Speaker 1: the Fascist Party. So that's how it happens. You get
Speaker 1: a hundred dudes together and you're like, we're a fucking
Speaker 1: political party. Now, start recruiting, and one of Benito's first
Speaker 1: moves is to start recruiting from the disaffected ranks of
Speaker 1: former soldiers. He brings in hundreds of these guys and
Speaker 1: he reorganizes them into paramilitary squads uniformed in black shirts
Speaker 1: and red Fez caps. Mussolini's Black Shirts start going after
Speaker 1: their political opponents in the street now in night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like the formula doc. Find somebody angry and
Speaker 1: give him a uniform, Give him a uniform, tell him
Speaker 1: it's okay to go out and beat the ship out
Speaker 1: of people they already don't like. And I'm already angry,
Speaker 1: I'm already pissy. And you say, those dudes are your problem.
Speaker 1: And there's in any society that has just gone through
Speaker 1: a war and is dealing with economic inequality, which Italy
Speaker 1: is at this period, in economic collapse and incompetent political leadership,
Speaker 1: you will be able to find tents, sorry, you will
Speaker 1: be able to find tens of thousands of those whom
Speaker 1: in her are like, yeah, I'll make this my whole life. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Oh where whatever, Fred Perry shirts, fuck it, let's do it.
Speaker 1: I'll storm the capital. Yes, it's very easy. Yeah, um yes,
Speaker 1: uh so, Mussolini forms the Fascist Party. He starts organizing
Speaker 1: all these squads of black shirts, and for an idea
Speaker 1: of how fast this gets out of hand, in nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: Mussolini starts the Fascist Party with a hundred men. By
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one, there were three hundred thousand members. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna pause here for another little rant about
Speaker 1: modern anti fascism, because this is something that's also relevant
Speaker 1: to us. Over the last four years, since antifa became
Speaker 1: a household name after the first Unite the Right rally
Speaker 1: in Charlottesville, liberal celebrities and politicians have repeatedly urged people
Speaker 1: not to confront fascists in the streets. Some of even
Speaker 1: complained about doxing, which is the public naming and shaming
Speaker 1: a fascist activist who are caught in the wild doing
Speaker 1: Nazi stuff. Now, the general argument tended to go something
Speaker 1: like this, people showing up to fight them just emboldens
Speaker 1: them and brings more of them out. Ignore them, and
Speaker 1: they'll go away. This was more or less the attitude
Speaker 1: of most, but not all, American liberals throughout much of
Speaker 1: the Trump administration. Antifa tended to be condemned as often
Speaker 1: as groups like the Proud Boys, Police were given a
Speaker 1: free hand to use violence on anti fascists, while fascist
Speaker 1: street movements were ignored or directly enabled by law enforcement
Speaker 1: and by political parties. Well a political party. These organizations,
Speaker 1: as a result, grew steadily in power and reach for
Speaker 1: several years now. On January two, liberal activist Amy Siskin tweeted,
Speaker 1: if you live in d C, stay off the streets.
Speaker 1: On January six, let the DC police take care of
Speaker 1: the white supremacists like they did in Oregon yesterday. I
Speaker 1: actually think it will be fun to watch L O L. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not a take that aged. Well ah yeah. Now, when
Speaker 1: anti fascists say fascist movements have to be confronted immediately
Speaker 1: and often with physical force, they're not always at least
Speaker 1: using bluster or bravado. There's certainly adrenaline junkies within the
Speaker 1: ranks of man. I've met a few of those people. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: But that's not entirely even mostly what that is. It is,
Speaker 1: in fact, a calculation based on a century of documented history.
Speaker 1: Um again, from a hundred to three hundred thousand in
Speaker 1: about two and a half year. Yeah wow, because ain't
Speaker 1: nobody say nothing? Yeah, because they were not enough with
Speaker 1: set You're not enough with set. It's it's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: crazy when you're dealing with like when you, like I said,
Speaker 1: you're already angry. You're already like all you understand is might,
Speaker 1: and it's like you can't reason with somebody that only
Speaker 1: understand might. Yes, but then if I go meet you
Speaker 1: with might and I don't beat you, then we all
Speaker 1: wasted our time and you you feel vindicated because I
Speaker 1: wasn't able to stop you. It's just yeah, this the
Speaker 1: the whole the whole concept just puts everybody in a pickle.
Speaker 1: It's not an easy thing to solve. Yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: solve it, you know what I'm saying, Yeah, I like,
Speaker 1: I mean, the best solution is to oppose them with
Speaker 1: overwhelming numbers, because that actually drastically diminishes the amount of
Speaker 1: violence that there will be because none, none of these
Speaker 1: guys want to get into a fight. If they're out
Speaker 1: number three hundred to one, that's not when the violence happens.
Speaker 1: It's when they have the numbers, or there's parody of numbers,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And that's why people were saying, like,
Speaker 1: what if tens of thousands of people have showed up
Speaker 1: in the streets of DC to protests. I don't think
Speaker 1: they would have made it through the capital barricades. Now
Speaker 1: it's a pandemic. None of this is a simple situation,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't simple in Italy. And we'll talk. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk now about the anti fascist resistance in Italy
Speaker 1: because in Italian, like Italian fascism did face substantial resistance
Speaker 1: from anarchists and other anti fascists, um, and we're to
Speaker 1: talk about why that didn't wind up working out. Much
Speaker 1: of the anti fascist resistance in Italy also came from
Speaker 1: members of the r d D, from other like uh
Speaker 1: elite soldiers who just like weren't Nazis right, hadn't or
Speaker 1: fascists who hadn't been pushed right who had gotten left instead,
Speaker 1: or who just didn't still believed in the idea of democracy.
Speaker 1: Because again, anti fascists in Italy there's a mix of
Speaker 1: like the hard but also just like people who are
Speaker 1: republican right and then like the sense of I support
Speaker 1: a republican form of government, not like not like a
Speaker 1: modern republicans totally different. So the inciting incident for the
Speaker 1: violence between anti fascists and fascists in Italy is generally
Speaker 1: seen to as having been an attack Mussolini ordered on
Speaker 1: April fifteenth, nineteen nineteen, against the newspaper he used to
Speaker 1: write for Avanti, which was the Socialist party in newspaper Um. Now,
Speaker 1: Italian fascists were courageous and often well organized, but they
Speaker 1: had to contend with not just fascists but the police
Speaker 1: in the army. This meant that the deck was stacked
Speaker 1: against them from the beginning. Meanwhile, events and Fume caused
Speaker 1: Mussolini to realize that he had an advantage in the
Speaker 1: fact that the police and the army were inherently sympathetic
Speaker 1: to fascists. So again we talked about Donunzio's occupation of
Speaker 1: Fume Um in another episode, but a brief refresher here's worthwhile.
Speaker 1: In short, Uh, he occupies Fume for about fifteen months. Um,
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of art and weird sex and political churning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: things go a little wild, and eventually the King of
Speaker 1: Italy like is forced to do something. So King Victor
Speaker 1: Emmanuel the Third, whose nickname was little Sword because he's
Speaker 1: a tiny guy. Um, at least he all things to
Speaker 1: be called sword. Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean they're Italians,
Speaker 1: you know, what they're saying. Yeah, that's called it. You
Speaker 1: can't be the king and called little sword. You like,
Speaker 1: he's not a very good king. So um, he's very
Speaker 1: sympathetic to what do Nunzio is doing. He wants Italy
Speaker 1: to control Fume, right, so he thinks that de Nunzio
Speaker 1: and his proto fascists are in the right. But also
Speaker 1: Fume went to Yugoslavia by international treaty and he's not
Speaker 1: about to go to war with the rest of Europe
Speaker 1: over a city of sixty thou people. So he has
Speaker 1: to send in the army and navy to clear Denuncio
Speaker 1: out in December of nineteen. Now, after this do Nunzio
Speaker 1: spell over the r d D and the other really
Speaker 1: hardened war veterans who had like gone to him and
Speaker 1: us like they're his spell over them is broken and
Speaker 1: they switched their allegiance to Mussolini. So these guys, the
Speaker 1: best fighters, like Mussolini's early guys, aren't really as competent.
Speaker 1: The people who had taken Fume, who were like really
Speaker 1: actually hard and dedicated, um to fucking shut up, Like
Speaker 1: those people start swarming over to Mussolini in mass after
Speaker 1: December of nineteen twenty and they expand the ranks of
Speaker 1: the black Shirts significantly. Um And Mussolini doesn't just benefit
Speaker 1: in that way, he also takes a really important lesson
Speaker 1: away from what happens in Fume. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: read a quote from the Warfare History Network, who did
Speaker 1: a great rite up on all of this. This is
Speaker 1: them describing what Mussolini learns from this occupation. The police
Speaker 1: would often overlook fascist depredations in favor of attacking their
Speaker 1: traditional leftist enemies, the socialists. The police would also fire
Speaker 1: on opponents of the monarchy more importantly, the Duce Observed,
Speaker 1: which is Mussolini's nickname, So would the military. Therefore, he
Speaker 1: realized he had to win over the king, the police,
Speaker 1: and the armed forces by a clever mix of both
Speaker 1: public bluss and behind the scenes old fashioned political maneuvering
Speaker 1: to attain appointed or elective office by legal means. In
Speaker 1: other words, do Nunzio. He realizes Denuncio was able to
Speaker 1: get this far and occupy the city because the army
Speaker 1: wasn't willing to fight him. The police weren't willing to
Speaker 1: stop him while he was marching there because they're sympathetic
Speaker 1: but when do Nunzio put himself in opposition to the
Speaker 1: Italian crown and the will of the government, the police
Speaker 1: in the army cracked down. They did their duty because
Speaker 1: they're loyal to the state inherently. So if he's going
Speaker 1: to win, he can't be fighting them, and he can
Speaker 1: make use of the fact that they're sympathetic if he
Speaker 1: just becomes part of the government. That's the way Mussolini realizes.
Speaker 1: Fascism is not going to win by a revolution. Fascism
Speaker 1: is going to win by democratic means, because the deck
Speaker 1: is stacked in our favor. If we try it that way.
Speaker 1: If we try to lead a violent revolution, they'll murder
Speaker 1: us like they would anyone trying to lead a violent revolution.
Speaker 1: If we become part of the government, they'll help us
Speaker 1: crush our enemies and will gain power. Dude, that yeah,
Speaker 1: the finesse because it's yeah, it's when you lay it out,
Speaker 1: it's pretty logical, you know, Like, yeah, a monarch will
Speaker 1: talk about something that's lasted thousands, it's in their d
Speaker 1: n a dog, Like you can't you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: just it's too it's like it's too much to ask. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, it's too much to ask
Speaker 1: these people to try to like go against their very
Speaker 1: nature to be like, but if you if you include
Speaker 1: the crown, you keep you're king. We're just gonna get
Speaker 1: rid of the left. Yeah like them anyway, do you
Speaker 1: help us kill him? Like yeah, now, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very saving. And this is again why I think
Speaker 1: people need to have more of the kind of like
Speaker 1: respect for Mussolini is opposed to seeing him as this
Speaker 1: buffoon is He's the first he he figures it out.
Speaker 1: He figures out how fascists are going to win anyway.
Speaker 1: So Mussolini decides, Okay, I have to um, I can't
Speaker 1: do what the anarchists and the communists and the left
Speaker 1: to do and try to like overthrow the government. That's
Speaker 1: not going to work. My path to victory is going
Speaker 1: to be finding a way into the government. And this
Speaker 1: was not hard for him to do. He runs for
Speaker 1: office and in May of nineteen one, he's elected to
Speaker 1: the Chamber of Deputies in Rome along with thirty four
Speaker 1: other Fascist Party members. Quick, very quick, and they're kind
Speaker 1: of in the middle of the pack in terms of
Speaker 1: how many elected leaders they have. UM, but they're they're
Speaker 1: in the government now. And Mussolini barely ever showed up
Speaker 1: in chamber because he thought any governing body based around
Speaker 1: him compromising was dumb and not worth listening to. But
Speaker 1: he liked the legitimacy that elected office gave him and
Speaker 1: his party. And it's not a coincidence that nineteen one
Speaker 1: is also the year when the Royal Italian Army joined
Speaker 1: the police and cracking down on anti fascists, because now
Speaker 1: the fascists are part of the government, right, so we
Speaker 1: can yeah now. Becoming an elected leader also gave Mussolini
Speaker 1: immunity from prosecution while he was in office. This was
Speaker 1: helpful because while the Fascist Party gained electoral power, Mussolini's
Speaker 1: black shirts were increasingly committing murder. And I'm a quote
Speaker 1: now from a study in the Journal of Values Based Leadership.
Speaker 1: Fascists agitated against the left and streets and neighborhoods across Italy.
Speaker 1: Socialist offices, institutions, and party newspaper headquarters were attacked and burned,
Speaker 1: militias organized throughout the country, and anti Bolshevik crusades breaking
Speaker 1: up strikes and fighting labor unions and farmer co ops.
Speaker 1: The Fascist squads dressed in black shirts and uniforms, were
Speaker 1: supported by the local police, landowners, merchants, and industrialists. They
Speaker 1: used violence to destroy any organization they felt could be
Speaker 1: an opposition to the doctrine of fascism. Thousands of people
Speaker 1: were beaten, killed, or forced to drink castor oil and
Speaker 1: run out of town. Hundreds of union offices, employment centers
Speaker 1: and party newspapers were looted or burnt down. In October
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty, after the election of a left administration
Speaker 1: in Bologna, fascists invaded the council chamber, causing mayhem and
Speaker 1: nine deaths. The council was suspended by the government. Later,
Speaker 1: so again, a left wing administration is elected in this city.
Speaker 1: Fascists invade the council and kill nine people and it's
Speaker 1: suspended by the government. Later, socialists and Catholic deputies were
Speaker 1: run out of parliament or had their houses destroyed. The
Speaker 1: two Black Years nineteen two destroyed opposition to the fascists.
Speaker 1: Union organizations were crushed. The Fedya Farmers co Op shrank
Speaker 1: from some one million members to less than six thousand
Speaker 1: in less than five years, Unable to defend basic democratic
Speaker 1: rights or prevent the criminal activities of a private militia
Speaker 1: that operated openly in nationwide the state had lost all credibility. Yo,
Speaker 1: gang banging. Any of that sounds familiar, Yes it does.
Speaker 1: It's yes, it's like, uh, god dug like you. It's something.
Speaker 1: It's something that fascinated me as you was reading. Is
Speaker 1: is like really helping you get into the brain of
Speaker 1: like a fascist to where it's like the government's not
Speaker 1: the head but an appendage. Yeah, like you're just You're
Speaker 1: a You're a You're a tool that I wield, just
Speaker 1: like the population, the labor unions, the military, the street guys.
Speaker 1: They're all just they're all just appendages. These are arms,
Speaker 1: their tentacles, but your means to an end. So I'm
Speaker 1: getting into the government not because I feel like that
Speaker 1: means I made it. It's just no, I just need
Speaker 1: to wield the government for my and that like, to me,
Speaker 1: that's like a you just like oh, it's like your
Speaker 1: relationship is transactional, Like it's a functional This isn't the goal.
Speaker 1: I just need that. You're my sword And I'm like, yes, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: government just a sword. Yeah, this is my weapon that
Speaker 1: I use on you. It's it's not a list of
Speaker 1: as I think a lot of liberal seat It's not
Speaker 1: a series of obligations. It's not a social contract. It's
Speaker 1: a gun. It's a gun. It's a gun. And when
Speaker 1: you get that's crazy, they listen. These Everything we just
Speaker 1: read that the Black Shirts did has been the goal
Speaker 1: for years of the American fascist movement, not just of
Speaker 1: groups like the Proud Boys, but of more extreme and
Speaker 1: explicitly Nazi organizations. Um. You can see evidence of this
Speaker 1: in attempted actions of men like Coastguard Lieutenant Christopher Hassan,
Speaker 1: who was caught with an arsenal and a list of
Speaker 1: Democratic lawmakers he planned to murder. UM. This is very
Speaker 1: much what groups like the Proud Boys wanted to do
Speaker 1: to left wing organizations nationwide. It's why you saw so
Speaker 1: many groups of right wing counter protesters and malicious show
Speaker 1: up at blm rallies, right. It's why before they were
Speaker 1: showing up at left wing anti fascist events. It's what
Speaker 1: you saw during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,
Speaker 1: leftists surrounded and assaulted and mass for standing against fascists.
Speaker 1: One of the great successes of the anti fascist movement
Speaker 1: in the United States that was not Uh. Something that
Speaker 1: we saw in Italy has been the fact that they
Speaker 1: actually did succeed in the widespread disruption of particularly the
Speaker 1: leadership cast of different fascist organizations. Basically everyone involved in
Speaker 1: planning Unite the Right had their life ruined, and most
Speaker 1: of them are no longer relevant on the streets. Nobody
Speaker 1: talks about Jason Kesler anymore. Nobody talks all that much
Speaker 1: about Richard Spencer anymore. Um, some of them are in jail, like,
Speaker 1: uh funk, what's that guy's name? The crying not Chris
Speaker 1: can't Well, that's how that was all med I got
Speaker 1: kicked off a tender. Yeah, yeah, that I think that
Speaker 1: happened to him too. Um. And you know a lot
Speaker 1: of them, like Richard Spencer's drowning in legal fees from
Speaker 1: lawsuits from people and and um. Yeah. In two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: not just angry at court cases, but angry at the
Speaker 1: fact that his speeches were continuously disrupted by anti fascist activists.
Speaker 1: Richard Spencer complained that's giving these speeches, like having these
Speaker 1: gatherings was no longer fun and quote Antifa is winning. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: he wasn't precisely right about that, because January six showed
Speaker 1: that the fight is very far from one. But Spencer
Speaker 1: was eaten, and most of the original wave of fascist leaders,
Speaker 1: the people who wanted to do what Mussolini did, whose
Speaker 1: goal was to do what Mussolini did, guys like Spencer,
Speaker 1: they've been fucking sidelined, which means that most of the
Speaker 1: people who are prominent now have not been prominent in
Speaker 1: in the position of leadership for all that long. So
Speaker 1: while you have groups like the Proud Boys that have
Speaker 1: been around this whole time, militias that go back quite
Speaker 1: a while, and more extreme groups that go back quite
Speaker 1: a while. UM, a lot of the leaders have been
Speaker 1: disrupted one way or the other, have had their lives
Speaker 1: bucked up, and it's stopped them from doing in some
Speaker 1: ways what maybe they might have otherwise done. It stopped
Speaker 1: them from gaining as much power, it stopped their organizations
Speaker 1: from being as cohesive. UM. Some organizations have been shut down,
Speaker 1: like Identity Europa. UM. So it's this has been if
Speaker 1: we want to look at like successes of a modern
Speaker 1: anti fascist movement, that's been one of them. And I
Speaker 1: think we can credit that for the fact that the
Speaker 1: attack on the Capitol on the sixth was not better
Speaker 1: organized or more cohesive. Because there has been disruption of
Speaker 1: these movements. I want to know what else would be
Speaker 1: a disruption of our our movements right now, Robert Baku,
Speaker 1: that is going to disrupt my train of thoughts significantly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't like that. I decided to do that. But America,
Speaker 1: that happened. How manna eat a chip? That's a good call.
Speaker 1: Everybody eat a chip. We're back. So prop I think
Speaker 1: you had you had something on your mind before we Uh,
Speaker 1: damn it. What the hell was I going to say? Break?
Speaker 1: What was I going to say? Um? Oh um? There's
Speaker 1: something that I think the these all school fascist did
Speaker 1: oh school wow um that these new guys they haven't
Speaker 1: done it. Yeah, I think that's why it's It's one
Speaker 1: of those things. It's a fine it's a fine um distinction,
Speaker 1: because I do think there's a lot of value in
Speaker 1: showing these people as as absurd and as sad as
Speaker 1: they are. Um, you have to do it without also
Speaker 1: making them feel like they're not a threat, which is hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a and And thankfully, I think one
Speaker 1: of the positives of how bad everything went on the
Speaker 1: sixth is that as absurd as it is in. One
Speaker 1: of the difficulties about talking about this movement to people
Speaker 1: for a while has been that like, folks, um, we're like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: these are just a bunch of of coops on the
Speaker 1: internet wearing dumpach t shirts about Q, Like why should
Speaker 1: I take this seriously? That's why you should take it
Speaker 1: seriously because yes, you just yeah, it's something again like dangerous. Yes,
Speaker 1: when you when you? When you? That's why I said earlier.
Speaker 1: It's like somebody hungry and angry like you. If somebody
Speaker 1: tell you they're willing to die, believe them. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like you, you should believe them. You
Speaker 1: take you underestimated something you learned living in just the
Speaker 1: inner city. You don't underestimate anybody, like if you know,
Speaker 1: if they presented it to you, Like I just I
Speaker 1: don't know how hungry you are. I might look like
Speaker 1: your lunch now if I can overpower you, or there's
Speaker 1: a whole other scenario, but you right, like, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna underestimate you. And I really feel like you know,
Speaker 1: fast forwarding or yeah, bringing us back to now is
Speaker 1: that I'm not sure you know, Oh, oh, Joe Biden
Speaker 1: really understand how serious your situation is. And I don't
Speaker 1: think he doesn't say they was gonna kill you, because like,
Speaker 1: I don't think you understand they that man somebody come
Speaker 1: into a Capitol building with a Viking horn, that man
Speaker 1: don't care about his life. He gonna kill you, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And I think I don't know that is Again one
Speaker 1: of the problems is I think a lot more people
Speaker 1: are taking it seriously. But I don't think Joe Biden is.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's I don't think you. I don't
Speaker 1: think you understand, bro, Like you know, don't you understand
Speaker 1: the severity of situation not done on the twenty big
Speaker 1: dog like, we're not We're not done. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of people out there who if they had gotten
Speaker 1: who if they get their hands on you, will do
Speaker 1: great harm to you. And they almost did it once
Speaker 1: in their heads at least. Uh you know. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about We go on a little bit
Speaker 1: of a tangent there, but I want to talk about
Speaker 1: the Italian anti fascists. So we just talked about kind
Speaker 1: of what I see is one of the big successes
Speaker 1: of the American anti fascist movement. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about why the Italian anti fascist movement did not succeed. Um.
Speaker 1: So the Italian anti fascists began to raise their own
Speaker 1: proper army in July of ninete, because again, the fascists
Speaker 1: had an army, The black Shirts were an army and
Speaker 1: it was doing great damage to not just like anarchists,
Speaker 1: but to all left wing movements around the country. So
Speaker 1: they formed their own army, the r d T del Popolo,
Speaker 1: like the People's urdd I think, um, so again they're
Speaker 1: still using that norm. A lot of them are veterans,
Speaker 1: and they were heterogeneous mix of anarchists, syndicalists, socialists, communists,
Speaker 1: republicans and other non authoritarian ideologies. The r d T
Speaker 1: del Populo were popular among the lower classes among poor
Speaker 1: Italians because they had no party affiliations than they offered
Speaker 1: protection from the fascists, who were basically a violent gang. Now,
Speaker 1: there were other militias style groups that confronted fascists, including
Speaker 1: the r d T Rossi, which was a communist organization,
Speaker 1: but the local Communist party forbade them from allying with
Speaker 1: the anarchists and the Republicans and the like, because like,
Speaker 1: you guys aren't our fan friends either right. This is
Speaker 1: again you see this happening in Germany. Now, there were
Speaker 1: communists who were part of the r d T del Populo,
Speaker 1: but they weren't like party communists, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: difference between those two things. And communists in this era
Speaker 1: is used a lot for people who were like very
Speaker 1: anti authoritarian. Um, a lot of folks would consider them
Speaker 1: basically anarchists today, and also for people who are like Stalinists,
Speaker 1: you know, um, and that they weren't Stalinist yet because
Speaker 1: it was you know, nineteen I was like, wait one,
Speaker 1: but like they that's where they that's where they're they were,
Speaker 1: they were headed. Um. Yeah. So on July the r
Speaker 1: d T del Populo held their first national Congress. One
Speaker 1: of their leaders, a guy named Argo Secondary, outlined the
Speaker 1: organization's goals in a speech, and uh, this is Argo here.
Speaker 1: The r d T del Populo's action has to be defensive,
Speaker 1: but defense means above all, to prevent and to render
Speaker 1: impossible any harm that can be caused by the adversary.
Speaker 1: The r d D del Populo do not carry out
Speaker 1: punitive expeditions, but perform acts of justice. They do not
Speaker 1: carry terror into the population, but to fend the people
Speaker 1: and organize their security. That is why the r d
Speaker 1: T del Populo welcome members of various parties and contain
Speaker 1: representatives of all political beliefs. They do not intend to
Speaker 1: make politics, but leave this to the already existing parties
Speaker 1: and economic organizations. The r d T del Populo must
Speaker 1: act like a worker's army and give the proletariat defense
Speaker 1: and protection. That's not gonna work. Yeah, yeah, they tried, um.
Speaker 1: Now you want to guess why it didn't work. They
Speaker 1: had no actual goals. They were just like, we're just
Speaker 1: They're like, oh no, there's no platforms in my head.
Speaker 1: I'm like, ain't no platform. You just said we're gonna
Speaker 1: lead that to the government. Yeah, we're just gonna make
Speaker 1: sure like no food of government's compromise. Anyway. Tell me
Speaker 1: to answer. That is a great, That is a great.
Speaker 1: You know, that didn't even a credit. You're you're right,
Speaker 1: like these guys are saying, our only goal is to
Speaker 1: defend you from the fascists, but that's not nearly as
Speaker 1: popular as saying, hey, here's what we we're the fascist,
Speaker 1: here's what we believe, here's our platform, here's what change,
Speaker 1: and we have this army, right, that is that is
Speaker 1: a very good point, Like, like you said, they're leaving
Speaker 1: the platform up to the government who is not on
Speaker 1: their side, and like you yeah, yeah, yeah, Now that's
Speaker 1: not everybody, right. There's a lot of anarchists and stuff
Speaker 1: who aren't saying like I think we should leave it
Speaker 1: to the government, but they are saying like, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to I think that fighting fascism with these other
Speaker 1: people is more importan than you know, pushing my own
Speaker 1: political beliefs in this necess in this area, which is
Speaker 1: I think a respectable thing to take. But it was
Speaker 1: a problem that there was not a concerted, organized, um
Speaker 1: counter left wing movement that was like that, that had
Speaker 1: like a solid platform and the to the extent that
Speaker 1: the fascist did. Right, there were different left wing groups
Speaker 1: that confronted them and had platforms, but it was not
Speaker 1: like what it was, not on the side and the
Speaker 1: same scale, you know, And that's a problem that anti
Speaker 1: fascists still have today. Right, there's a strength in saying
Speaker 1: like hey, if you're a communist, if you're an anarchist,
Speaker 1: if you're just a libertarian who's not an authoritarian, if
Speaker 1: you're a democrat, like come join us we're just trying
Speaker 1: to fight the fascist. But there's a weakness in well.
Speaker 1: But also we don't agree on anything other than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's like okay, cool, so what if you win? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do we do? Or how do you win? If
Speaker 1: they have a thing they believe that they're fighting for
Speaker 1: and you're mainly fighting against them, that that is true.
Speaker 1: There's a good point to that, um. And there's obviously
Speaker 1: there's a lot of anti fascists who do who wrap
Speaker 1: their anti fascism in um, this is part of the
Speaker 1: struggle against capitalism, this is part of the struggle for
Speaker 1: a better world. This is part of a revolutionary that's
Speaker 1: a lot of it today. Um. And those people did
Speaker 1: exist in Italy at the time. But this large organized
Speaker 1: the r DD del Populo, isn't really doing that, um.
Speaker 1: And it's it's part of their downfall, I guess, um,
Speaker 1: because the government starts spying on them, as is always
Speaker 1: the case whenever that is organized in any government. I've
Speaker 1: been undefeated, boy. Yeah. And the in Italy's FBI equivalent
Speaker 1: actually did confirm in a report to the government that
Speaker 1: the r d T del Populo had quote only one
Speaker 1: principal aim that is to react against fascism with the
Speaker 1: same means that are employed against them, i e. Arm defense.
Speaker 1: So the the Italy is like FBI equivalent is like
Speaker 1: these guys are only there too for defensive purposes. But
Speaker 1: despite this, the government orders a crackdown on the r
Speaker 1: d T del Popular. They enforce anti paramilitary laws against them,
Speaker 1: They dissolve local cells, they imprison many leaders and members,
Speaker 1: and by October the organization is essentially defunct. Now no
Speaker 1: actions were taken against the black Shirts, and as a result,
Speaker 1: by the end of nineteen twenty one, the Mussolini's Fascist
Speaker 1: Party had more than a quarter of a million members
Speaker 1: or members something like that. Um, this is one of
Speaker 1: those situations where like, yeah, your house is getting broken
Speaker 1: into and you called a police and the police arrest you. Yeah, like, bam,
Speaker 1: this is my house. Like I'm telling you, I'm not
Speaker 1: the problem. I don't understand this. I'm telling you this
Speaker 1: is the issue. And I were going to book them.
Speaker 1: Dano It's like, oh, man, like I feel like I
Speaker 1: don't know, That's what it sounded like to me. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're trading the wronghood right now. Yeah, the police cracked
Speaker 1: down pretty in the army cracked down exclusively on the
Speaker 1: anti fascists, and the fascists are allowed to continue to organize,
Speaker 1: and they said, like they used the same laws against
Speaker 1: them they could have used on the fascist for having
Speaker 1: the black shirts. They just don't choose the shoes. And
Speaker 1: the part that don't make sense and continues to not
Speaker 1: make sense is like you said, the fascists are telling
Speaker 1: you the platform, this is our plan. You've gonna overthrow
Speaker 1: you and put all our guys in power. And that's
Speaker 1: our dude, that's our plan. Oh you want our side, Okay, cool?
Speaker 1: Like yeah, it's because they it's you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's because hatred of the left unites the fascists and
Speaker 1: the people who wouldn't necessarily be whole hog in on
Speaker 1: fascism but are because they hate the left, which is
Speaker 1: you know why this this keeps happening and why um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's frustrating we deal with versions of the
Speaker 1: same problem today. And this is why I don't suggest
Speaker 1: people who are talking about like, well, in the wake
Speaker 1: of the sixth we need a new anti domestic terrorism statutes,
Speaker 1: like that's only going to be used on the left,
Speaker 1: Like they'll do. They'll use it once on a couple
Speaker 1: of proud boys, and then it will be used against
Speaker 1: leftists for decades. That's the way it's going to happen.
Speaker 1: And Muslims, you know, anyone who's not a white conservative
Speaker 1: a man. So as we know the problem is white people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: white people. Basically everybody's white. So that's really pretty easy
Speaker 1: to say. Now. Yeah, so I'm just kidding by the
Speaker 1: bastards listeners. I'm just kidding. I'm much more nuanced than that.
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding behind the bastards listeners. So uh d
Speaker 1: early nineteen twenty two, the anti fascist resistance has been
Speaker 1: heavily like, not completely eliminated, but very badly broken. Um,
Speaker 1: the fascists are ASTs, and that they have hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of members. They have elected leaders in government. Um.
Speaker 1: Now again they're kind of middle rung when it came
Speaker 1: to their actual number of elected leaders. They're not in
Speaker 1: charge at all. But Benito didn't care about how many
Speaker 1: actual elected deputies they said. He famously stated, I prefer
Speaker 1: fifty thousand rifles to fifty votes. What mattered to him
Speaker 1: was having a presence in the halls of power, which
Speaker 1: would enable him to get those rifles on his side.
Speaker 1: And of course the government's already shown that they're going
Speaker 1: to let him a crew rifles while they stopped his
Speaker 1: opponents from getting rivals. Yeah. Now, Mussolini starts in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two sketching out the dimensions of an ambitious and
Speaker 1: daring plan for a power grap He had spent the
Speaker 1: last year so placing strategic groups of fascists around the country,
Speaker 1: replacing shattered left wing trade unions with their fascist equivalent,
Speaker 1: which allowed him to organize postal workers, cab drivers, and
Speaker 1: other working communities. He expanded the black Shirts into a
Speaker 1: force of tens of thousands, a veritable paramilitary army. On
Speaker 1: October sixteenth, nineteen twenty two, he convened a meeting in
Speaker 1: Milan with his most trusted deputies, including the three commanders
Speaker 1: of the Black Shirts and two retired Italian Army generals.
Speaker 1: He announced that he was planning to organize a mass
Speaker 1: march on Rome. He would gather a force of tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of black Shirts and march to occupy the
Speaker 1: capital and force a change of government. At this stage,
Speaker 1: Mussolini did not think that he was going to be
Speaker 1: the head of that government. Instead, his goal was to
Speaker 1: force a coalition a liberal prime minister with five fascist
Speaker 1: ministers basically like um cabinet secretaries kind of who would
Speaker 1: be the real power behind the scenes. So he wanted
Speaker 1: to have a liberal like in front and have it
Speaker 1: all be run by fascists. Right, Okay. So the actual
Speaker 1: inspiration for the March on Rome came not from Mussolini
Speaker 1: but from the secretary of the National Fascist Party, Michelle Bianci.
Speaker 1: Bianci wanted an armed fascist insurrection to force the liberal
Speaker 1: ruling class to hand over power to Mussolini himself rather
Speaker 1: than even paying lip service to the idea of liberal democracy,
Speaker 1: and Bianci eventually like convinced everyone to go with his plan.
Speaker 1: Now true to form, Mussolini took credit for it, later
Speaker 1: claiming that the march. The plan for the March on
Speaker 1: Rome had come to him after a rally in September
Speaker 1: when his supporters had chanted to Rome to Rome. But
Speaker 1: in any case, by October of nineteen two, he's ready
Speaker 1: to do this. Ship. So Mussolini gives a speech to
Speaker 1: about sixty his followers at a fascist congress Naples on
Speaker 1: October and he tells them, our program is simple. We
Speaker 1: want to rule Italy now. As he spoke on the
Speaker 1: it's of his black shirts were fanning out to occupy
Speaker 1: key locations around Italy in preparation for this march on Rome.
Speaker 1: In all, some twenty six thousand fascist paramilitaries assembled with
Speaker 1: illegal arms and ammunition from the Warfare History Network quote.
Speaker 1: Illicit stores of arms and ammunition were received secretly from
Speaker 1: sympathetic police stations and some army barracks, while armories and
Speaker 1: even museums were raided for antique firearms. The overall array
Speaker 1: of weaponry included shotguns, muskets, powdered loaded pistols, golf clubs, scythes,
Speaker 1: garden hose, tree roots, table legs, dynamite sticks, dried salt, codfish,
Speaker 1: and even an ox's jawbone. What just whatever they can
Speaker 1: beat someone with. If they can't get a gun, it's
Speaker 1: anything they can hit someone with. And imagine an antique
Speaker 1: weapon already in that's an old gun. That's an old gun, boy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just whatever they can get your hands. So that
Speaker 1: was you actually answered one of the questions I had.
Speaker 1: I was like, so, if they're marching to Rome, where
Speaker 1: are they coming from? Say, coming from everywhere? He's in
Speaker 1: Naples right now. They coming from everywhere. They are coming
Speaker 1: from everywhere, and they have horses and carts, trucks and wagons.
Speaker 1: They even have a race car with the machine gun
Speaker 1: mounted to it, and they have guys riding on trains
Speaker 1: that style and finesse. There's some style in the machine
Speaker 1: gun races. And a lot of people are just marching
Speaker 1: on foot too. Now, obviously this is a cause for
Speaker 1: concern for some people in the government. Two days after
Speaker 1: the Naples speech, former Italian Prime Minister Antonio Cilandra becomes
Speaker 1: aware of Mussolini's plans and he warns the current prime
Speaker 1: minister that the Fascist leader was organizing an armed march
Speaker 1: on the capitol. Cilandra's intelligence told him that Mussolini planned
Speaker 1: to demand the prime minister's resignation and demand that he
Speaker 1: be appointed head of the government instead, So the prime
Speaker 1: minister obviously is also worried by this. He goes to
Speaker 1: the King with this warning and he asks the King
Speaker 1: for permission to use the police in military to suppress
Speaker 1: the fascists. The King refuses. So the reason the King
Speaker 1: says no is that he had just sat down with
Speaker 1: his Minister of War, General Armando Diaz. Now, the general
Speaker 1: who was not quite well, who was basically a fascist,
Speaker 1: tells the king that if he asks the army to
Speaker 1: stop Mussolini, quote, the army will do its duty, but
Speaker 1: it would be better not to put it to the test. Basically,
Speaker 1: he's like another the army likes these guys that you
Speaker 1: really shouldn't you really shouldn't try it. So King Victor
Speaker 1: Emmanuel the Third, the little Sword was not like an
Speaker 1: ideological fascist. I know, it's very silly, oh man, what
Speaker 1: if that was his like tender profile, a little little sword.
Speaker 1: He's not a fascist in the sense that he doesn't
Speaker 1: believe in fascism. He believes in a monarchy, and more specifically,
Speaker 1: he believes in a monarchy where he's the monarch. Now
Speaker 1: by nineteen twenty two, the Kingdom of Italy is in
Speaker 1: bad financial straits. World War One had been a disaster
Speaker 1: for the country. The great like not the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: but like an economic collapse has hit Europe as a
Speaker 1: result of the end of the war. It's horrible in Munich.
Speaker 1: In this period of time, to write, political violence in
Speaker 1: the streets had reached a fever pitch, largely thanks to
Speaker 1: Mussolini's black Shirts, and the king was afraid there might
Speaker 1: be a civil war. More than anything, he was worried
Speaker 1: about the rising Italian left. The Socialist Party had a
Speaker 1: hundred and forty six members in the Chamber of Deputies
Speaker 1: and the Communists had eleven, giving them together nearly five
Speaker 1: times as much elected representation as the fascists. Now, communists
Speaker 1: and socialists aren't big fans of kings, and Victor Emmanuel
Speaker 1: crudely calculated the fascists would let him continue to be
Speaker 1: the king. He also, and this is important, calculated that
Speaker 1: the middle class would back the fascists if it meants
Speaker 1: crushing the left, and he was right on both counts.
Speaker 1: Some of the king's generals did push back and demand
Speaker 1: he signed orders to send the army out after the
Speaker 1: black Shirts. The King threatened to abdicate at this, and
Speaker 1: sinuating that this would put Italy in the same position
Speaker 1: as Russia had been in when the Czar abdicated. Basically,
Speaker 1: if you forced me to use the army on these fascists,
Speaker 1: I will leave the throne. And you saw what happened
Speaker 1: to Russia when you don't want those scary Bolsheviks being insurance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you it's like that's I see. That's why I like
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, that's to me, that's
Speaker 1: like the problem with like when you only understand the
Speaker 1: world via like power broke, you're brokering in my you know,
Speaker 1: um like in my mind, Like I take two weird comparison.
Speaker 1: But if you take like Mike Pence is like position
Speaker 1: right now like with the moment or president being impeached,
Speaker 1: it's like he if for lack of better term, either way,
Speaker 1: he's a bit because it's like, first of all, it's
Speaker 1: not like it's not like Donald Trump has ever respected you,
Speaker 1: because you do what the hell he tells you to do,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So it's like this man,
Speaker 1: this man was gonna let these they was yelling to
Speaker 1: kill you, and he didn't stop it. And you ain't
Speaker 1: do ship, Mike, you ain't do ship. You let this
Speaker 1: man and you're still gonna back this man. You're a bitch,
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. At the one time he publicly disagrees
Speaker 1: with you, and then he calls for your head and
Speaker 1: they want to take it, and then and if they
Speaker 1: got the chance there whatever, and you didn't say nothing.
Speaker 1: You're a bitch, you know what I'm saying. So it's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm saying that tonguey, you can understand what
Speaker 1: we're trying to say. Yeah, so it's like you're okay.
Speaker 1: So then so then Nancy Pelosi and and and with
Speaker 1: it with the Democrats, with the impeachment being and so
Speaker 1: it's almost like them saying, Yo, get your boy before
Speaker 1: we do, right, so then so now and and then
Speaker 1: if he doesn't, if he doesn't, if he doesn't stop
Speaker 1: the impeachment, you're a bitch again, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: If you don't call for you're a bit, you feel me.
Speaker 1: So it's just like, no matter what the moral of
Speaker 1: the story is, you should have never signed up to
Speaker 1: play with this man, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: it shouldn't have got here in the first place because
Speaker 1: all this, all these people understand it's power brokery. So
Speaker 1: when you so, if you King low Sword, you feel me,
Speaker 1: you set yourself up to a situation where these people
Speaker 1: only understand power. Either way, You're a bit, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like, I just I don't I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I hate saying it like that. I just because
Speaker 1: it's like I'm not trying to like throw shrapnel towards
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying a derogatory terms sword female,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. That's not what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say, but I am saying, just in street terms,
Speaker 1: that's what we mean. There's you can't You've put yourself
Speaker 1: in a position where you can't leave this unscathed. Yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's yeah, that's kind of where we are here.
Speaker 1: And so the king and also a lot of liberal
Speaker 1: elected leaders are like, Okay, let's like let's let these
Speaker 1: people in. Let's let them do it. They're not as
Speaker 1: scary as these leftists. So let's left the fascists into
Speaker 1: the government. Can you imagine being you imagine being a king?
Speaker 1: Whereas like my bloodline go back to the fifteen hunt.
Speaker 1: It's and I'm no one that's about to lose the
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lose this crown, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So I get the calculation. It's just you're it's just
Speaker 1: you're the you're the punk in this. Yeah, you're starting
Speaker 1: the ball of fascism rolling in Europe because you want
Speaker 1: to keep it thrown and because a lot of other
Speaker 1: elected leaders so when his so his prime minister resigns
Speaker 1: when it becomes clear that the King is not going
Speaker 1: to stop the fascist and a bunch of former prime ministers,
Speaker 1: many of them liberals, start petitioning the king to make
Speaker 1: them the prime minister again so that they can make
Speaker 1: Mussolini their vice minister to placate the fascists. So like again,
Speaker 1: establishment politicians cannot wait to make a deal with the fascists,
Speaker 1: like couldn't do it fast enough? Um, yeah. The King
Speaker 1: says no though, because the King has decided that Mussolini's
Speaker 1: going to be the new premier, right, that he's just
Speaker 1: going to give him straight to the big job. And
Speaker 1: while all this is going on, the black Shirts are marching.
Speaker 1: So years later Mussolini would claim to have marched on
Speaker 1: foot with his soldiers all the way to the capital.
Speaker 1: The reality is that he stayed in Milan for the
Speaker 1: first day. A few days of the march, he was
Speaker 1: seen at the theater just yeah, he's not stay back here,
Speaker 1: just in case. Well, it's like how Donald Trump tells
Speaker 1: his crowd to like march on the capitol and then
Speaker 1: goes back home. He's like, that's the problem, Like, do
Speaker 1: y'all see this man behind bulletproof glass. They've got guns
Speaker 1: over there. I'm not doing that, you know, So like
Speaker 1: why you followed his man? Yeah? I feel like when
Speaker 1: you might get shot anyway? Good luck? Yeah, yeah, I'm good.
Speaker 1: Don't you see his glass? Yeah? So, uh yeah. He
Speaker 1: stays in Milan. He keeps a getaway car gassed up
Speaker 1: and ready prepared to flee to Switzerland. Actually more ready
Speaker 1: to flee for Switzerland than he is to actually go
Speaker 1: to Rome, because he's sure they're going to crack down
Speaker 1: on this. He's just making a gamble. He doesn't think
Speaker 1: it's gonna work. Plan B. Eventually, though, after several days,
Speaker 1: he realizes that the king is not going to institute
Speaker 1: martial law to stop the march, and that he'd won.
Speaker 1: Like this is a dawning realization while he's in Milan
Speaker 1: that like, oh shit, we're getting away with this. So
Speaker 1: that has to be Donald Trump. He's very there's some
Speaker 1: similarities where he was like wait wait, wait what wait
Speaker 1: what kind of shocked that this had worked. Mussolini starts
Speaker 1: scrambling to dress himself up as the revolutionary leader. It
Speaker 1: now kind of seemed like he was and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote now from the Warfare Historical Network. Mussolini's own Milan
Speaker 1: newspaper office, where he was staying, was barricaded with huge
Speaker 1: rolls of newsprint, paper and barbed wire, and guarded by
Speaker 1: a curious mix of fascist police and army troops. His
Speaker 1: second floor offices featured hand grenades and desk trays, and
Speaker 1: the fluster Duca himself was seen brandishing a rifle. Melodramatically,
Speaker 1: he wrote in his nineteen autobiography, there was a rapid
Speaker 1: exchange of shots. I had my rifle loaded and went
Speaker 1: down to defend the doors. Bullets whizzed around my ears.
Speaker 1: This is all a lie. The reality is that the
Speaker 1: Milan police chief refused to even arrest him. The mayor
Speaker 1: and commander of the Royal Guard asked for a truce
Speaker 1: with the fascists and withdrew their men from around his office. UM.
Speaker 1: There was no real crackdown taken on Mussolini directly whatsoever. Now,
Speaker 1: while his militia march, they took over telephone switchboards, telegraph offices,
Speaker 1: water works, and other government buildings. UM very little resistance
Speaker 1: to this. About seven black Shirts are shot dead by
Speaker 1: the army in various skirmishes. UM During this period of time,
Speaker 1: and about a dozen people die. Over the course of
Speaker 1: the March on Rome. Mussolini gets increasingly confident. His phone
Speaker 1: calls start coming in from the Royal Palace from the King,
Speaker 1: but he refuses the first three calls from the King
Speaker 1: because Mussolini does understand how power works, and he knows
Speaker 1: that when you got him on the ropes, you want him,
Speaker 1: you got to bring him a little bit closer, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we want to make a call. I'm not gonna take
Speaker 1: that first call. I'm gonna take that second of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Get him close, get him close.
Speaker 1: That's how you do it. So eventually he decided that
Speaker 1: his men had occupied enough territory that he felt confident
Speaker 1: that King was not going to turn around and shoot
Speaker 1: him as a trader if he showed up in Rome.
Speaker 1: So on the night of October twenty nine, Benito Mussolini
Speaker 1: took a sleeper train from Milan to Rome for the
Speaker 1: soon to be dictator. The march on Rome consisted of
Speaker 1: a single fourteen hour train. Right, so he does no marching.
Speaker 1: He takes a train right into the capitol while his
Speaker 1: guys are marching and fighting. No I'm not marching to Rome.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about marching? We got trains now. Benito
Speaker 1: would later lie about every major aspect of the march
Speaker 1: on Rome. The reality is that about seven Black Shirts
Speaker 1: again were shot and a dozen people died. Once they
Speaker 1: were in power, the fascists claimed that three thousand people
Speaker 1: had been killed in vicious fighting for control of the capital,
Speaker 1: just a lie to make it seem heroic. When he
Speaker 1: finally met the King, Mussolini's first words were, your majesty,
Speaker 1: will forgive my attire. I have come from the battlefield.
Speaker 1: You came from Milan, dude, Yo, two points for style. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's a good line. It's a good just came from battle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The bluff a like fighting where I told the army
Speaker 1: not to fight you. Yeah. So, Victor Emmanuel has to
Speaker 1: have known Mussolini was lying about that, but he liked Mussolini.
Speaker 1: He considered him a quote man of purpose, and he
Speaker 1: appointed him his premier foreign minister and Interior Minister. On
Speaker 1: October thirty one, the day after Mussolini's meeting with the King,
Speaker 1: his Black Shirts finally arrived in Rome. He had them
Speaker 1: turn around immediately and marched to the train station so
Speaker 1: they could go home. As the fascist columns withdrew, the
Speaker 1: king declared, Mussolini has saved the nation. That is hilarious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I recapt that buss set I sent y'all got what
Speaker 1: I needed, Then I sent you back, did you saying?
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, it's great. It's a great position to
Speaker 1: be in if you're Mussolini. He's really right and high
Speaker 1: right now, because a lot of Italians agreed that he'd
Speaker 1: saved the nation. Because people are really fucking dumb. And
Speaker 1: again you have to assume very little access to accurate
Speaker 1: news about what was happening Antennas. Now, the Roman middle
Speaker 1: class was overjoyed by the lack of violence and by
Speaker 1: the fact that the dreaded anarchy and the threat of
Speaker 1: a communist revolution had been avoided. The stock market rose
Speaker 1: on news of of Mussolini's power grab, and I should
Speaker 1: note here that on January six, the Russell two thousand
Speaker 1: index of small capitalization stocks rose three point seven percent,
Speaker 1: while the SMP five point six percent. Now this had
Speaker 1: less to do with the stock market loving the fact
Speaker 1: that there had been an attempt to take over the
Speaker 1: capital and more to do with it loving stability, because
Speaker 1: January six ended with everybody repudiating the president and the
Speaker 1: certainty that there would be a transfer of power. And
Speaker 1: but that's kind of the same reason why the stock
Speaker 1: markets raised when Mussolini like took power. It's because someone
Speaker 1: was in power, there was certainty. Yeah, that's that. I
Speaker 1: love that. I love that you brought that up, because
Speaker 1: like if you if you want to talk about you know,
Speaker 1: big corporations, you know one percenter's high money, they are
Speaker 1: still beholden to a stable government that will um like
Speaker 1: affirm and support their contracts. Like if I got contracts
Speaker 1: all over the place and you breeched this contract, I
Speaker 1: want to be able to sue the crap out of you.
Speaker 1: So I gotta take you to a course that means
Speaker 1: I have to have a government stable enough that says
Speaker 1: so so so yeah so so so. It has no
Speaker 1: no moral value either way. I just need y'all to
Speaker 1: chill and if and if and if there's somebody that
Speaker 1: can stop at you now that y'all agree, cool. I
Speaker 1: don't care what you agree with as long as y'all
Speaker 1: agree so that my money can keep coming. So that's that.
Speaker 1: That that that point about the stock market, that's dope, man,
Speaker 1: that that's the was stuff that Like, you know, I
Speaker 1: always always cringe any anytime any leader, I don't care
Speaker 1: who you are saying, Well, the stock market rose, this
Speaker 1: is like man like that guy I got not They
Speaker 1: just want you all to you know what I'm saying
Speaker 1: like that. That doesn't that's not the indicator that you
Speaker 1: that you say it is. Yep, it's not um and
Speaker 1: it's it's yeah, it's a sign. It's a sign that
Speaker 1: the people who are rich are confident they're going to
Speaker 1: continue to be rich. And that's that's that's where fascism's
Speaker 1: power traditionally comes from, and not as much from the
Speaker 1: rich as it does from the middle class. The middle
Speaker 1: class of Italy backed Mussolini for the same reason he
Speaker 1: meants stability. Right, Maybe they weren't all fascist. Most of
Speaker 1: them weren't. Most of them had never really like, hadn't
Speaker 1: supported the fascist prior to him coming into power. But
Speaker 1: now that he was in power, it means the communists
Speaker 1: aren't gonna met win. Means I'm not gonna lose my business.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lose like whatever like that because I'm
Speaker 1: in the middle clad got shipped to lose, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what the middle classes, you're the ship to lose class. Um. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: the middle class was in Italy, as it has been
Speaker 1: in every country that's been taken over by fascists, the
Speaker 1: chief base of fascist support. UM. And this is true
Speaker 1: again everywhere fascism gains political power. In March of two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen, and NBC survey found that only about a
Speaker 1: third of Trump supporters in the primaries had a household
Speaker 1: income at or below the national media and income of
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a year UM and that stayed more or
Speaker 1: less the same for the election. UM. And again you
Speaker 1: can look at the same kind of things happened in Germany. Um.
Speaker 1: He said it was the same class that supported him. That. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's important. And again another thing I love you
Speaker 1: just brought up. Brought this up too, because it's like,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about somebody that lives below the poverty line,
Speaker 1: you don't have time to be listening to whatever the
Speaker 1: politicians are saying, Like I'm trying to secure my next meal,
Speaker 1: So there's not a they don't. You don't have the
Speaker 1: luxury to go lobby and in canvas and do all
Speaker 1: the things that someone who has uh, you know, liquid capital,
Speaker 1: like leisure capital, be able to do. So that's the
Speaker 1: middle class, you know what I'm saying, So like so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just yeah, it's same thing like us critique in
Speaker 1: our own silo to be like, man, don't you can't
Speaker 1: just call this you can't just say it was all
Speaker 1: these poor these poor was not him in power because
Speaker 1: they hungry, they working, These poor people working, they got
Speaker 1: time for audience anything. It's the fucking what the fascists
Speaker 1: are saying to the middle class, to the comfortable. It
Speaker 1: is saying like, you see that poor motherfucker who doesn't
Speaker 1: have time to think about any of this because he's
Speaker 1: living hand the mouth. The communists are gonna make that
Speaker 1: be you. You know, that's the that's the fucking pitch um.
Speaker 1: And it works every time, or it works well enough
Speaker 1: that it becomes a problem every time. Maybe it's not
Speaker 1: gonna work this time. We'll fucking see um because Trump
Speaker 1: was leading middle class support in I don't know he
Speaker 1: really was. Man, Yeah, so that's good. We owe that too.
Speaker 1: Behind the bastards, thank you. Yeah, I take total credit
Speaker 1: for Biden's victory, thank you. So um so yeah, Fascism
Speaker 1: generally cloaks itself as a working class movement of laborers
Speaker 1: and hard men doing hard jobs. It's always the image, right,
Speaker 1: the imagery of like a guy working at a steel
Speaker 1: miller some ship. But that's not where their support actually
Speaker 1: comes from. The support of fascism comes from a lot
Speaker 1: of like the middle class and the a lot of
Speaker 1: the affluent, not all of the affluent, because a lot
Speaker 1: of the very rich are more establishment people. They're not
Speaker 1: gonna back. They'll back a fascist when they're in power
Speaker 1: because again, they don't want to lose their ships needs
Speaker 1: to build, like yeah, they're they're up until it becomes
Speaker 1: clear the fascists are gonna win there, you know, they're
Speaker 1: gonna back whatever the order was previously. The middle class
Speaker 1: is scared and anxious and always being pushed from both directions,
Speaker 1: so they're the ones who really will go with a fascist.
Speaker 1: And the first person in history to really lay this
Speaker 1: out was Luigi Salvatorelli. Now he was an editorial writer
Speaker 1: for an anti fascist news paper named La Stampa. I'm
Speaker 1: going to quote now from an article on the March
Speaker 1: of Rome by scholar Emilio Gentile talking about Luigi Salvatarelli
Speaker 1: and how he came to this conclusion quote a year
Speaker 1: before the March on Rome, Salvatarelli understood that fascism was
Speaker 1: a new revolutionary movement, and that it organized and mobilized
Speaker 1: a new social class, the petit bourgeoisie, equally hostile to
Speaker 1: the proletariat and the upper middle classes. Salvatarelli had labeled
Speaker 1: fascism reactionary Bolshevism, a danger today infinitely more real than
Speaker 1: communist Bolshevism. He had since that fascist ambitions went beyond
Speaker 1: the bourgeoisie, anti proletarian reaction and the protection of the
Speaker 1: middle class. The dictatorial ambition of fascism, Salvatarelli wrote in
Speaker 1: December nineteen one, had already shown its face in parts
Speaker 1: of Italy, where the Fascist Party was imposing its dictatorial
Speaker 1: will by crushing opponents, to whom they denied any political
Speaker 1: or civil right, including the right to live. In July nine,
Speaker 1: when not even Mussolini had thought of out taking over power,
Speaker 1: Salvatarelli denounced the ongoing anti state attack perpetrated by Fascism
Speaker 1: that was endangering the very existence of the Italian state
Speaker 1: in order to establish a regime of violence throughout the country.
Speaker 1: Immediately after the march on Rome, Salvatarelli stated that the
Speaker 1: fascist government was determined to establish a one sided dictatorship
Speaker 1: because it did not want any political activity to be
Speaker 1: carried out outside of fascism. Salvatarelli saw in fascism, as
Speaker 1: he wrote on November first, nineteen, the true and proper
Speaker 1: characteristic of a political movement, of a party organized for
Speaker 1: its own ends of a specific social class and that
Speaker 1: aimed at the conquest of power on its home was
Speaker 1: determined to fling itself against the existing state in the
Speaker 1: name of the presumed greater good of the nation. M hmm, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot there, There's a lot there. He suggested
Speaker 1: something that I need the thought in that that the
Speaker 1: thought never crossed my mind that as there were so
Speaker 1: many big wires, it is hard for me to nail
Speaker 1: down exactly where I heard it. But he almost suggested
Speaker 1: the possibility of a two party system in a fascist state.
Speaker 1: When he was like this fascism impresses it was almost
Speaker 1: like he's it sounded redundant, where he was kind of
Speaker 1: like this one party power fascist state, as if it's
Speaker 1: possible to have a two party system, because that at
Speaker 1: the time. At the time, fascists were a part of
Speaker 1: the government, right, and a lot of people, even a
Speaker 1: lot of like liberals, were like, well, they're not that dangerous.
Speaker 1: They're just one other party. They have their view. This
Speaker 1: is that that's it's that old thing of like, well
Speaker 1: they have an opinion, and everybody gets to have their
Speaker 1: appew and like we have to listen to them. They
Speaker 1: have they get the freedom to speak their peace, And
Speaker 1: what Salvatrelli is saying is their peace. What they're saying
Speaker 1: they believe is that only their opinion matters, and they'll
Speaker 1: kill you if you have a different one, got it.
Speaker 1: So he let them in the government. So he's trying
Speaker 1: to say, are y'all hearing what he's saying? Yeah? Yeah, really,
Speaker 1: did you hear what he just said? This is not
Speaker 1: just said yeah, yeah, if we let them, they will
Speaker 1: be the only party, right um. And he's and he's
Speaker 1: also saying, like they are their strength comes from a class,
Speaker 1: right And because the a lot of the communist at
Speaker 1: the time had been like had written off the fascists
Speaker 1: as any kind of real movement, and it even written
Speaker 1: off the March on Rome. We'll talk about that later
Speaker 1: in the series. We're gonna do a big episode at
Speaker 1: the end on sort of what we can learn from
Speaker 1: all this. But there was a big failure among a
Speaker 1: lot of people in the left and even anti fascists
Speaker 1: to see fascists as the threat that they really were,
Speaker 1: because number one, they were so darn silly, but number
Speaker 1: two like, well, you know, I'm looking at this from
Speaker 1: this Marxist analysis, and it tells me that all these
Speaker 1: classes like it forms it. I don't. I don't see
Speaker 1: this as a legitimate political movement that is speaking to
Speaker 1: a class that has a large body of the populace
Speaker 1: behind it. Okay, that was the peace I was missing
Speaker 1: when you add the Marxists like glasses on there and
Speaker 1: you go, oh, yeah, well who's where where do they fit? Like,
Speaker 1: where's the cause? Can't be real because they don't fit him,
Speaker 1: none of these Yeah, And there's there's this attitude again
Speaker 1: we'll talk about us later among a lot of Marxists
Speaker 1: that like, well, fascism is just the inevitable in the
Speaker 1: state of capitalism. And one of the things Salvatorelli saying,
Speaker 1: and a lot of things will say, is like that's
Speaker 1: not exactly true. Fascism is pro capitalism a lot of
Speaker 1: the time. It's also anti capitalism a decent chunk of
Speaker 1: the time. And that's how it gets a lot of
Speaker 1: people on board with it. Um it's it's it is
Speaker 1: speaking to a specific class in the country who feels
Speaker 1: edged out by both sides, who feels oppressed by the rich,
Speaker 1: and who feels that the left is coming for what
Speaker 1: little they do have. Right, that still gets on board
Speaker 1: with this ship. And you have to see that they
Speaker 1: are looking out for their own that that that they
Speaker 1: have legit like interests that they see being threatened like
Speaker 1: that there this is not just some sort of plot
Speaker 1: by the bankers to take power for themselves. Right. The
Speaker 1: fascists are speaking to legitimate um, you know, even if
Speaker 1: they're wrong, legitimately felt exactly like those are legitimate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are legitimate emotions that that you are actually in
Speaker 1: your body experiencing, whether that's the reality like I say
Speaker 1: that about like, um, there's this this you know, this
Speaker 1: discussion about like well, you know, race is a social construct,
Speaker 1: therefore it's not real. Therefore racism is not real. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, yes, you're right, race is a social construct,
Speaker 1: but what I'm experiencing in my body is real. It's
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So I love that. I
Speaker 1: love that because it's like, that's that's what you can't
Speaker 1: dismiss about these people that are so riled up that
Speaker 1: they would storm a capital. Is it's that what they're
Speaker 1: experiencing in their bodies exct. What you said is being
Speaker 1: is you're pressed on both sides, and yeah, you feel
Speaker 1: that way. At least you feel it. At least this
Speaker 1: person is saying. These group of people are saying, I
Speaker 1: feel you, and I have an answer for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I have an answer for you, and it's let's
Speaker 1: kill the left and take over the government. You know.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, easy, um, yeah, and that's why you
Speaker 1: know the six happened. Um So. Mussolini UH takes office
Speaker 1: um two weeks after the March on Rome on November
Speaker 1: UH November sixteenth, nineteen twenty two. He stands before the
Speaker 1: Chamber of Deputies to present his new list of ministers.
Speaker 1: So he picks out all the people who are going
Speaker 1: to run the government, all fascists, um. Now the new
Speaker 1: Prime Minister. Mussolini begins his speech to the Chamber of
Speaker 1: Deputies by attacking the nation's elected leaders, calling them old
Speaker 1: and deaf and incompetent, and he even threatened them with violence, stating,
Speaker 1: with three hundred thousand armed men determined to carry out
Speaker 1: my orders, I could have punished those who have vilified
Speaker 1: and tarnished fascism. I could make this deaf and gray
Speaker 1: hall filled exclusively with fascists. I could, but I have not,
Speaker 1: at least not for now. Shut up, Shut up, gramps,
Speaker 1: I'll slapped the ship out of you now. He promised
Speaker 1: his as symboled deputies that his new fascist Italy would
Speaker 1: ensure law and order, strengthen the military, and crushed the left.
Speaker 1: The next day, the Chamber of Deputies conducted a vote
Speaker 1: of confidence, which Mussolini won three hundred and six two
Speaker 1: hundred and sixteen. So again he three's like I can
Speaker 1: fucking kill you if I want to, and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: come up, I'll put it, Yes, I voting I for you,
Speaker 1: now your life. Yeah, I'm going to read a quote
Speaker 1: from an article by Emilio Gentile about um anti fascism
Speaker 1: in Italy and about the March on Rome. Quote. Benito
Speaker 1: Mussolini could now claim that power was bestowed on him
Speaker 1: by democratic means, even though it was claimed that many
Speaker 1: votes were cast out of terror and intimidation from the fascists,
Speaker 1: which he had literally threatened the entire chamber. Bonito Benita
Speaker 1: was the man of the hour. He was, in fact,
Speaker 1: imminently a product of a particular crisis World War One
Speaker 1: and a special social class, the petty bourgeoisie. Mussolini's capture
Speaker 1: of power was classic. He was the right national leader
Speaker 1: at the right moment. By nineteen twenty three, Mussolini's consolidation
Speaker 1: of power was complete. Italy was a fascist state, and
Speaker 1: any resistance to the regime from then on would take
Speaker 1: the form of mere insurgency. In total, between nineteen eighteen
Speaker 1: and nineteen twenty three, Italian anti fascists killed some four
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty eight fascists. Meanwhile, Mussolini's Black Shirts murdered
Speaker 1: at least three thousand people in the same period. Most
Speaker 1: of those people were not anti fascists. There were members
Speaker 1: of trade unions, journalists, local politicians, anyone who stood in
Speaker 1: the way between fascists and ultimate power. And again we've
Speaker 1: talked a bit about why the Italian anti fascist didn't succeed,
Speaker 1: and that's a longer conversation than we can have today.
Speaker 1: I think you're right that a lack of a a
Speaker 1: lack of something with momentum to oppose fascism, true momentum,
Speaker 1: was a part of it. Um A lack of UH
Speaker 1: state support is another part of it. There's a thing
Speaker 1: that some folks on the kind of who are are UM,
Speaker 1: anti fascist and anarchist activists in particular, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: called the three way fight, which is the idea that
Speaker 1: we're not just fighting against the fascist, we're fighting against
Speaker 1: the state, and we're fighting against the fascist because the
Speaker 1: state is also deeply harmful and deeply injurious to life
Speaker 1: and used. That was particularly very strongly felt by people
Speaker 1: during the blm UH risings. Right like, we have these fascists,
Speaker 1: these proud boys and stuff, coming in the street to
Speaker 1: do violence to us, we also have the cops doing it.
Speaker 1: We're in a three way fight, right, very valid way
Speaker 1: to look at things. It's also an almost impossible situation
Speaker 1: to win because the fascists aren't in a three way
Speaker 1: fight the fascist if they're smart, they're not dumb. Fascists
Speaker 1: sometimes are UM and maybe our fascists have taken a
Speaker 1: turn for the dumb. Let's hope. But the smart fascists
Speaker 1: get to power with some degree of legitimacy and legality
Speaker 1: and then use the state to crush the or enemies
Speaker 1: because they don't want a three way fight. Right, that's
Speaker 1: a problem. Yeah, because yeah, because yeah, because the government
Speaker 1: is just a weapon. It's not because the end goal.
Speaker 1: It's just a weapon. Yeah. Wow, she'sh man, I need
Speaker 1: a shower. Yeah, oh god, please tell me you're done. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I'm done. That's the end of episode. Doc. It's like
Speaker 1: the it's just the party that feels like these people
Speaker 1: give you this when you're trying to to stop, when
Speaker 1: you're the ones trying to stop an insurrection. It's like,
Speaker 1: these people give you no you have no safe aaiby,
Speaker 1: they give you no breaks like that. You can never
Speaker 1: stop and take a breath because they're gonna read that
Speaker 1: as weakness. And then next thing, you know, somebody tying
Speaker 1: up Nancy Pelosi. And it's not that I'm a Nancy
Speaker 1: Pelosi fan, it's just you shouldn't be able to tie
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi get up, and how that should happen. That's
Speaker 1: not as should happen. You feel me like, I just
Speaker 1: this and it's not that I'm a fan of the
Speaker 1: US government. However, however, there are worse things to yes.
Speaker 1: So it's just like there's yeah, like you said, like
Speaker 1: you feel like you're in a three way fight, and
Speaker 1: my fight is especially as someone who would say organizationally
Speaker 1: and factually, my black life matters, right is that That's
Speaker 1: all I'm trying to say is NIGGD. Can I live?
Speaker 1: Like God damn it, man? Can I live? You know?
Speaker 1: And so you you my goals. I feel like in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways if it comes to like how
Speaker 1: do I say this, Like, I'm not looking for as
Speaker 1: a as a black person, if you will, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm just looking for my rights to be honored. That's
Speaker 1: all I'm trying to say. Just honor my right like
Speaker 1: I have. No there's no platform of a read construction
Speaker 1: of the government short of just stop sing killing, like,
Speaker 1: let me be a citizen like you dog, like that's
Speaker 1: all tries he Just let me a citizen like you, bro,
Speaker 1: That's That's all I'm saying. So so when you when
Speaker 1: you try to when you pit me against a fascist movement,
Speaker 1: that's saying, well, no, our goal is to overthrow this
Speaker 1: whole thing and be in charge, and no, you don't
Speaker 1: get rights somehow the government choosing you. It's like it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's almost like all all I get to do now
Speaker 1: is I got homeboys that live in Atlanta, and what
Speaker 1: they saying is they finda just grabbed a popcorn and
Speaker 1: watch the civil war between these fascists and the and
Speaker 1: the police. Like I'm just because it's like I don't
Speaker 1: I want to be on the side of the government,
Speaker 1: but the government on the side of me either, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So it's just you just in
Speaker 1: this weird predicament. But I know who I don't want
Speaker 1: to win. Yeah, this is where we get to the
Speaker 1: problem of the side opposing the fascists has done a
Speaker 1: lot of good, uh, And it is important to oppose fascists.
Speaker 1: What's actually needed to beat them. Opposing in this one
Speaker 1: thing and it can slow them down. What's needed to
Speaker 1: beat them is to provide something else that is not
Speaker 1: the state as it exists, because that's um, but that
Speaker 1: you can also get people on enough. People on board
Speaker 1: with the fascists don't have oxygen anymore. Right, the fascist
Speaker 1: it's like a fire right where you've got a bunch
Speaker 1: of dry fucking brush and trees and ship and oxygen.
Speaker 1: And as long as you have those things, the fire
Speaker 1: is going to spread. And the way to counter that
Speaker 1: is to fucking pour some fucking water on it. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: that's good analogy, man. You need to reduce the area
Speaker 1: in which it can spread, and it's human terrain, right,
Speaker 1: So by the only way to reduce the human terrain
Speaker 1: the ship can spread in is to give people something else. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: because they don't have anything right. Yes, that's what I
Speaker 1: was going back to when you was asking me, like,
Speaker 1: why did this fails? Like they didn't give them nothing else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just said don't do this. Well, then what do
Speaker 1: we do because we got now ain't working? Yes, So
Speaker 1: it's either the government that led us into World War
Speaker 1: One or some people who are saying we should do
Speaker 1: what they're doing in Russia right now. And that doesn't
Speaker 1: look great. Um, And you know, most of the liberals
Speaker 1: are like on the side of like, well, we'll just
Speaker 1: we'll just keep tweaking the system that got us into
Speaker 1: World War One, and a lot of people are like
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem good. Yeah, I need I needed, I
Speaker 1: need an option, deed, Jake, Yeah, I'm poor, my government,
Speaker 1: I have no hope for the future. So Jake, this
Speaker 1: guy is saying it'll be different. Dr Jacob, let's see
Speaker 1: if it's different. Yes, exactly. Uh, It's like it's like
Speaker 1: when you're watching a basketball game and it's your two
Speaker 1: least favorite teams playing and you want both of them
Speaker 1: to lose, but there isn't a way for one of them,
Speaker 1: not like somebody has to win, so that there has
Speaker 1: to be some sort of interference that makes it so
Speaker 1: that the game can't even happen. Otherwise you're going to
Speaker 1: just pick your your Joe Biden. You get stuck with
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, so you guys, otherwise you get Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants that either, you know. That's man, That's what
Speaker 1: I'm like, look like, do do not say I'm glad
Speaker 1: nobody has suggested that, Like Joe Biden is just a
Speaker 1: left wing of Trump to some people know, he is
Speaker 1: a consolation pride of the consolation price we settle for
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, Like this thing ain't to come in Messiah.
Speaker 1: He he to Disciple bartholomewle at best conscious even he's
Speaker 1: not even Peter John Like, so that's a deep cut
Speaker 1: Boyle's not even Paul because like you, Timothy, you ain't
Speaker 1: even write no book in the New test I'm cheering
Speaker 1: up in my whole face, is right, this is so funny.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a that's a that's a that's an
Speaker 1: evangelical joke. So that's the first part of this behind
Speaker 1: the direction part motherfucking one. Prop Where can people follow you?
Speaker 1: Oh Lord, please follow me at prop hip hop on
Speaker 1: all them things? Um yeah, all the all of the
Speaker 1: twitters and instagrams. Um, you could my website prop dot
Speaker 1: com backslize coffee. Yeah, that is my website and we
Speaker 1: do coffee stuff there. Um. Got some pods. Uh, politics
Speaker 1: were prop which is um political analysis just from like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you survived eighth grade, you could you
Speaker 1: understand your politics? You know, I just kind of giving
Speaker 1: you political analysis. Yeah. That's that's that's my that's my
Speaker 1: thangs and uh, well we'll be back soon, Robert, We
Speaker 1: will be back soon. We'll be back to talk about
Speaker 1: the Munich beer Hall pusch um next week, um, and
Speaker 1: then we'll talk about some other ship and then we're
Speaker 1: going to end this talking in broad about why fascists
Speaker 1: win when they win, And why fascists lose when they lose.
Speaker 1: Your gift to the world, Robert h like like like socks,
Speaker 1: a nice pair of socks. Robert doesn't know how to
Speaker 1: take compliments as you can. I'm just going to run
Speaker 1: away from my computer now, goodbye. That's the episode.