Speaker 1: M We're back. This is again Behind the Bastard to
Speaker 1: the podcast where we talk about terrible people, and we're
Speaker 1: talking about Gabriel de Nunzio, the inventor of fascism and
Speaker 1: the inventor of claiming you had two ribs removed to
Speaker 1: suck your own dick. Um, now, Sharine, how are you
Speaker 1: feeling about this guy as we as we barrel into
Speaker 1: part do you know he's fascinating? He's fascinating. I am intrigued. Um,
Speaker 1: I thought he I mean, I was learned. Every second
Speaker 1: of the last episode got more absurd as we continued. Um,
Speaker 1: and it ended with me learning what he looked like.
Speaker 1: So now that I haven't imagine in my head, it
Speaker 1: might be easier for me to imagine what he how
Speaker 1: he's going about his life. Um. Yeah, he's his claim
Speaker 1: to fit his he has so many claim to fames,
Speaker 1: which is he really does, which is crazy because you
Speaker 1: would think, I don't know, Uh, he wouldn't quit, He
Speaker 1: wouldn't quit. And I can't wait to learn how he
Speaker 1: uh literally invented fascism, which is crazy. Yeah. This he's
Speaker 1: got a lot of gas left in the tank. This
Speaker 1: guy so much bullshit, He so much bullshit. He's lived
Speaker 1: a full life of bullshit, and it's it's not even
Speaker 1: at the halfway point. Really his activity is notable. That's
Speaker 1: astonishing For a little I do want to say, like,
Speaker 1: as interesting as I find this guy, his biography Gabrielle
Speaker 1: de Nunzio, Poet, Seducer and the Preacher of War by
Speaker 1: Lucy Hughes Hallett, I really recommend, like it's it's one
Speaker 1: of the best biographies I've ever read. UM Like, very
Speaker 1: compulsively readable. Um Hugh's Hallett is a is a fantastic
Speaker 1: writer and very a very critical um I in a
Speaker 1: really interesting way, Like I, I really appreciate her perspective
Speaker 1: on this guy. So I very much recommend that book.
Speaker 1: I mean, all the clothes you've read from it are
Speaker 1: are amazing. Yeah. Abriel de Nunzio loved planes. Loved planes,
Speaker 1: big plane fan. He'd been an enthusiastic fan of the
Speaker 1: new technology since its inception. In nineteen nine. He had
Speaker 1: made headlines at a famous air show in Brescia for
Speaker 1: writing with an American aviator named Glenn Curtis over an
Speaker 1: adoring crowd of thousands. The seat he sat on during
Speaker 1: the flight was later auctioned off to his legions of
Speaker 1: adoring fans. Prior to World War One, Gabrielle had repeatedly
Speaker 1: pressed the Italian government to start an air force. When
Speaker 1: the war started, Gabrielle's enormous fame and belligerent speeches managed
Speaker 1: to secure him a lofty position in the Italian military.
Speaker 1: The government expected him to write a song of war,
Speaker 1: some brilliant poem that would light a fire in the
Speaker 1: hearts of the Italian soldiery and helped to get the
Speaker 1: nations fully behind a war most of them still did
Speaker 1: not want. He was officially attached to the Third Army
Speaker 1: as staff to the Duke of Aosta, but he was
Speaker 1: given unlimited freedom to basically do whatever he wanted. He
Speaker 1: could go to any part of the front he desired,
Speaker 1: partake in any maneuvers or actions he wanted to partake in.
Speaker 1: His job was generally to inspire the military in whatever
Speaker 1: ways seemed interesting to him. So that's the job this
Speaker 1: guy gets. At the start of World War One, Gabriel's
Speaker 1: first trip up to the front was delayed by the
Speaker 1: difficulty he had designing and hiring someone to sew his
Speaker 1: custom uniforms. He eventually solved that problem while thousands of
Speaker 1: his countrymen dashed themselves to bloody chunks and Austrian machine
Speaker 1: gun nests. He spent so much time waiting at a
Speaker 1: fancy hotel to get all of that sorted out that
Speaker 1: yet again he went broke. His manager suggested he go
Speaker 1: to Third Army headquarters and start working. He'd get free
Speaker 1: food and lodging and be paid. But once he arrived
Speaker 1: in Venice, the closest city to the front, he yet
Speaker 1: again set him up in the fanciest possible hotel. As
Speaker 1: much of an incorrigible dandy as he was do Nunzio's
Speaker 1: writing during this period shows he was eager to actually
Speaker 1: take part in war. On his way to the front,
Speaker 1: he wrote in his notebook Sense of Emptiness and Distance,
Speaker 1: Life and the Reasons for Living, a lude me between
Speaker 1: two streams between past and future, Tedium, lukewarm water, necessity
Speaker 1: for action. Surprisingly, this was not just bluster. Two days
Speaker 1: after reaching Venice, he was on a naval destroyer doing
Speaker 1: night maneuvers, heading towards the Austrian coast. Like two weeks
Speaker 1: before he did this, one of those historians had been
Speaker 1: sunk by a mind and dozens of guys had died,
Speaker 1: so this was a very dangerous thing to do. Um.
Speaker 1: His trip wound up not having any combat in it,
Speaker 1: but he later spent time up at the front lines,
Speaker 1: where he was under machine gun fire and artillery shelling regularly.
Speaker 1: He made friends, and he saw them die horribly. Um
Speaker 1: and none of this dimmed the nuncio's ardor for war.
Speaker 1: Lucy Hughes Howett writes, blessed are those who are now
Speaker 1: twenty years old. He said he worshiped and envied their
Speaker 1: beauty and took enormous pleasure in the opportunities that war
Speaker 1: afforded him to live alongside them as companions and arms.
Speaker 1: Their deaths were marvelous to him. When they were killed,
Speaker 1: as one after another they were, he took them into
Speaker 1: the pantheon. He was elaborating in his writing and speeches,
Speaker 1: making them the martyrs and cult heroes of his new
Speaker 1: mythology of war. Yeah he's a guy, I mean like
Speaker 1: he's he's doing exactly what he wants, which is like infuriating.
Speaker 1: You know, he does that, that's his whole life. Yeah, yeah, out,
Speaker 1: Gabrielle is is enticing. As he found the front lines,
Speaker 1: he had no desire to actually take part in trench
Speaker 1: combat because it led to all everyone dying basically anonymously
Speaker 1: in huge groups. And if there's one thing he could
Speaker 1: not stand, it was being part of a large, anonymous
Speaker 1: group of men. Um he had. Yeah, so he decided
Speaker 1: that the sky was more like the theater of war
Speaker 1: he wanted to get involved in. UM. It had nothing Now,
Speaker 1: this choice like had nothing to do with cowardice, but
Speaker 1: it was intimately tied to his narcissism. He was absolutely
Speaker 1: willing to die, and flying in any any length of
Speaker 1: time was very dangerous at this period of time. UM.
Speaker 1: What he couldn't abide was dying anonymously, and pilots were
Speaker 1: at the time seen as the knights of the sky.
Speaker 1: So if he died, you know, in a plane, that
Speaker 1: was a romantic enough death for him to be willing
Speaker 1: to like take the risk. Very calculated. Yeah, he never
Speaker 1: learned to fly, but he figured he was more than
Speaker 1: capable of being a bombardier basically dropping bombs by hand
Speaker 1: on targets like while the guy in front flew. UM.
Speaker 1: And now up at the front, he had befriended a pilot,
Speaker 1: a guy named Meraglia, who told him that a bombing
Speaker 1: raid had been planned for the city of Trieste, Austria's
Speaker 1: chief port. The city had a large Italian population, was
Speaker 1: seen by people like Gabrielle as rightfully Italy's property, and
Speaker 1: de Nunzio here was struck by a brilliant idea. Not
Speaker 1: only would he bomb the city, he had also devised
Speaker 1: a way to air drop propaganda onto Trieste to try
Speaker 1: and incite the Italian citizens to rise up against their government.
Speaker 1: This was not an easy mission. No Italian pilot had
Speaker 1: ever flown this far in a single trip, and there
Speaker 1: would be numerous machine guns protecting the port itself from
Speaker 1: aerial attack. It was an insanely dangerous gambit, seen as
Speaker 1: suicidal by many, and Maraglia and Nunzio would be undertaking
Speaker 1: this mission alone. Obviously, the attack had little military value,
Speaker 1: but the propaganda value of dropping bombs on the Austrian
Speaker 1: emplacements and propaganda for the Italian citizens was, in Gabrielle's
Speaker 1: eyes huge. For days, he agonized over how to drop
Speaker 1: the leaflets, which he wrote himself. He eventually went with
Speaker 1: tiny and bags that would help the leaflets fall on
Speaker 1: target rather than getting blown to and fro the message
Speaker 1: itself was titled to the Italians of Trieste and promised
Speaker 1: an imminent liberation. Each copy was handwritten by him, a
Speaker 1: sign of how much the project mattered in Gabrielle's eyes.
Speaker 1: Once it became clear that what they planned to do,
Speaker 1: of course, the admiral in charge of Italy's air force
Speaker 1: tried to put a stop to it. So did the
Speaker 1: government known with any measure of power, and wanted gabriel
Speaker 1: de Nunzio, Italy's most famous living poet and writer, to
Speaker 1: die flying over Austria. Morale was bad enough, after the
Speaker 1: glorious war against Austria had turned almost instantly into a
Speaker 1: blood soaked stalemate. Instead, they wanted him to sit in
Speaker 1: his hotel room and write the damn poem they'd been
Speaker 1: counting on him to write to help motivate the war effort.
Speaker 1: But now up at the front, Gabrielle de Nunzio found
Speaker 1: himself unable to write. I have a horror of sedentary work,
Speaker 1: of the pin, of the ink of paper, of all
Speaker 1: those things now become so futile. A feverish desire for
Speaker 1: action takes me do. Nunzio protested against being grounded and
Speaker 1: a battle ensued behind the scenes of the military brass. Eventually,
Speaker 1: De Nunzio went to the time Minister and tried flattery.
Speaker 1: And here's how Lucy Hughes Hallett describes it in one
Speaker 1: of the most deliciously catty sections of her book. You,
Speaker 1: whose own spirit is so hard working and so generous,
Speaker 1: must understand me. He stressed his physical competence. He was
Speaker 1: not a man of letters as of the old type,
Speaker 1: and skull cap and slippers. He was an adventurer. My
Speaker 1: whole life has been a risky game, he boasted of
Speaker 1: his past daring. I have exposed myself to danger a
Speaker 1: thousand times against the fences and hedges of the Roman Campagna.
Speaker 1: He adored fox hunting in France. He had often been
Speaker 1: out on the Atlantic and chancey weather, as the fishermen
Speaker 1: of the Landez could tell you. He had ventured repeatedly
Speaker 1: in the enemy territory on the Western Front. He visited
Speaker 1: the front twice, staying on the safer side of the
Speaker 1: French lines. Most importantly, I am an aviator. I have
Speaker 1: flown many times at high altitude. This wasn't strictly true either,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't only brave. He had knowledge and skills
Speaker 1: which could be useful. He knew Istria, he knew Trieste,
Speaker 1: he had an observant spirit. Having presented his credentials, he
Speaker 1: made his request in the most insistent terms, I pray
Speaker 1: I beg repeal this odious veto. He hinted that if
Speaker 1: he were not allowed to risk his life in his
Speaker 1: own way, he would liberately endangered by going straight to
Speaker 1: the front to bar one with my past, my future
Speaker 1: from living the herolic life would be to cripple me,
Speaker 1: to mutilate me, to reduce me to nothing. And the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister was apparently impressed by his ardor, and permission
Speaker 1: was granted for the raid. So he gets his way,
Speaker 1: as he always tells his entire every single time, of
Speaker 1: her her way of writing that though I love that,
Speaker 1: she's just like I imagine in my head and like
Speaker 1: in parentheses being like all this like side note, like
Speaker 1: not true. The whole biography is written with the air
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, she's just utterly unimpressed by a lot
Speaker 1: of this guy's life that I love that, but also
Speaker 1: fascinated by him and compelled to chronicle that it's an
Speaker 1: interesting book. I mean, I will say, like in my brain.
Speaker 1: When you were talking about him dropping uh, propaganda from
Speaker 1: a plane, I was I was thinking, like he might
Speaker 1: as well be dropping poetry books, Like isn't that one
Speaker 1: of the same. Isn't that kind of what they wanted
Speaker 1: him to do? Regardless, Like isn't like it's they wanted
Speaker 1: him to inspire the people of Italy um, because like
Speaker 1: most Italians weren't really on board with the war. Like
Speaker 1: he was able to get a lot of them in
Speaker 1: the cities on board, but like most people in Italy
Speaker 1: were like, why are we Why would we get involved
Speaker 1: in this stupid thing? It would be like sends our
Speaker 1: suns off to die for this. So that's what the
Speaker 1: government wanted, was him to convince them of that, and
Speaker 1: instead he really wants to go be in danger um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and no, he just likes being a contrarian. Probably that's
Speaker 1: part of it. So Gabrielle and his pilot set off
Speaker 1: on August seven, and what followed was an outrageously dangerous adventure.
Speaker 1: They were shot at several times and at least one
Speaker 1: bullet struck the plane. Just flying a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: kilometers in that period of time was very risky and
Speaker 1: it's really impossible to overstate just how fucking dangerous this was.
Speaker 1: At one point, a bomb got stuck on the plane
Speaker 1: and Di Nunzio had to dislodge it, an act that
Speaker 1: could have easily led to the bomb exploding and killing
Speaker 1: he and his pilot. Um. I'm emphasizing the danger here
Speaker 1: because I want to make it clear that with his actions,
Speaker 1: Gabrielle in Nzio did prove that his rhetoric wasn't empty.
Speaker 1: He was not the sort of guy who would urge
Speaker 1: others onto war and then stay safely in the background. UM.
Speaker 1: He repeatedly risked his life over the course of World
Speaker 1: War One, but the attack on Trieste was probably the
Speaker 1: most insanely dangerous act of his life. When he landed
Speaker 1: safely after dropping propaganda and bombs on Trieste and the
Speaker 1: news broke of his new exploit, De Nunzio was more
Speaker 1: famous than ever. He became the idol of the Italian public,
Speaker 1: the nation's single greatest living hero. He could barely go
Speaker 1: out in public without being mobbed, and he continued to fly,
Speaker 1: or at least let others fly him. He dropped numerous
Speaker 1: bombs and fired machine guns, but his highest preference was
Speaker 1: at deploying propaganda. Do Nunzio was well ahead of the
Speaker 1: curve on recognizing this as the weapon of the future,
Speaker 1: and his most famous action was dropping leaflets over Vienna,
Speaker 1: the Austrian capital, near the end of the war. The
Speaker 1: propaganda would be almost the last significant written work of
Speaker 1: Gabrielle's life, As The New Republic notes, in January nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: he suffered a detached retina during an air raid and
Speaker 1: was forced to lie absolutely still for several months to
Speaker 1: save other eye. During his enforced convalescence, he composed a
Speaker 1: text of in poetic verse prose, written line by line
Speaker 1: on slips of paper handed to him by his daughter Nada.
Speaker 1: These formed the basis for his memoir Naturno, which appeared
Speaker 1: in nineteen has recently been published in supple English translation
Speaker 1: by Steven Sartarelli. It was Denunzio's entry into the stream
Speaker 1: of consciousness sweepstakes, his most openly modernist work, admired by many,
Speaker 1: including Hemingway, in spite of the fact that he considered
Speaker 1: his author a jerk. Naturno was De Nunzio's last major
Speaker 1: contribution to literature. I mean, god, He's just praised as
Speaker 1: a God, his entire fucking life, and I think a
Speaker 1: part of the reason why he risked his life, I
Speaker 1: don't think he was actually ready to die. I think
Speaker 1: he just feels he felt invincible, and I think he
Speaker 1: might have been it. Yeah, I mean, like, I just
Speaker 1: think there's so much um I don't know your your
Speaker 1: brain is a powerful thing, and if you actually think
Speaker 1: you're invincible, I think there's an element that like you will,
Speaker 1: you'll be fine, Like it's your whole life, You've gone
Speaker 1: away with every fucking thing. You're not going to die
Speaker 1: in a plane. And I don't think he was. He
Speaker 1: I don't think he I think he knew the whole
Speaker 1: time he was never going to die. I don't know.
Speaker 1: He wrote a lot about being convinced that he would
Speaker 1: die on these missions, and they were very dangerous, but
Speaker 1: it is impossible to know, like how he really felt
Speaker 1: in the center of this part, because like, obviously you
Speaker 1: would have to write about being certain you were going
Speaker 1: to die as part of what you're trying to do
Speaker 1: is convince other men to go into situations where they'll
Speaker 1: probably die. And I'm sure it was extremely dangerous and
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was outrageously so like very fright frightening
Speaker 1: and everything. But I do think there's an element to
Speaker 1: his personality where he just thinks he's invincible because he's
Speaker 1: gotten away with so much shit and he literally lands
Speaker 1: and his life starts over again. He's a god, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like it's like exactly what he's
Speaker 1: been since birth. Yep. And this like really is the
Speaker 1: end of his period of time as a writer and
Speaker 1: an artist of note, Like he stops lead producing work
Speaker 1: after World War One, and like especially subs producing his
Speaker 1: best work. Um. And while the war the end of
Speaker 1: the war more or less brought about the end of
Speaker 1: Gabrielle's career as an artist, it was not the end
Speaker 1: of his career as an asshole who shoved his dick
Speaker 1: into world affairs. Italy wound up on the winning side
Speaker 1: of World War One, but they were by far the
Speaker 1: junior partner on their side of the war. The French,
Speaker 1: British and Russians rightly viewed the misturn Coats, who got
Speaker 1: in late and sacrificed far fewer men than their allies.
Speaker 1: As a result, Italy got very little in the way
Speaker 1: of new territory at the end of the war. Gabrielle
Speaker 1: de Nunzio considered this a mutilation, a disgusting stab in
Speaker 1: the back after all the sacrifices he had convinced his
Speaker 1: countrymen to make. One of the things that infuriated him
Speaker 1: most was the fact that the territory of the Austro
Speaker 1: Hungarian Empire was being broken up and given to its
Speaker 1: own people. He was livid at the establishment of a
Speaker 1: Slavic state and the Balkans, and particularly livid at the
Speaker 1: fact that the city of Fume, with an assizeable Italian population,
Speaker 1: would be a part of that state. Gabrielle Donunzio decided
Speaker 1: he was not going to take this lying down, so
Speaker 1: he decided to raise an army and can or the
Speaker 1: city for Italy on his own. Yeah. The balls on
Speaker 1: this guy, I mean you can see him in the
Speaker 1: banana hammock. They're they're they're good, good, good old old balls. Um. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the new Republican go ahead, please please Yeah. He called
Speaker 1: in the Italian government to occupy the city, and in
Speaker 1: September nineteen nineteen, after they failed to do so, he
Speaker 1: took matters into his own hands. He marched on Fume
Speaker 1: at the head of a Cadre of Arditi or daredevil
Speaker 1: stormtroopers clad in the black and silver uniforms and black
Speaker 1: fezs that would be aped like so much. That was
Speaker 1: De Nunzio by the fascists. Greeted with cheers by the
Speaker 1: Italian speaking locals, De Nunzio announced that he had annexed Fume,
Speaker 1: expecting the government would take control, but there was no reaction.
Speaker 1: Suddenly the poet politician found himself in charge of a
Speaker 1: city in the grip of a delirious cocaine enhanced bachanal. Eventually, Fume,
Speaker 1: with de Nunzio as its deuice, declared its independence. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I keep wanting to like analyze this guy, like really okay,
Speaker 1: I think his his fame when he was a poet,
Speaker 1: were it was. It was revered and beautiful like like
Speaker 1: like a beautiful like like not beautiful, Sorry I thought
Speaker 1: the word I'm trying. It was he was revered as
Speaker 1: this like artistic guy, and it was this like kind
Speaker 1: of like a fan base that was passionate and read
Speaker 1: his stuff, thought he was sexy whatever. But now this
Speaker 1: kind of fame, this lesion, is this violent thing that
Speaker 1: I think he's always wanted He's always wanted to command
Speaker 1: people that will do whatever he says, and I think
Speaker 1: he got a taste of that as a like during
Speaker 1: the war. And it's scary the kind of power that
Speaker 1: this guy has. He's always had, but in this scenario,
Speaker 1: with violence and with with bringing people to literally make
Speaker 1: an army, like he's always had some type of army,
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to say. His army as a
Speaker 1: poet was different than his army is than this point
Speaker 1: in his life. But it's a little scary just how um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It seems like he's really he's really
Speaker 1: obsessed with being this figure and it's because he's doing
Speaker 1: he's really good at it, I don't know well. And again,
Speaker 1: as is always the case with these guys, everyone kind
Speaker 1: of gives him what he wants. Um. You know, Like
Speaker 1: obviously what he did was profoundly illegal, and like the
Speaker 1: Allied forces were like, yeah, Fume has to go to Yugoslavia.
Speaker 1: You can't let him do this, and they sent an
Speaker 1: army to stop him when he was marching on the city.
Speaker 1: But that army was made up of Italians and they
Speaker 1: loved De Nunzio. They refused to attack him, and hundreds
Speaker 1: of soldiers deserted to join his army as he marched
Speaker 1: on the city. That is a third power. That's crazy,
Speaker 1: It's almost incomprehensible. Um. Yeah, and and so in the
Speaker 1: fall of nineteen nineteen, Gabrielle de Nunzio found himself as
Speaker 1: the dictator of a small state on the Mediterranean post.
Speaker 1: He was this guy's life, Jesus, well, it's something else. Um.
Speaker 1: He was fifty six years old and powerfully ill with
Speaker 1: the flu As his forces marched into town. The people
Speaker 1: of Fume did not notice his infirmity. They were enormous
Speaker 1: fans of the celebrity poet, and thousands of them stayed
Speaker 1: up all nights, specifically so they could welcome their new
Speaker 1: dictator home with rapturous applause. His soldiers were greeted in
Speaker 1: the streets with women wearing evening dresses and carrying guns,
Speaker 1: ready to party or do battle against the Allies should
Speaker 1: they try to stop. To Nunzio, he announced the creation
Speaker 1: of a new city state, which he believed would be
Speaker 1: a model for human society in the future. The state
Speaker 1: would be based around what he called the politics of
Speaker 1: poetry Fume. He insisted would be a searchlight, radiant in
Speaker 1: the midst of an ocean of objection. He believed that
Speaker 1: what they built there would set a fire that would
Speaker 1: burn down the old order in the world. And so
Speaker 1: he declared, fume the city of the Holocaust. Wow. That
Speaker 1: was ch that sentence. Jesus, this fucking guy. Wow. In
Speaker 1: some ways, he's most similar to a guy like l
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard, who was like, you just kept accelerating right
Speaker 1: up until the end, like, never take your foot off
Speaker 1: the gas, like, not for a fucking second. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is that is crazy. It's wild. What a journey. And
Speaker 1: he's he's young in comparison to the he's he's only
Speaker 1: fifty something and dictator like that's a yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: sure I've got listeners in their fifties white Even't you
Speaker 1: taken over a small city on the Mediterranean? Established Republican poetry? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Come on now, I'm gonna quote again from Lucy Hughes.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, no, it's a it's ad break time, isn't
Speaker 1: it is? It is? All right? Well, you know what
Speaker 1: won't turn your city into a city of the Holocaust.
Speaker 1: Whoever the ad is, whatever, exactly, they will not do that.
Speaker 1: They do not we do. That is one of our
Speaker 1: firm lines with advertisers. Do not create cities of the Holocaust. Anyway,
Speaker 1: We're back. So I want to start with reading a
Speaker 1: quote from Lucy Hughes Hallett on like what happens in
Speaker 1: Fume After after Gabrielle de Nunzio takes over quote, the
Speaker 1: place became a political laboratory. Socialists, anarchists, syndicalists, and some
Speaker 1: of those who had begun earlier that year to call
Speaker 1: themselves fascists congregated. There Representatives of shinn Fine, which is
Speaker 1: like an Irish republican extremist group, and of nationalist groups
Speaker 1: from India in Egypt arrived discreetly, followed by British agents.
Speaker 1: Then there were the groups whose homeland was not of
Speaker 1: this earth. The Union of free Spirits tending towards perfection,
Speaker 1: who met under a fig tree in the old Town
Speaker 1: to talk about free love and the abolition of money
Speaker 1: and yoga, a kind of political comb street gang, described
Speaker 1: by one of its members as an island of the
Speaker 1: blessed in the infinite sea of history. Donunzian Fume was
Speaker 1: a land of the cognate, an extra legitimate place where
Speaker 1: normal rules didn't apply. It was also a land of cocaine,
Speaker 1: fashionably carried in a little gold box in the waistcoat.
Speaker 1: Pocket deserters and adrenaline star war veterans alike sought a
Speaker 1: refuge there from the dreariness of economic depression and the
Speaker 1: tedium of peace. Drug dealers and prostitutes followed them into
Speaker 1: the city. One visitor reported he had never known sex
Speaker 1: so cheap. So did aristocratic dilettants, runaway teenagers, poets, and
Speaker 1: poetry lovers from all over the Western world. Human nineteen
Speaker 1: nineteen was as magnetic to an international confraternity of discontented
Speaker 1: idealists as San Francisco's Hate Ashbury would be in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight. But unlike the hippies, Donunzio's followers intended to
Speaker 1: make war as well as love. So it's this weird
Speaker 1: melting pot of like left wing radicals and right wing
Speaker 1: radicals who were all united in their idea that like,
Speaker 1: fuck everything else that's going on, let's all take murder
Speaker 1: each other. They're just Desperation is a really dangerous tool
Speaker 1: because I think, similar to what you said in the
Speaker 1: last episode about like anger, like people really channeling being
Speaker 1: able to like utilize the mass, the anger of the masses,
Speaker 1: and channel in the right way. I think anger and
Speaker 1: desperation are really related in that regard because you can
Speaker 1: you can unify people with their desperation, and I think
Speaker 1: that's the case with a lot of extremist groups honestly. Uh.
Speaker 1: But and it's also it's important to note that de
Speaker 1: Nunzio himself gets hugely into cocaine at this point, Like
Speaker 1: he's a not surprisingly loves cocaine and starts like inhaling
Speaker 1: his fucking body weight every week and fucking in blow
Speaker 1: just like and that's part of when you try to
Speaker 1: understand this place in this period, Like do Nunzian fume,
Speaker 1: It floats on an ocean of blow, like like impossible
Speaker 1: amounts of cocaine is like the only thing that would
Speaker 1: make an experiment like this possible. Um, it sounds great.
Speaker 1: I actually would have loved to be there, Like it
Speaker 1: sounds like it kind of rules. It sounds like, I mean,
Speaker 1: especially for the time, it sounds like this oasis in
Speaker 1: a in a sea of dread, you know, especially I
Speaker 1: mean art. Yeah, yeah, it was well, it wasn't safe
Speaker 1: because there were also street gangs of fascists and it
Speaker 1: was gunning each other down. Yeah, it's just this lawless,
Speaker 1: bizarre place where everyone's making art and experimenting with new
Speaker 1: politics and having gunfights and orgies and cocaine parties on
Speaker 1: an hourly basis. It's just incomprehensible. That is his entire life. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I can't really wrin my head around it. Every turn.
Speaker 1: I said this before, but every turn is more absurd
Speaker 1: than the next. Like I did not think this was
Speaker 1: going to go here in the beginning, Like that's crazy.
Speaker 1: He's a monster, but he's objectively one of the most
Speaker 1: fascinating people who ever lived his life. And not be like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck, dude, you're the most fascinating people, Like
Speaker 1: a lot of historical figures like Hitler as a historical figure,
Speaker 1: very compelling as an individual, kind of a weird, boring, gross,
Speaker 1: sad life. De Nunzio a monster too, but like fuck,
Speaker 1: what a what a life? Like you gotta respect it
Speaker 1: at like a lot of that, Like that's you gotta
Speaker 1: respect the hustle at least. It's just I'll give you that.
Speaker 1: I'll respect the hustle. And he's just problematic in so
Speaker 1: many ways. He's a monster monster. He's like, I'll run
Speaker 1: a Hubbard where he's like this terrible person. But you
Speaker 1: can't turn away from what he turned his life into. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean it works. He got what he wanted every
Speaker 1: step of the fucking way, every step of the fucking way. Basically, Dan,
Speaker 1: does this guy not suffer. I'm waiting for this guy
Speaker 1: to suffer. Just that we're getting to that a little bit,
Speaker 1: a little bit. De Nunzio wanted Fume to be a
Speaker 1: work of art made in the medium of human lives,
Speaker 1: and it was certainly something public life. Was described as
Speaker 1: a permanent street theater performance. There were constant orgies involving
Speaker 1: huge numbers of people, and of course, like all the
Speaker 1: cocaine in the world, there was also violence and constant
Speaker 1: murdered by gangs of black shirted thugs. But oddly, left
Speaker 1: and right found a way to meet in Fume. This
Speaker 1: was before fascism had really taken off, and write as
Speaker 1: Communism was in the process of taking over Russia, the
Speaker 1: bizarre experiment in Fume attracted the support of literally every
Speaker 1: kind of extremist. Vladimir Ilioch Lennon sent Gabrielle a pot
Speaker 1: of Caviare and called him the only revolutionary in Europe.
Speaker 1: Benito Mussolini expressed his deep admiration of de Nunzio, and
Speaker 1: the two began a long correspondence in letters. So, like,
Speaker 1: both Lennon and Mussolini loved this guy and what he's
Speaker 1: doing in Fume. Um, it's so weird and it's so bizarre.
Speaker 1: It's hard to wrap your head around. So many people
Speaker 1: were obsessed with this guy. Like I'm thinking about what
Speaker 1: you said about Hemingway, like even like every type of
Speaker 1: person was like I gotta give it to him. But
Speaker 1: now there's like really and len like you can't ignore
Speaker 1: de Nunzio, Like then that's what Denunzio wants. You have
Speaker 1: to like stare at him. You can't not He's just this,
Speaker 1: He's he's just like a peacock. He's his entire life.
Speaker 1: He peacocked the entirety of Europe, which is quite an accomplishment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so fun as it sounds. Fume was not a paradise.
Speaker 1: Syphilis was astonishingly rampant, and Denunzio could be like everybody,
Speaker 1: including de Nunzio, got syphilis. When you said partners, he
Speaker 1: had wanted to ask like he must have had some
Speaker 1: type of consequence. There must have he was his body
Speaker 1: weight was sevent like, sexually transmitted like he was more
Speaker 1: chlamydia than man um and Denunzio could also be a
Speaker 1: brutal ruler. Midway through nineteen sixteen, he held a plebiscite
Speaker 1: promising to hand over control of the city to someone
Speaker 1: else if the people no longer wanted him in charge,
Speaker 1: and he lost the plebiscite, but he did not give
Speaker 1: up power is Centurions of Death, an elite corps of
Speaker 1: black shirted thugs kept the city under his control, and
Speaker 1: during this period, Gabrielle also introduced an innovation that everyone
Speaker 1: today is tragically agonizing. Lee familiar with the Roman salute
Speaker 1: now most people know. Most people know the Roman salute
Speaker 1: better as the Nazi salute, that weird, creepy straight arm
Speaker 1: salute that fascists and border patrol employees do. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: invented that. He invented lying about removing your ribs to
Speaker 1: suck your dick and the fascist salute the same guy shit.
Speaker 1: No idea that one person was capable of achieving so much.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that is I'm Harry gets way too much credit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fucking de Nunzio. Yo, I'm going to read a quote
Speaker 1: from Count Carlos Sforza, an Italian diplomat and an anti
Speaker 1: fascist politician who was a contemporary of De Nunzio's. Um.
Speaker 1: He wrote quote, it was he who had fume invented
Speaker 1: that Roman salute, which has now become also the German salute,
Speaker 1: and which he, overlooking its implications, copied from some statue
Speaker 1: or fresco forgetting that in Rome the sieves the citizens
Speaker 1: greeted each other by shaking hands, and that only slaves
Speaker 1: made the sign, which has been adopted by the subjects
Speaker 1: of Mussolini and Hitler. So he's they were very condescending
Speaker 1: as far as like this, Like he didn't know. He
Speaker 1: liked the way it looked in statues, and so he
Speaker 1: made his people do it, and it took off with
Speaker 1: Mussolini's fascists, and then with Hitler's fascists, and now with
Speaker 1: border patrol employees. Um wow, I am amazing. Literally every
Speaker 1: second of this podcast blotter off to the floor. I
Speaker 1: wish I wish this this call was recorded, because my
Speaker 1: face just literally contorts and like my mouth is a
Speaker 1: gape for so much of what you're saying. I cannot
Speaker 1: believe this guy's life. It's something else down. Immediately after
Speaker 1: taking power, De Nunzio's first action was to establish a
Speaker 1: press office, which he used to send out communicats to
Speaker 1: governments and politicians and media outlets round the world. Journalists
Speaker 1: flocked to the city, as well as political extremists. Gabrielle
Speaker 1: offered to arm the IRA with some of the tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of rifles his forces had captured. He entertained
Speaker 1: grand visions of invading England, which he hated at the
Speaker 1: head of an Irish army, but the IRA was a
Speaker 1: little too smart for that. They wanted guns, but Gabrielle's
Speaker 1: hatred of the United States was seen as potentially alienating
Speaker 1: the nation they saw as their greatest ally. Mussolini at
Speaker 1: one point wrote to him and suggested that two of
Speaker 1: them should work to overthrow the Italian monarchy and establish
Speaker 1: a directory essentially a powerful fascist central government. Remarkably, Benito
Speaker 1: didn't see himself as the head of this organization. He
Speaker 1: wanted to make De Nunzio the dictator, but Gabrielle was
Speaker 1: at least loyal to the Italian throne and was unwilling
Speaker 1: to take part in such a revolution. In November of
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, Osbert Sitwell, an English writer, joined the crowds
Speaker 1: of journalists in revolution suctionaries who'd come to fume. His
Speaker 1: goal was to see what the man who has done
Speaker 1: more for the Italian language than any writer since Dante
Speaker 1: had done with a nation of his own and Lucy
Speaker 1: Hughes Howett writes quote, Sitwell finds the streets full of
Speaker 1: colorful desperadoes. Every man seemed to wear a uniform designed
Speaker 1: by himself. Some more beards and had shaven heads like
Speaker 1: the commander. Others cultivated huge tufts of hair half a
Speaker 1: foot long waving out from their foreheads, and a black
Speaker 1: fez at the back of the head. Cloaks, daggers, and
Speaker 1: flowing black ties were universal, and all carried the Roman dagger.
Speaker 1: Sitwell succeeds in securing an audience. He passes through a
Speaker 1: pillared hall full of palm trees and pseudo Byzantine flower pots,
Speaker 1: where soldiers lounged and typis rushed furiously in and out.
Speaker 1: In an inner room almost entirely covered with banners, he
Speaker 1: finds two more than life size carved and gilded saints
Speaker 1: from Florence, a huge fifteenth century bronze bell, and the commandant,
Speaker 1: as do Nunzio now likes to be called, in military
Speaker 1: gray green, his chest striped with ribbons of his many medals.
Speaker 1: He seems nervous and tired, but bald and one eyed
Speaker 1: as he is. At the end of a few seconds,
Speaker 1: one felt the influence of that extraordinary very charm, which
Speaker 1: has enabled him to change howling mobs into furious partisans.
Speaker 1: Since sit Will arrived in Fume, the great conductor Arturo
Speaker 1: Tuscanini has brought his orchestra to the town. To celebrate
Speaker 1: Tuscanini's visit, De Nunzio lays on a mock battle which
Speaker 1: is as lethal as an ancient Roman circus. Four thousand
Speaker 1: men take part, attacking each other with real grenades. The orchestra,
Speaker 1: which initially provides a musical accompaniment Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, becomes
Speaker 1: involved in the fighting. Over a hundred men are injured,
Speaker 1: including five musicians. Now De Nunzio, discussing the event with Sitwell,
Speaker 1: explains that his legionnaires are weary of waiting for battle.
Speaker 1: They must fight one another. I have so many questions. Okay, first,
Speaker 1: I remember you said that he didn't even like politics. No,
Speaker 1: but this is not politics. This is being worshiped by
Speaker 1: a whole city and having them fight for his amusement.
Speaker 1: For he's basically eats religion. For someone who hates religion
Speaker 1: as much as he does, he loves being worshiped. His
Speaker 1: religion is just CULTI and worship of himself absolutely, And
Speaker 1: like I've heard it said that, like you know, the
Speaker 1: rock stars of like the sixties and seventies, like the
Speaker 1: Beatles and the Stones and like Pink Floyd and stuff
Speaker 1: like those guys got about as close to being a
Speaker 1: god as anyone has ever gotten. I think the Nunzio
Speaker 1: is the closest any human has ever experienced to really
Speaker 1: like like, at least in the modern era. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe earlier when he literally worshiped, but like in every field,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that's wild and every field imaginable, he
Speaker 1: was worshiped. My other question is he so he actually
Speaker 1: lost his eye, so he was bedridden, but then he
Speaker 1: lost the eye. Yeah, he lost one eye. So now
Speaker 1: he's even weird, weirder looking than he was before. He's
Speaker 1: just like, does he wear a patch. I think he
Speaker 1: wears a glass eye. Okay, yeah, you know he's probably
Speaker 1: still fucking too, so yeah, oh he is fucking constantly.
Speaker 1: He never stops fucking, like always fucking. Yeah? Did he
Speaker 1: also invent Viagara? What's next? What? What? What? What I
Speaker 1: wanted to give me next? I do kind of feel
Speaker 1: like he was one of the people who never really
Speaker 1: needed that, Like he was the horniest man who ever lived.
Speaker 1: Like that is that is Gabriel de Nunzio. Now, this
Speaker 1: whole deliriously mad state of affairs lasted only a few
Speaker 1: more weeks. In January of ninety one, pressed by the
Speaker 1: League of Nations, the Italian government finally took action against
Speaker 1: its native son. They sent a gunboat and soldiers and
Speaker 1: laid siege to the city. A few after five days
Speaker 1: of fighting and fifty some deaths, Gabrielle de Nunzio decided
Speaker 1: he had finally had enough of war. Perhaps he was
Speaker 1: scared of dying himself, or perhaps he just had no
Speaker 1: stomach for fighting his fellow Italians. He left the city.
Speaker 1: One supporter later wrote, descriptively, under a delusion flowers, he
Speaker 1: forces his way through a city in tears. The failure
Speaker 1: of his fume ventures seems to have drained Gabrielle of
Speaker 1: much of his remaining energy. He was allowed back into
Speaker 1: Italy with a squad of his cult like followers, and
Speaker 1: he ordered them to find him a home with a
Speaker 1: grand piano, a bath through him, a laundry, plenty of
Speaker 1: wood and coal in an enclosed garden. He told them,
Speaker 1: if within eight days none of you have found a
Speaker 1: suitable house for me, I shall throw myself into the
Speaker 1: Canal Jesus. Unfortunately, they found him a place and he
Speaker 1: occupied it for three years or so until Benito Mussolini's
Speaker 1: March on Rome ended Italy's quasi democracy and brought about
Speaker 1: the establishment of the world's first fascist state. Mussolini's Italy
Speaker 1: and the tactics he used to present himself to the
Speaker 1: people were deeply based in things he learned from Gabrielle
Speaker 1: to Nunzio, and the poet knew it. In one letter
Speaker 1: to Mussolini, he wrote, am I not the precursor of
Speaker 1: all that is good about fascism? I I'm just speechless, honestly. Like,
Speaker 1: first of all, away with the dramatic guy, A very
Speaker 1: dramatic thing, very very dramatic, where I'm going to just
Speaker 1: throw myself. But like he really I hate to say it,
Speaker 1: but like he thinks he's good at everything, and he
Speaker 1: kind of was the like he was very very much
Speaker 1: in Anetzcha and likes idea of the ubermention. And it's
Speaker 1: one of those guys where it's like life didn't prove
Speaker 1: him wrong. Like if you believe you're a superior being
Speaker 1: and you live this guy's life, it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: not to remain convinced of that. That's what I meant
Speaker 1: earlier when I mentioned that I get this this feeling
Speaker 1: of like the self fulfilling prophecy of like if you
Speaker 1: think you're invincible, then you actually will get away with anything,
Speaker 1: will be and will be invincible. Obviously it doesn't work
Speaker 1: all the time, but with this case, having lived your
Speaker 1: entire life this way since you were a literal baby god,
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of the things interesting to me,
Speaker 1: this guy being Italian and being very obsessed with like
Speaker 1: ancient Rome and Roman iconography. The ancient Romans had um
Speaker 1: a strategy for dealing with as most cultures had to
Speaker 1: develop some sort of strategy for trying to deal with
Speaker 1: runaway egos because it's dangerous when somebody's ego gets this
Speaker 1: out of control, which is de Nunzio's whole life is
Speaker 1: lesson in that. Um. So they would have these things
Speaker 1: called triumphs. When like a Roman general went a particularly
Speaker 1: great victory, he would be allowed to go on this
Speaker 1: massive parade through the city. He was basically dictator for
Speaker 1: a day. Everybody almost worshiped him for like a day,
Speaker 1: and they knew that this was dangerous because it really
Speaker 1: got on someone's ego. So while this guy is like
Speaker 1: the center of the entire like Roman Republic and then
Speaker 1: Empire's attention the whole day, there's a guy whose job
Speaker 1: is to stand next to him and repeatedly whisper into
Speaker 1: his ear basically, you're gonna die at some point, you're
Speaker 1: going to die. Like, remember, you're going to die. You're
Speaker 1: just a man, and you're going to die like like
Speaker 1: someone should have been doing that for Denuncie into the ground. Damn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a crazy thing. Well I know that about the
Speaker 1: it's a cool bit of history. Um So you know what,
Speaker 1: isn't the precursor of all that's good about fascism? Sharine
Speaker 1: sponsors that's right, That is right, Robert stay Roberto the
Speaker 1: Italian unless you believe in the theory that fascism is
Speaker 1: the inevitable descendant of capitalism, because capital will always resort
Speaker 1: to authoritarian means to preserve itself in the face of
Speaker 1: civil unrest um in which well, let's just go to ads.
Speaker 1: So let's not linger on that one too much. We're
Speaker 1: back so Hi. Mussolini is in charge of Italy now,
Speaker 1: and he well understood the value of using someone like Gabrielle.
Speaker 1: De Nunzio was too famous and popular to ignore, and
Speaker 1: so will do. Trotted De Nunzio out for public events
Speaker 1: and made sure everybody saw the poet embracing him and
Speaker 1: his new regime. In private, Gabrielle hated this. He saw
Speaker 1: Mussolini as an imitation, and his enormous ego could not
Speaker 1: stand the insinuation that he had merely prepared the way
Speaker 1: for some other greater Italian leader. Under Mussolini, the Italian
Speaker 1: state gifted Gabrielle a ma se mansion, money and regularly
Speaker 1: sent him bizarre gifts, including half of an actual battleship,
Speaker 1: which he set up on his lawn like a gazebo.
Speaker 1: He continued to host parties and socialized, but over the
Speaker 1: next decade and change, his health gradually declined. He died
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight at age seventy four. Personally, Gabrielle
Speaker 1: disagreed with most of the decisions Mussolini made. He particularly
Speaker 1: hated the alliance with Hitler, who De Nunzio saw correctly
Speaker 1: as a monster and a fool. He was briefly courted
Speaker 1: by the anti fascist resistance in Italy as a possible
Speaker 1: foil to Mussolini, but if that was ever something that
Speaker 1: would have interested to Nunzio, he was far too old
Speaker 1: to try. I quoted count Sforza a little earlier. That
Speaker 1: was from an obituary he wrote, titled De Nunzio Inventor
Speaker 1: of Fascism in nineteen thirty eight, and I want to
Speaker 1: read you how it opens. The War of nineteen fourteen
Speaker 1: and nineteen eighteen left in its wake, to a certain
Speaker 1: extent everywhere, and especially in Italy and Germany, a new
Speaker 1: category of white collar proletarians who saw themselves as troubled
Speaker 1: wreckage in a society in which capitalism and the world
Speaker 1: of the working man seemed equally hostile to them. By
Speaker 1: a strange paradox, it was Gabriel de Nunzio, whose lyric
Speaker 1: richness had been so splendid, and who became the poet
Speaker 1: and the prophet of all these pathetic misfits. It was
Speaker 1: he who was the real inventor of fascism. A. Sforza
Speaker 1: goes on to note quote it was de Nunzio who
Speaker 1: invented those dialogues with the crowd, which fascism later on
Speaker 1: found so useful. At the piazzaive an Easia in Rome,
Speaker 1: to whom shall fume belong? De Nunzio called down from
Speaker 1: the capital balcony, and the mob of volunteers who had
Speaker 1: invaded Fume thundered from below to us and the poet,
Speaker 1: dictator and Italy, and the mob once more a noir
Speaker 1: to us. This, to us later gave the key to
Speaker 1: the real love of De Nunzio for the fatherland, a
Speaker 1: love of possession, not a love of devotion and sacrifice.
Speaker 1: Lucy Hughes Hallett writes, though Denunzio was not a fascist,
Speaker 1: fascism was de Nunzian, and I think that really gets
Speaker 1: at the core of it. He personally was a weirder,
Speaker 1: more complicated guy. He didn't mean to invent fascism, but
Speaker 1: the way that he addressed the crowd, the way that
Speaker 1: he worked with the crowd, the way that he riled
Speaker 1: people up. Um, the iconography he used, like the way
Speaker 1: that his soldiers were dressed in like these black leather
Speaker 1: uniforms was copied both by mussolini stormtroopers and later the SS.
Speaker 1: The salute that he invented, you know, and he's he's
Speaker 1: exchanging dozens and dozens of letters with Mussolini before the
Speaker 1: then rises to power like there and and Mussolini's march
Speaker 1: on Rome is very much an imitation of of the
Speaker 1: Nunzio's March on Fume. Like he he didn't purposefully invent
Speaker 1: fascism because of the man he was, He created it
Speaker 1: as a byproduct of his ego. Yeah, well what what
Speaker 1: what date? What year did he die? Ninety eight? Right
Speaker 1: before the war started? Because I know at the time,
Speaker 1: like Mussolini in particular, he was maybe one of the
Speaker 1: first people to really utilize the film industry in his propaganda,
Speaker 1: Like he like made an entire film studio and just
Speaker 1: used it in the late thirties, I think it was
Speaker 1: thirty seven to literally just make propaganda for fascism, and
Speaker 1: there were just so many pro war films that were made, Uh,
Speaker 1: like the Declaration. I guess the Allied Forces was also
Speaker 1: like under the film studio that he like established. But
Speaker 1: I think that union of film and politics, I have
Speaker 1: to say, like probably did Unzio pave that way to
Speaker 1: like this artistic union of of politics and like like
Speaker 1: creative art. The first thing he established in Fume once
Speaker 1: he was in control was a press office. Like he
Speaker 1: was a little too early to really take advantage of television. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean he was, he was filmed a number of times,
Speaker 1: like he clearly saw the potential. But he was a
Speaker 1: propagandist from the beginning, Like that was what he decided
Speaker 1: his his involvement in war should be. And I think
Speaker 1: he was just a little too old to have become
Speaker 1: a fascist dictator. If he'd been born a bit later.
Speaker 1: The man he was the kind of you know, charisma,
Speaker 1: he had, the energy he had. I think that's the
Speaker 1: kind of path he would have been on. It was
Speaker 1: just a little bit early, and he was raised in
Speaker 1: too different of a we've really wanted that as much.
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree. I think like Mussolini is like
Speaker 1: a version of like what he could have not become.
Speaker 1: But like it's very I don't know Mussolini him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mussolini pretended to be him and it said that like
Speaker 1: a lot of people say that, like De Nunzio was
Speaker 1: kind of what turned Mussolini was a socialist initially, and
Speaker 1: Denunzio kind of converted him away from that. And then
Speaker 1: Mussolini deliberately aped de Nunzio's like affectations, the way he
Speaker 1: spoke to crowds, the way he addressed people, way he
Speaker 1: patterned himself, um, and just did it with a little
Speaker 1: bit more of a modern tinge to it and more
Speaker 1: use of things like television and the radio, um, and
Speaker 1: you know, than Hitler iterated from that and that was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that Tasian flattery, same thing, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think Mussolini and Hitler they both used the mouthpiece of
Speaker 1: their generation, which was like this new filmmaking and and
Speaker 1: and it was film and propaganda and um, if they
Speaker 1: were born at the time of Nunzio with poetry, I'm
Speaker 1: sure it would have been that too. But uh, it's
Speaker 1: interesting because what Mussolini did with filmmaking in Italy was
Speaker 1: really fascinating. And like disturbing at the same time. Um,
Speaker 1: but I think if I think you're right, I think
Speaker 1: if the Nunzio was born a little bit later, he
Speaker 1: would have used that mouthpiece the same way he used poetry,
Speaker 1: just to gardner worship and fame and use his like
Speaker 1: poetic verse in a different way. Uh. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty cool story. I'm really intrigued. Like I there, he's
Speaker 1: genuinely what you said earlier. I agree with like maybe
Speaker 1: one of the most fascinating people to have ever lived.
Speaker 1: Like his life at every turn was more absurd than
Speaker 1: the last. Yeah, it's kind of hard to really wrap
Speaker 1: your head around, like how much this guy did, how
Speaker 1: bold he was, how awful he was, Like he did
Speaker 1: so much and he did and I had to leave
Speaker 1: out so much, just like make this a comprehensible episode.
Speaker 1: Like I really recommend the biography by Lucy Hughes Howett
Speaker 1: Gabrielle de Nunzio, poet, seducer and preacher of war. It's
Speaker 1: fantastic and he is just absolutely a fascinating piece of shit. Yes,
Speaker 1: a fascinating piece of ship. I would agree with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's right up there with l Ron Hubbard in my
Speaker 1: list of like, fuck, what a life. Genuinely, what a
Speaker 1: life he got away with all of this? What a
Speaker 1: life he got away? And I'm sure he still has
Speaker 1: a billion of fans out there, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he has. His work is obviously respected. Still
Speaker 1: he's still deemed it poet. Yeah, his poetry, his books
Speaker 1: have kind of fallen out of favor, and our scene
Speaker 1: is sort of like, you know, they were great, they
Speaker 1: were good in their time and respecting their time, they
Speaker 1: haven't really continue to have legs. I think his poetry
Speaker 1: does still have legs. He's still highly regarded as a poet. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm obviously not equipped or qualified to comment on Italian
Speaker 1: poetry or his place in there, but a lot of
Speaker 1: experts put him as regard him highly in that field. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something else. Huh. Yeah, I'm I've learned a lot.
Speaker 1: I've learned a lot, and I don't know. I hate
Speaker 1: how indestructible he was. I really hate that. But I
Speaker 1: mean it's like it's one of those things it's hard
Speaker 1: to even get that. Like he does in his life
Speaker 1: kind of unhappily, like Mussolini doesn't care about him or
Speaker 1: respect him, he uses his his tactics and like, uh,
Speaker 1: sort of treats him as a like a like a
Speaker 1: pet almost like yeah, brings him out to like burnish
Speaker 1: the regime's credibility, but ignores him and what he has
Speaker 1: to say. And it's really like bums out and infuriates
Speaker 1: de n Zio. But it's hard to take too much
Speaker 1: joy in that because it means Mussolini's in charge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't win either way. We don't win. Wait, wait,
Speaker 1: what how did he die? What was the cause of death? Oh?
Speaker 1: I think it was like a stroke or some ship.
Speaker 1: He's an old, old man, you know, it's not even
Speaker 1: like a sex. There's rumors he was poisoned by a
Speaker 1: Nazi agent, but I don't, I don't hear, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know see any evidence behind them. I think
Speaker 1: it's more likely he was an old man who had
Speaker 1: horribly advanced syphilis and had been doing cocaine for like
Speaker 1: a decade straight, or more like for probably for decades.
Speaker 1: But I mean even with the syphilis into cocaine to
Speaker 1: make it to seventy, like, yeah, that's a full life,
Speaker 1: a good run. He had a good run. He had
Speaker 1: a very full life. Yeah, leave anything on the table.
Speaker 1: You can say that. Wow, So Sharine, Yes, as this
Speaker 1: influence your own your own desires in your career as
Speaker 1: a as a poet trying to figure out the best
Speaker 1: way to it, you could lead an armed march on
Speaker 1: the city of Fume. Yeah. I mean it's been a
Speaker 1: while since there was a poet that I don't know
Speaker 1: it was worshiped. I'm an audition for that role, you know. Wow,
Speaker 1: I don't know poech I mean, I love poetry. Poetry
Speaker 1: is powerful, but he really he really went a different
Speaker 1: route with it, didn't any Yeah, he was a living
Speaker 1: monument to the power of narcissism. Yeah, speaking of narcissism,
Speaker 1: you want to plug your plug doubles, Yes, I do. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm Sharn and I'm a filmmaker, I'm a poet and
Speaker 1: I also co host Ethnically Ambiguous on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio network. You can thought every podcast app w go
Speaker 1: listen to it on your favorite one if you want to.
Speaker 1: And Um, I'm Shiro Hero on instagram s h E
Speaker 1: R O H E r oh and then on Twitter
Speaker 1: at your hero six six six. And I have a
Speaker 1: poetry book on Amazon called Dime Peace Like the like
Speaker 1: a coin dime, and then piece like a piece of
Speaker 1: a puzzle, and then I'm making my next one, So
Speaker 1: stay tuned for that. If you want watch my stuff,
Speaker 1: I don't care, just to be nice to me. You
Speaker 1: can find me on the twits and the grams and
Speaker 1: the twin stagrams at behind the Bastards. Uh. Well, nope,
Speaker 1: that's not where you can find me. You can find
Speaker 1: me on the twitters at I right, okay. You can
Speaker 1: find this podcast on the twitters and the grams at
Speaker 1: Bastards pod. You can find us on the internet behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards dot com. Um, and you can find your
Speaker 1: way uh into having an immortal impact on the future
Speaker 1: by joining my upcoming cult. Um. It's gonna be a
Speaker 1: really good time. Um. We're gonna lead a march on.
Speaker 1: I don't know what city would be easy to capture.
Speaker 1: I feel like Sacramento wouldn't put up a fight. Roseville, Roseville, Roseville.
Speaker 1: We'll continue. You hit us up on Twitter with which
Speaker 1: city you think we should lead an armed march on
Speaker 1: to conquer? Yeah, we'll figure it out. Um, that's the
Speaker 1: fucking episode. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's I always
Speaker 1: learned so much. I always leave feeling so dead inside.
Speaker 1: Didn't think it was possible to get more dead inside.
Speaker 1: But you know what that podcast America Feel Dead Inside Again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the tagline to this podcast, right, so if we
Speaker 1: need to get some hats made, No, thanks for having me, yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for being on