Speaker 1: Hello, Hello, Hey. I don't know if you heard, but
Speaker 1: my podcast Checking It has been nominated for the a
Speaker 1: CP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Lifestyle and
Speaker 1: Self Help Podcast. I'm grateful for the nomination. I I
Speaker 1: almost didn't even do a podcast because I was just
Speaker 1: wandering there are thousands of podcasts out there and why
Speaker 1: is my voice needed? But the nomination from the a
Speaker 1: CP lets me know that I made the right choice,
Speaker 1: and I encourage you to do Don't worry if there
Speaker 1: are thousands of something else that you want to do.
Speaker 1: No nobody has your sauce, so listen. You can still vote.
Speaker 1: Go to vote dot in double a CP Image Awards
Speaker 1: dot net. You have until February five, um nine pm
Speaker 1: Eastern Standard Time, and please listen to my podcast. We're
Speaker 1: part of the Black Effect podcast Network on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast. Thank
Speaker 1: you for checking in. Conquer your New Year's resolutions with
Speaker 1: the Before Breakfast podcast and each bite sized daily episode,
Speaker 1: you'll learn how to make the most of your time
Speaker 1: with practical tools to help you feel less busy and
Speaker 1: get more done. Listen to Before Breakfast on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app four wherever you get your podcasts. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to our show. I'm Zoe Deschanel and I'm
Speaker 1: so excited to be joined by my friends and cast
Speaker 1: mates Hannah Simone and Lamar and Morris to recap our
Speaker 1: hit television series New Girl. Join us every Monday on
Speaker 1: the Welcome to Our Show podcast, where we'll share behind
Speaker 1: the scenes stories of your favorite New Girl episodes. Each week,
Speaker 1: we answer all your burning questions like is there really
Speaker 1: a bear in every episode of New Girl? Plus you'll
Speaker 1: hear hilarious stories like this, that was one of your
Speaker 1: things you brought back from Yeah, all professional basketball players. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Listen to the Welcome to Our Show podcast on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. What's overthrowing my democratically elected stay. I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the worst
Speaker 1: people in all of history. And we are, of course
Speaker 1: recording in the immediate wake of what I think can
Speaker 1: fairly be called an insurrection by fascist dominated right wing
Speaker 1: militants UM. And in the immediate wake of that, I
Speaker 1: sat down with my producer Sophie Sophie say Hi. Now
Speaker 1: not literally sit down together, because of the plague. But
Speaker 1: we we got on a text chat and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, this fascist insurrection against the democratically elected government
Speaker 1: has a lot of similarities with other fascist insurrections against
Speaker 1: democratically elected governments. Perhaps we should talk about the history
Speaker 1: of fascist insurrections against democratically elected governments in order to
Speaker 1: better prepare people for what needs to be done in
Speaker 1: the wake of this to stop them from succeeding the
Speaker 1: next time. And of course, once we had that idea,
Speaker 1: the only person we could possibly bring on was our
Speaker 1: good friend Jason Petty a k A. PROP. What what
Speaker 1: the lick read? What's up with that failed nation? Stay?
Speaker 1: How y'all feeling like literally I think I text Prop
Speaker 1: and I was like, hey, I want to do this,
Speaker 1: and like it was like yes, yeah, no brainer. There's
Speaker 1: like they're so like you know, Robert myself, anybody else
Speaker 1: who has like a seventh grade level understanding of history
Speaker 1: has been like kind of flaring their arms like crazy
Speaker 1: scientists in every movie that's like, y'all, the aliens are coming, guys,
Speaker 1: I don't understand. How come nobody is seeing us telling y'all,
Speaker 1: we're standing on our heads yelling at you like, this
Speaker 1: is point for point, like bar for bar, point for point,
Speaker 1: We've seen this before and I don't understand what you
Speaker 1: don't understand. Yeah, how did this? Because I've been warning
Speaker 1: about this for quite a while and uh that it
Speaker 1: could happen here, and people continuously are like, I can't
Speaker 1: believe you predicted this, And it's like nobody predicted this.
Speaker 1: Everyone who was paying attention was like, Oh, this is
Speaker 1: obviously going to happen because thousands of people are promising
Speaker 1: to do this. Yes, it's like the dog. My favorite one,
Speaker 1: my favorite meme going around was one where Ron Burgundy
Speaker 1: he was like, wow, that estimated slowly over the past
Speaker 1: ten years, Like yeah, I know, I can't believe these
Speaker 1: people did exactly what they said they was gonna do.
Speaker 1: This is crazy. Yeah, it's it's very frustrating. Um. And
Speaker 1: so you know, the reason we decided to do the
Speaker 1: special mini series Behind the Insurrections is that I think
Speaker 1: historically that's what this is called. That you're listening to insurrection. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you and I did a similar thing this year when
Speaker 1: the uprising against the police started, where we kind of
Speaker 1: talked about the history of the police and I thought
Speaker 1: that was useful to inform people both the context of
Speaker 1: why folks were angry for a lot of folks who
Speaker 1: maybe had never really thought that much about the police
Speaker 1: and didn't understand all the hatred um. And I also
Speaker 1: thought it was useful because understanding, you know, the history
Speaker 1: of something that you want to fight is useful in
Speaker 1: fighting it, um, whether it's the police state or a
Speaker 1: fascist insurrection. And understanding what other fascists have done throughout
Speaker 1: history and where they've succeeded and failed, and how the
Speaker 1: people opposing those fascists have succeeded or failed is important
Speaker 1: both for us to know what's coming next and to
Speaker 1: avoid making the same mistakes that other people made in
Speaker 1: the past that led to them being ruled by fascists,
Speaker 1: which I'd like to avoid. So naturally, we're gonna start
Speaker 1: with Rome, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're about We're gonna
Speaker 1: be starting with my old friend Benito, m Um big
Speaker 1: Benny as no one has ever any move Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing that I like, I mean, we're gonna get
Speaker 1: into this, but like off jump the in in my
Speaker 1: hopes to like, you know, help people figure out ways
Speaker 1: in roads too, you know, their family members who have
Speaker 1: been cooked by this like fascist movement is like is
Speaker 1: dig inside of you and understand what it feels like
Speaker 1: to be disenfranchised and what it feels like to feel
Speaker 1: like you've been left behind by those that are supposed
Speaker 1: to take care of you. And if you can understand that,
Speaker 1: you know, coupled with a person having really non powerful
Speaker 1: antennas to know that they're being fed bullshit, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Um, then I feel like you're you're like,
Speaker 1: you're you're starting to get an owners manual asked to
Speaker 1: like how to not let yourself and you trying to
Speaker 1: stop a fascist regime not incensing and creating martyrs out
Speaker 1: of them and confirming their feelings that uh, you know,
Speaker 1: airby against them. You know what I'm saying. It's just
Speaker 1: it's a matter of like getting behind that and being like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if this election was stolen, that would suck. You're right,
Speaker 1: that would suck if that was true. It's yeah, not
Speaker 1: though it's not, Yeah, it's not, it's not. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if a bunch of Satan worshiping pedophile wizards
Speaker 1: were eating all of our children, that would be a problem.
Speaker 1: We should fight that. But that's not happening. It's just
Speaker 1: not true. Bro. Yeah, the real pedophiles in power are
Speaker 1: more like the guy you think is the Second Coming.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, so let's let's let's talk about old
Speaker 1: old Benito Mussolini. UM moves. I started thinking about NATO
Speaker 1: as I was watching live stream footage of people breaking
Speaker 1: through the capital barricades and into offices with zip ties
Speaker 1: and weapons. UM. And I know that while this was happening,
Speaker 1: in the immediate wake of it, a lot of people
Speaker 1: started bringing up historical comparisons, and unfortunately, I think a
Speaker 1: ton of those historic comparisons were bad. We're the wrong ones.
Speaker 1: To make a good example of this would be a
Speaker 1: ton of people who compared the events of the sixth
Speaker 1: to Krystal knocked the Night of Broken Glass. UM. And
Speaker 1: I think everyone here knows what that is. For those
Speaker 1: that don't listening, it was a pegram, which is a
Speaker 1: racial amass, racial assault like on members of a specific
Speaker 1: race basically UM. That was instituted by the Nazi government
Speaker 1: against Jewish people in Germany. Hundreds of synagogues and Jewish
Speaker 1: owned businesses were burnt down on the space of a night. UM.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of people were killed. UM. And it was a
Speaker 1: nationwide racial attack carried out at the government's behest. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: that's not what we saw on the set. That's not this.
Speaker 1: Yeah and yeah, probably the most prominent person to make
Speaker 1: that comparison was our current governor or former governor of
Speaker 1: California and current Arnold Schwartzenegger Arnold Schwarzenegger um, whose video
Speaker 1: otherwise had some really good stuff in it about Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say I kind of dig it in
Speaker 1: the sense of, like the way he was talking about
Speaker 1: the remorse of people that was a part of it.
Speaker 1: I 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, Yea 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. He's definitely like
Speaker 1: the like the meme of like, you know, when it's
Speaker 1: heartbreaking that the worst person, you know, it's an excellent point,
Speaker 1: makes a really good point. Yeah, great point, Roley, And
Speaker 1: I think his best point was just like, how you
Speaker 1: 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 Knock. When 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 Adol 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 capitol. It's a bit different. So for looking
Speaker 1: for a better historic parallel to January six, I think
Speaker 1: we might be better served by going back a year
Speaker 1: before the nineteen Beer Hall putch, when a completely different fascist,
Speaker 1: Benito Mussolini lad what came to be known as the
Speaker 1: March on rome Um. A lot of really good comparisons
Speaker 1: to what's happened, a lot of good lessons in the
Speaker 1: March of rome Um. So most people good before you
Speaker 1: start is just if you could it's you never really
Speaker 1: want to like reach into the past and draw like
Speaker 1: direct lines if you will, But if you could think
Speaker 1: to yourself, just as a general grid, if in the
Speaker 1: story you own the side of Mussolini, you probably on
Speaker 1: the wrong side of history. I think we can say
Speaker 1: that completely. So now as you continue think about your
Speaker 1: position in this and you that might be able to
Speaker 1: tell you which side of history you should be all
Speaker 1: right now anyway going and if you're if you're rightfully
Speaker 1: on the side of history, that's like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: to stand with Mussolini, which I think the vast I
Speaker 1: think the vast majority of people listening to this are
Speaker 1: already there. I think one of the things this teaches
Speaker 1: is why the people who didn't want Mussolini to wind
Speaker 1: up in charge failed, you know, and and it's important
Speaker 1: to know that as well. Right. Um, So, most people
Speaker 1: are probably broadly familiar of Benito Mussolini, but because of
Speaker 1: how history went down, he tends to be remembered mostly
Speaker 1: as like Hitler's ridiculous and kind of sad sidekick, like
Speaker 1: the least threatening dictator on the axis side. Um, Mussolini
Speaker 1: doesn't wind up as like the frightening villain in a
Speaker 1: lot of movies, right, you know, yeah, that's good. I
Speaker 1: ever thought of it like that, but yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's like you're just like, oh you oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: Hitler light, unless you was in unless you was in it,
Speaker 1: unless you was in Italy. Yeah, I mean even then
Speaker 1: Italy would have been it would have been better to be,
Speaker 1: you know, a Jewish person in Italy than in Germany.
Speaker 1: Not a high bar, you know, the lowest bar in
Speaker 1: history actually minimal hum. But yes, he gets this kind
Speaker 1: of reputation of just being like incompetent and the junior
Speaker 1: partner to Hitler and not very frightening. And that really
Speaker 1: misses a lot of the history and what what people
Speaker 1: at the time when Mussolini rose to power thought, because
Speaker 1: Hitler actually in some ways idolized Mussolini. Um, and he
Speaker 1: patterned his career off of Mussolini's career. The Munich Beer
Speaker 1: Hall Pusch was inspired directly by the March on Rome.
Speaker 1: Mussolini was not just the first um like Mussolini was
Speaker 1: the first fascist dictator. He was the man who created
Speaker 1: fascism as a political ideology that actually took power. Right.
Speaker 1: We talked about Gabrielle de Nunzio, who kind of invented
Speaker 1: a lot of the ideas that became fascism as a
Speaker 1: and who was a contemporary of Mussolini's. But Mussolini is
Speaker 1: the guy who made fascism work for the first time.
Speaker 1: And when I say work, I mean actually seized power,
Speaker 1: not that is a good government or anything. Um. He
Speaker 1: was the first fascist who seized power from a functional democracy.
Speaker 1: So he's he is not an incompetent buffoon. And you
Speaker 1: kind of you it behooves you to understand how he
Speaker 1: succeeded in the way that he did. Um. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do a full set episodes on his life at some
Speaker 1: point on behind the Bastards. But since we're just focused
Speaker 1: on the march on Rome today, I'm gonna give a
Speaker 1: little cliffs notes of Benito's life prior to him coming
Speaker 1: to power. So Benito aml car Andrea Mussolini, which is
Speaker 1: quite a name. That is a mafia boss right there,
Speaker 1: except for the Andrea, right, except for that Andrea have
Speaker 1: baptizes christening they gave him Andrea. Yeah, either that or
Speaker 1: it's like a boy named Sue situation, and it turns
Speaker 1: out that's actually a bad idea. Yeah. Uh. So he
Speaker 1: was born on July three in a small Italian town
Speaker 1: that I'm not going to try to pronounce right now.
Speaker 1: His father, Alessandro, was a blacksmith and a socialist. He
Speaker 1: named Benito after Mexican President Benito Warez, who's the name
Speaker 1: sake of Uarez and who was the first indigenous president
Speaker 1: of Mexico. Um and was a famous liberal you know.
Speaker 1: Um I thought that was interesting, super inter 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 yeah, this guy is one of
Speaker 1: the great all time historic pivots, you know. Um. In
Speaker 1: nineteen o two, Benito fled to Switzerland to avoid compulsory
Speaker 1: military service. He became active in the Italian socialist movement
Speaker 1: from Afar, and he grew obsessed with the writing of
Speaker 1: syndicalist Georges Morel, who believed that capitalist democracy needed to
Speaker 1: be overthrown by a combination of general strikes and violent
Speaker 1: direct action. So he's he's a socialist's a leftist, but
Speaker 1: he's a fan of these guys who are like, we
Speaker 1: need a revolution and violence is okay in that revolution. Right.
Speaker 1: That's like a big, big chunk of his early ideological upbringing.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o four, or Benito returned to Italy under
Speaker 1: a general amnesty for draft dodgers in exchange for which
Speaker 1: he's 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 fire brand, participating in
Speaker 1: a nineteen eleven riot protesting Italy's imperialist war in Libya.
Speaker 1: He did night or five months in prison for this,
Speaker 1: So not just like a talker, Like he puts his
Speaker 1: skin in the game and he does time protesting and
Speaker 1: imperialist war. Dang all right, okay, yeah, yeah he was,
Speaker 1: he was. He was not like wishy washy about this stuff.
Speaker 1: I guess it's the point I'm making. So as a
Speaker 1: hardcore leftist, Mussolini hated the monarchy, which in Italy at
Speaker 1: the time was similar in its kind of power to
Speaker 1: the British monarchy. Italy is a constitutional monarchy at this point,
Speaker 1: so more or less a democracy. But they've got a
Speaker 1: king and he has some power. Um. In nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: Mussolini stated the king is nothing more than a useless
Speaker 1: citizen and the Italian flag is fit only for a
Speaker 1: dung heap. Yeah, burn it all down, burn it all
Speaker 1: down kind of guy. Yeah, yeah, very much, very much. Now,
Speaker 1: it may seem odd that the first fascist dictator was
Speaker 1: a committed left wing activist in his youth, but it's
Speaker 1: really not that strange. This is a pattern that we
Speaker 1: see repeating itself over and over throughout the history of fascism.
Speaker 1: In more recent times, just to talk about stuff that's
Speaker 1: happened in the last like four years, Jason Kessler, who's
Speaker 1: the fascist you planned and organized the first Unite the
Speaker 1: Right rally in Charlottesville, got his starting political activism and
Speaker 1: occupy in New York. You can find in Unicorn Rights
Speaker 1: discord jets him talking about being very indue occupy at
Speaker 1: the time. UM. Andrew Arenheimer, we've who's a neo Nazi
Speaker 1: hacker and a prominent member of the fascist movement in
Speaker 1: this country, claims to have been an organizer at Occupy
Speaker 1: Wall Street. I found discussions in Unicorn Riots archive where
Speaker 1: we've debates with other Nazis who were there about how
Speaker 1: Occupied could have been handled differently and been more successful.
Speaker 1: And for a lot of these Nazis, the failure of
Speaker 1: the occupy movement to garner any real change and the
Speaker 1: ease with which the police swept it aside were major
Speaker 1: factors in radicalizing these guys to the far right. One
Speaker 1: fascists that I found in a discord conversation said quote,
Speaker 1: I was at Occupy Wall Street in two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: It was black pilling as fuck, by which he means
Speaker 1: the experience was so disheartening that it pushed him towards fascism. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's really what we see with Mussolini um, he's
Speaker 1: very involved in left wing politics. He gets arrested for them,
Speaker 1: and he sees them continue to fail. Right, they don't
Speaker 1: succeed in overthrowing the government, they don't succeed in pushing
Speaker 1: the changes that he believes are necessary, and it starts
Speaker 1: to embitter him. I I often think that like some
Speaker 1: of that happens in the black community with just also
Speaker 1: like like still trying to wrap my brain around, Like
Speaker 1: I saw a video of crips for Trump on the
Speaker 1: on the UH at the at the at the at
Speaker 1: the insurrection earlier. It's like Chris for Chump, west Side
Speaker 1: something something, and and I could not wrap my brain around,
Speaker 1: like how does will work? But I think it's it.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it does have to do
Speaker 1: with the fact that, like, you know, we've tried so hard,
Speaker 1: we put our flag in the sand with this particular
Speaker 1: way of approaching you know, political change, and it's not working,
Speaker 1: that you're like, well forget it, you know, and then like,
Speaker 1: well maybe this will work. Maybe this going this direction
Speaker 1: speaks more to like since the Empire the machine just
Speaker 1: met us with might and just overpowered us with Mike
Speaker 1: because they just they're just more powerful you'll only recourse
Speaker 1: is to be like, well, I need to be more
Speaker 1: powerful than that. I don't know. Yes, yes, that's exactly
Speaker 1: when you when you're I think you're really onto something
Speaker 1: like when you were when you're getting your ass kicked.
Speaker 1: And I think some of this is that I think
Speaker 1: it's probably more common with males who are kind of activism,
Speaker 1: like and you get your pride is harm by getting
Speaker 1: the ship kicked out of you repeatedly, by the repeated
Speaker 1: failure to win, to advance, um, by the sheer strength
Speaker 1: of your opponents. I do think that that can have
Speaker 1: the effect of pushing people in that kind of more
Speaker 1: violent authoritarian direction where you're like, well I just want
Speaker 1: to win, Like yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that
Speaker 1: has if that's a part of what's going on. And
Speaker 1: I think it is for Mussolini, because the switch for
Speaker 1: him really happens as a result of World War One. UM.
Speaker 1: So basically what you've got with World War one, Archduke
Speaker 1: friends Ferdinand get shot dead along with his wife, and
Speaker 1: it starts this this series of events right um, where
Speaker 1: Austria is going to invade Serbia and Russia is going
Speaker 1: to come in on the side of and like it
Speaker 1: starts this whole domino effect, And so there's months between
Speaker 1: his assassination and the actual outbreak of the war where
Speaker 1: everyone knows that Europe is gearing up for a war.
Speaker 1: And prior to that happening, the international left, the communist International,
Speaker 1: largely had been very anti war, very united across national boundaries.
Speaker 1: But as soon as a mass European war becomes a reality,
Speaker 1: it starts to splinter. And there are a lot of
Speaker 1: folks who had been socialist leftist, like workers who instead
Speaker 1: of kind of siding with workers solidarity or like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna side with my country on this um. And
Speaker 1: you know, that's not the only thing that's happening. There's
Speaker 1: also like this, the Second International tries to organize like
Speaker 1: some sort of workers strike or something like. There's a
Speaker 1: couple of ideas about how they might stop the war
Speaker 1: by organizing workers, and all of these ideas fail um
Speaker 1: and you know, all of these ideas fail, and Europe
Speaker 1: lurches towards war, and it's kind of like this moment
Speaker 1: where this big international left wing movement shows it that
Speaker 1: it's toothless in the eyes of at least of the
Speaker 1: eyes of a guy like Mussolini, like, we said like this,
Speaker 1: we weren't going to let this kind of thing happen,
Speaker 1: and now it's happening. Um So that that for one
Speaker 1: thing as a source of frustration to a lot of people. Um.
Speaker 1: Mussolini is more directly enraged by something that happens earlier
Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen, um, something called Red Week, which was
Speaker 1: when a bunch of workers there was a big mass
Speaker 1: becers revolt in Italy that was brutally put down by
Speaker 1: Italian police and the Royal Army. Um. And this had
Speaker 1: kind of convinced him that the bourgeoisie leaders of left
Speaker 1: wing political parties, the actual like liberals and socialist in
Speaker 1: government didn't really support revolution and he did. So all
Speaker 1: of this stuff is kind of in the mix, leading
Speaker 1: to him getting kind of black pilled, to use the
Speaker 1: words of that other Nazi. Um. And Benito doesn't come
Speaker 1: 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 accelerations. We need to go to
Speaker 1: war because that's going to force a revolution, is the
Speaker 1: only way. Yeah, yeah, I I yeah. When you it's
Speaker 1: it's always at least in my head, like I've I've
Speaker 1: kind of let go of the like linear swing of
Speaker 1: like you know, far right far left in my brain.
Speaker 1: I know, we use that because that's how we understand
Speaker 1: the world right now, but like it seems much more
Speaker 1: like circular to where it's like, uh, they ended authoritarianism
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, they end with a
Speaker 1: with a strong dude like so so it was crazy
Speaker 1: like yeah, so like the further left you go, you're
Speaker 1: 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. Get off the loop, because if it
Speaker 1: ends at authoritarian ism, then this is not where I
Speaker 1: need to be. Yeah, exactly, if it ends with like
Speaker 1: all of the power, we're being in one dude or
Speaker 1: a tiny number of people's hands. Yeah, no, I want
Speaker 1: It's like somewhere on this horse to I knew that
Speaker 1: that wasn't a good idea. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: we need to get off the ride. And and Mussolini
Speaker 1: is very much just a guy who's he's of that.
Speaker 1: He's he's always been kind of an authoritarian um in
Speaker 1: part because he is very in love with his own
Speaker 1: ideas and thinking. And that's the same when he's on
Speaker 1: the left as when he's on the right. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's not a clean process of him going from socialist
Speaker 1: to fascist. But it happens over the course of not
Speaker 1: just World War One, but ramping up to getting Italy
Speaker 1: involved in World War One. So Italy had, prior to
Speaker 1: the outbreak of hostilities been allied with the Central Powers,
Speaker 1: so they should have come in the war on Germany's side.
Speaker 1: But they very intelligently, We're like, no, no, we're not
Speaker 1: We're not doing this. This does seems like a good idea,
Speaker 1: but and that's why. So they say we're not getting
Speaker 1: involved in the war, and Mussolini becomes a pro war activist,
Speaker 1: trying to force Italy to come into the war on
Speaker 1: the side of the Allies, so fighting against the people
Speaker 1: they've been allied with before. And I'm gonna quote now
Speaker 1: from a write up in nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen online,
Speaker 1: which is a World War One encyclopedia. It's a very
Speaker 1: good resource on all this. After his late October editorial
Speaker 1: demanded Italian intervention, socialist outrage prompted Mussolini's resignation. So he's
Speaker 1: forced to resign from the party he had been a
Speaker 1: member of. When his pro interventionalist newspaper will Popolo the Italia,
Speaker 1: the Italia, the the Italian people, I think is what
Speaker 1: it stands for. Yeah, not appeared In mid November, the
Speaker 1: party expelled him. Mussolini concealed its funding by industrialists, the French,
Speaker 1: his wealthy lover Margharita Saffrati, and possibly Russian agents. For
Speaker 1: six months, through editorials and demonstrations, he promoted the interventionalist movement.
Speaker 1: Collaborating with syndicalist Filippo Corradoni, Mussolini demanded war against Italy's
Speaker 1: allies Germany and Austria Hungary to demolish bulwarks against European
Speaker 1: Revolution of victorious war would forge a national mass movement
Speaker 1: demanding political change. If the government rejected war, Mussolini threatened revolution.
Speaker 1: Most Italians favorite piece, but Vittorio Emmanuel, the third King
Speaker 1: of Italy, forced a war declaration on twenty four of
Speaker 1: May nineteen fifteen. So there's a lot of interesting stuff
Speaker 1: that's happening there. One of them is that Mussolini has
Speaker 1: an ideological reason for wanting war because he thinks it's
Speaker 1: going to lead to revolution. Another is that he's very
Speaker 1: likely getting paid by foreign powers in order to incite
Speaker 1: Italy to come in on their side. Um, kind of
Speaker 1: like our ad sponsors who pay us, you know who
Speaker 1: does come in sponsored violence against trying to accelerate our wallets. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: accelerate your wallets, accelerate our wallets. There we go, we came,
Speaker 1: we had, we landed on it. Here's products. Adoption of
Speaker 1: teens from foster care is a topic not enough people
Speaker 1: know about, and we're here to change that. I'm April
Speaker 1: to what the host of the new podcast Navigating Adoption,
Speaker 1: presented by adopt us Kids. Each episode brings you compelling,
Speaker 1: real life adoption stories told by the families that lived them,
Speaker 1: with commentary from experts. Visit adopt us Kids dot org,
Speaker 1: slash podcast, or subscribed to Navigating Adoption presented by adopt
Speaker 1: us Kids, brought to you by the U. S Department
Speaker 1: of Health, that Human Services Administration for Children and Families,
Speaker 1: and the ad Council. Look for your children's eyes to
Speaker 1: see the true magic of a forest. It's a storybook
Speaker 1: world for them. You look and see a tree. They
Speaker 1: see the wrinkled face of a wizard with arms outstretched
Speaker 1: to the sky. They see treasure and pebbles. They see
Speaker 1: a windy path that could lead to adventure, and they
Speaker 1: see you. They're fearless. Guide. Is this fascinating world? Find
Speaker 1: a forest near you and start exploring a Discover the
Speaker 1: Forest dot org brought to you by the United States
Speaker 1: Forest Service and the AD Council. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: our show. I'm Zoid Channel and I'm so excited to
Speaker 1: be joined by my friends and cast mates Hannah Simone
Speaker 1: and Lamar and Morris to recap our hit television series
Speaker 1: New Girl. Join us every Monday on the Welcome to
Speaker 1: Our Show podcast, where we'll share behind the scenes stories
Speaker 1: of your favorite New Girl episodes, reveal the truth behind
Speaker 1: the legendary game true American and discuss how this show
Speaker 1: got made with the writers, guest stars, and directors who
Speaker 1: made the show so special. Fans have been begging us
Speaker 1: to do a New Girl recap for years, and we
Speaker 1: finally made a podcast where we answer all your burning
Speaker 1: questions like is there really a bear? In every episode
Speaker 1: of New Girl? Plus each week you'll hear hilarious stories
Speaker 1: like this at the end when he says you got
Speaker 1: some schmid on your face. I feel like I pitched
Speaker 1: that joke. I believe that. I feel like I did.
Speaker 1: I'm not on a thousand percent I want to say
Speaker 1: that was I tossed that one out. Listen to the
Speaker 1: Welcome to Our Show podcast on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Uh, we're back. Um,
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're talking about Mussolini becomes this very much
Speaker 1: like interventionalist figure and there's a mix of ideology and
Speaker 1: foreign backing that kind of pushes him towards it. And
Speaker 1: I could talk about websites like the Gray Zone and
Speaker 1: they're weird Russian funding and how they're ostensibly left wing
Speaker 1: but also pro imperialist intervention when some countries do it,
Speaker 1: but I won't because we need to move on to
Speaker 1: the story of Benito Mussolini. We've seen these patterns happen
Speaker 1: recently as well. So Mussolini was obviously just one very
Speaker 1: prominent voice in favor of war. He was a major
Speaker 1: pro war figure, but he was probably he was not
Speaker 1: the only one, and he was probably less influential than
Speaker 1: Gabrielle de Nunzio, who again we covered in a two
Speaker 1: party that I'd recommend people listen to. And to his
Speaker 1: minimal credit. After helping to monger his nation into war,
Speaker 1: Mussolini joined the army and fought as a bersiglieri uh,
Speaker 1: which is like a marksman. It's almost a special forces unit,
Speaker 1: right like it's an elite military unit. Um, kind of
Speaker 1: like the Army Rangers, it seems um. And he was
Speaker 1: did at the front by an exploding mortar in one
Speaker 1: of Italy's many bloody stalemates with Austria. Since he'd become
Speaker 1: a very public face of the pro war movement, the
Speaker 1: King came to visit him twice while he was in
Speaker 1: the hospital. Benito became a bona fide celebrity, and when
Speaker 1: the war ended, this provided him with a great deal
Speaker 1: of political capital. He moved further and further right, pulled
Speaker 1: in by the spell of Gabrielle de Nunzio's proto fascist
Speaker 1: rhetoric when Italy was screwed over by her allies with
Speaker 1: the spoils of war, because like Italy had come in
Speaker 1: on the side of the Allies, but they didn't really
Speaker 1: get ship at the end of it, Like they wanted
Speaker 1: a lot more territory, more of Austria, and they kind
Speaker 1: of got sucked out of it. Um. And that pisces
Speaker 1: off the Italian right who feel like we fought and
Speaker 1: bled and lost our comrades for this and we didn't
Speaker 1: get anything. And it's because of our lay mass left
Speaker 1: wing government. Um, that's how a lot of folks feel. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, Mussolini becomes is basically by the time the
Speaker 1: war ins is pretty entrenched in the growing far right
Speaker 1: in Italy and he supports Gabrielle Benunzio when de Nunzio
Speaker 1: leads an army of Italian special forces veterans to occupy
Speaker 1: a city of fume Um. And this is we again,
Speaker 1: we talk about this in our episodes on de Nunzio,
Speaker 1: but fume is this city that was part of Yugoslavia.
Speaker 1: Yugoslavia gets created at wor World War One ends and
Speaker 1: they get this city that Italy thought should be theirs.
Speaker 1: So Denunzio leads an army of retired Special Forces veterans
Speaker 1: to take it, and they turn it into this weird
Speaker 1: It's like this melting pot because in you know, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen nineteen, you've got all these ideologies that are
Speaker 1: like still kind of forming. Anarchism and communism and fascism
Speaker 1: are popular in a lot of like similar circles of people.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of interplay between the at this period
Speaker 1: because they're all kind of new ideologies being developed and
Speaker 1: the same kinds of people who are interested in radical
Speaker 1: politics are all hanging out together. Um. Yeah, So FUME
Speaker 1: is like a big melting pot for all these kinds
Speaker 1: of things and it winds up being the place where
Speaker 1: a lot of what becomes fascism gets cooked up. It's
Speaker 1: like that's that's the agency, you say, because like I
Speaker 1: do picture it as like this, like yeah, like planets
Speaker 1: for like nebulous balls of gas, where it's like it's
Speaker 1: all the same elements and like you know, you're it's
Speaker 1: still like, yeah, all this stuff is still kind of
Speaker 1: coalescing and stuff like that. And but I also think
Speaker 1: this particular moment in history for me is is it's
Speaker 1: it should be very anchoring or or calibrating for all
Speaker 1: of us, because what it tells you is that borders
Speaker 1: are bullshit, like like it's not real. Borders are real,
Speaker 1: Like you know what I'm saying, Like somebody just decided
Speaker 1: that fumes in Yugoslavia, Like Yugoslavia came out of this
Speaker 1: plot of land, has been here the whole time, all sometime,
Speaker 1: I drew a line around, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So it's like a large chunk of the city's population,
Speaker 1: our Italian like yes, yeah, all of a sudden, they
Speaker 1: just woke up in another country, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So like that to me, like I need everybody remember
Speaker 1: that when we're talking about our modern politics, like the
Speaker 1: ship came from year and it's made up well, and
Speaker 1: when we're talking about why so many people because one
Speaker 1: of the things you see in this period is a
Speaker 1: lot of people who were anarchists become fascists, and a
Speaker 1: lot of fascists become anarchists. And it's because, in part
Speaker 1: because when you when you live through a thing where
Speaker 1: suddenly tens of millions of people wake up one day
Speaker 1: in a completely different country than they went to sleep in,
Speaker 1: everything is more malleable, right, Everything is more malleable. And
Speaker 1: it's not obviously like fascism and anarchism are not similar ideologies,
Speaker 1: but people who are into both may be drawn to
Speaker 1: certain similar things. For example, a major aspect of fascism
Speaker 1: is the cult of action for action's sake, the beauty
Speaker 1: of violence and physical exertion and speed. And a lot
Speaker 1: of anarchists were also into direct action, physical violence, fighting
Speaker 1: like and so if you've got communities that are kind
Speaker 1: of embracing this idea of action for action sake, some
Speaker 1: of them are anarchists, some of them are fascists. But
Speaker 1: a lot of times they're gonna wind up at the
Speaker 1: same fucking places, you know, which is kind of you Also,
Speaker 1: if you look at Germany prior to Hitler's rise to power,
Speaker 1: there were times when communists and the fascists fought alongside
Speaker 1: each other against the cops. It happened. It's a thing
Speaker 1: that occurred, just this understanding that like, whatever we have
Speaker 1: right now isn't working exactly like you know, what I'm saying, like,
Speaker 1: and so you're all gonna be in the same space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And a lot of people in Fume they're not. They
Speaker 1: maybe have called themselves a fascist and anarchist at the time,
Speaker 1: where a communist it wasn't really settled in their minds.
Speaker 1: They just knew that what they had grown up with
Speaker 1: was wrong, you know. Um, And yeah, so Fume is
Speaker 1: one of the things that comes out of this experiment
Speaker 1: in Fume is the Italian fascist movement gets like solidified
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, but it starts before, like
Speaker 1: there's thinkers pushing it before then. And while do Nunzio
Speaker 1: is off on his adventure and fume um, Benito Mussolini
Speaker 1: forms a fascist party in March twenty three of nineteen nineteen. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of the impetus behind the early fascists in
Speaker 1: Italy were demilitarized army veterans, in particularly Special Forces guys UM.
Speaker 1: Most of the fighters who accompanied de Nuncio to Fume
Speaker 1: were members of the r d T, which is like
Speaker 1: the Italian equivalent of like Special Forces guys. Like. They
Speaker 1: were very elite soldiers. Mussolini had served in an elite
Speaker 1: unit of marksman Um there were a bunch of like
Speaker 1: the the guys who followed de Nunzio, the RDD were
Speaker 1: like trench like stormers. They would do like what the
Speaker 1: German stormtroopers would do, um, and they were terrifying people.
Speaker 1: They would go into battle with like knives in their
Speaker 1: teeth and grenades in both hands, like running directly ahead
Speaker 1: of artillery barrages, and like this is where like a
Speaker 1: lot of that cult of action for actions saying these
Speaker 1: are adrenaline junkies. That's a huge part of early fascists
Speaker 1: in Italy and Germany. These are guys who became addicted
Speaker 1: to adrenaline during the war and can't stop fighting when
Speaker 1: they get back home. And it's a thing that is
Speaker 1: a factor in our modern fascist movements. Right. A lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of vets and cops and stuff wind
Speaker 1: up in that. UM. I'm also interested in just the enarrowomised.
Speaker 1: As I started a political party, I'm like, logistically, what
Speaker 1: does that look? Was there like paperwork? You file? Like,
Speaker 1: how do you style? Like? I still think, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll start a party. We'll talk about that in just
Speaker 1: a second. I want to talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about some of these demilitarized vets. Yeah, there's a form
Speaker 1: online somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. The r d D had been
Speaker 1: formed in June of nineteen seventeen UM as a special
Speaker 1: forces unit in Italy. Um and they were like when
Speaker 1: they were like sort of um like new. One of
Speaker 1: their commanding officers address the unit, these very young men,
Speaker 1: most of whom came from a peasant background, who had
Speaker 1: gotten to be very good at fighting, extremely experienced veterans,
Speaker 1: and he tells the soldiers, you are the first, the best,
Speaker 1: the future owners of Italy, the new Italian generation, fearless
Speaker 1: and brilliant. You will prepare the great future of Italy.
Speaker 1: The smile of the beautiful Italian woman as your reward,
Speaker 1: you can 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 of these guys
Speaker 1: become fat? And as an aside, one of the emblems
Speaker 1: on their uniform that they wore in their hats was
Speaker 1: a skull and crossbones, which is the same basic emblem
Speaker 1: that the Nazi s s which started as like Nazi
Speaker 1: street fighters before they were a military and you know
Speaker 1: what they wore, right, like a lot of the same
Speaker 1: ships happening. These guys. The r d D are famous
Speaker 1: for giving the stiff armed Roman salute, the sig hile
Speaker 1: as most people know it. Um Like, so a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff again, you see it all cooking up
Speaker 1: in World War One. And by the time the war
Speaker 1: came to an end, the liberal biblical elite in Italy
Speaker 1: knew that these young guys were terrifying. That like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: we trained up an entire generation of incredibly violent and
Speaker 1: competent at violence young men and now we have nothing
Speaker 1: for them to do. Like and um that they realized
Speaker 1: this as a problem, they disbanded the r d D
Speaker 1: like immediately after the war ends. It takes less than
Speaker 1: a month. But these guys are still all out there,
Speaker 1: and they have no plan for demilitarizing them. And again,
Speaker 1: I could again make some comments about what happened in
Speaker 1: Iraq after we dissolved the entire Iraqi army. Yes, now,
Speaker 1: it's never a good idea. You have to take care
Speaker 1: of these people afterwards, otherwise they murder people in the
Speaker 1: streets sometime or become the nexus of a fascist political party.
Speaker 1: Um So again, four months after the armistice ended, World
Speaker 1: War One. Three months after the r d D are disbanded,
Speaker 1: on March nineteen nineteen, Benito Mussolini puts together a group
Speaker 1: of one hundred angry young men, a mix of Italian
Speaker 1: war veterans, a lot of them special forces type guys,
Speaker 1: former socialist elected leaders and journalists. They meet in Milan
Speaker 1: and they declare the formation of the Fascist Party. So
Speaker 1: that's how it happens. You get a hundred dudes together
Speaker 1: and you're like, we're a fucking political party. Now start recruiting.
Speaker 1: And one of Benito's first moves is to start recruiting
Speaker 1: from the disaffected ranks of former soldiers. He brings in
Speaker 1: hundreds of these guys and he reorganizes them into paramilitary
Speaker 1: squads uniformed in black shirts and red Fez caps. Mussolini's
Speaker 1: black Shirts start going after their political opponents in the
Speaker 1: street now in night. Yeah, it's just like the formula doc.
Speaker 1: Find somebody angry and give him a uniform, Give him
Speaker 1: a uniform, tell him it's okay to go out and
Speaker 1: beat the ship out of people they already don't like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm already angry, I'm already pissy. And you say
Speaker 1: those dudes are your problem. And there's in any society
Speaker 1: that has just gone through a war and is dealing
Speaker 1: with economic inequality, which Italy is at this period, in
Speaker 1: economic collapse and incompetent political leadership, you will be able
Speaker 1: to find tents, sorry, you will be able to find
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of those whom and he are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll make this my whole life. Absolutely, Oh where whatever,
Speaker 1: Fred Perry shirts, fuck it, let's do it. I'll storm
Speaker 1: the capital. Yes, it's very easy. Yeah, um, yes. Uh
Speaker 1: so Mussolini forms the Fascist Party. He starts organizing all
Speaker 1: these squads of black shirts, and for an idea of
Speaker 1: how fast this gets out of hand, nineteen nineteen, Mussolini
Speaker 1: starts the Fascist Party with a hundred men. By nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty one, there were three hundred thousand members. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pause here for another little rant about modern
Speaker 1: anti fascism, because this is something that's also relevant to us.
Speaker 1: Over the last four years, since Antifa became a household
Speaker 1: name after the first Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,
Speaker 1: liberal celebrities and politicians have repeatedly urged people not to
Speaker 1: confront fascists in the streets. Some of even complained about doxing,
Speaker 1: which is the public naming and shaming a fascist activists
Speaker 1: who are caught in the wild doing Nazi stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: the general argument tended to go something like this, people
Speaker 1: showing up to fight them just emboldens them and brings
Speaker 1: more of them out. Ignore them, and they'll go away.
Speaker 1: This was more or less the attitude of most, but
Speaker 1: not all, American liberals throughout much of the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: and TIFA tended to be condemned as often as groups
Speaker 1: like the Proud Boys. Police were given a free hand
Speaker 1: to use violence on anti fascists, while fascist street movements
Speaker 1: were ignored or directly enabled by law enforcement and by
Speaker 1: political parties. Will a political party, these organizations, as a result,
Speaker 1: grew steadily in power and reach for several years now.
Speaker 1: On January two, liberal activist Amy Siskin tweeted, if you
Speaker 1: live in d C, stay off the streets. On January six,
Speaker 1: let the DC police take care of the white supremacists
Speaker 1: like they did in Oregon yesterday. I actually think it
Speaker 1: will be fun to watch l O L. Yeah. Not
Speaker 1: a take that aged well ah yeah. Now, when anti
Speaker 1: fascists say fascist movements have to be confronted immediately and
Speaker 1: often with physical force. They're not always at least using
Speaker 1: bluster or bravado. There's certainly adrenaline junkies within the ranks,
Speaker 1: and I've met a few of those people. Absolutely, but
Speaker 1: 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 years. Yeah, wow, because ain't
Speaker 1: nobody say nothing? Yeah? Because or not enough with set?
Speaker 1: You're not enough with set. It's it's yeah, it's crazy
Speaker 1: 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 easiest thing to solve. Yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: solve it, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I'd 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 if you none, none of
Speaker 1: these guys want to get into a fight, if they're
Speaker 1: out number three d to one. That's not when the
Speaker 1: violence happens. It's when they have the numbers, or there's
Speaker 1: parody of numbers, you know. Yeah, And that's why people
Speaker 1: were saying, like, what if tens of thousands of people
Speaker 1: have showed up in the streets of DC to protest,
Speaker 1: I don't think they would have made it through the
Speaker 1: capital barricades. Now it's a pandemic. None of this is
Speaker 1: a simple situation, and it wasn't simple in Italy. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk We're gonna talk now about the anti fascist
Speaker 1: resistance in Italy because in Italian, like Italian fascism did
Speaker 1: face substantial resistance from anarchists and other anti fascists, um,
Speaker 1: and we're about to talk about why that didn't wind
Speaker 1: up working out. Much of the anti fascist resistance in
Speaker 1: Italy also came from members of the r d D,
Speaker 1: from other like UH elite soldiers who just like weren't
Speaker 1: Nazis right hadn't been or fascists who hadn't been pushed
Speaker 1: right who had gotten left instead, or who just didn't
Speaker 1: still believed in the idea of democracy, Because again anti
Speaker 1: fascists in Italy there's a mix of like the hard left,
Speaker 1: but also just like people who are republican right and
Speaker 1: like the sense of I support a republican form of government,
Speaker 1: not like not like a modern republican totally different. So
Speaker 1: the inciting incident for the violence between anti fascists and
Speaker 1: fascists in Italy is generally seen to as having been
Speaker 1: an attack Mussolini ordered on April fifteenth, nineteen nineteen, against
Speaker 1: the newspaper he used to write for, Avanti, which was
Speaker 1: the Socialist Party newspaper UM. Now, Italian fascists were courageous
Speaker 1: and often well organized, but they had to contend with
Speaker 1: not just fascists but the police in the army. This
Speaker 1: meant that the deck was stacked against them from the beginning. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: events and Fume caused Mussolini to realize that he had
Speaker 1: an advantage in the fact that the police and the
Speaker 1: army were inherently sympathetic to fascists. So again we talked
Speaker 1: about Donunzio's occupation of Fume. Um in another episode, but
Speaker 1: a brief refresher here's worthwhile. In short, Uh, he occupies
Speaker 1: Fume for about fifteen months. Um, there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: art and weird sex and political sure, and yeah, things
Speaker 1: go a little wild, and eventually the King of Italy
Speaker 1: like is forced to do something. So King Victor Emmanuel
Speaker 1: the Third, whose nickname was Little Sword because he's a
Speaker 1: tiny guy. Um, at least he all things to be
Speaker 1: 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 liked.
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 do 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 people. So he has to
Speaker 1: send in the army and navy to clear Denuncio out.
Speaker 1: In December, of nineteen Now, after this de Nunzio spell
Speaker 1: over the r d D and the other really hardened
Speaker 1: war veterans who had gone to him and Moss like
Speaker 1: they're his spell over them is broken and they switched
Speaker 1: their allegiance to Mussolini. So these guys, the best fighters,
Speaker 1: like Mussolini's early guys, aren't really as competent. The people
Speaker 1: who had taken Fume, who were like really actually hard
Speaker 1: and dedicated, um to fucking shut up. Like, those people
Speaker 1: start swarming over to Mussolini in mass after December of
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, and they expand the ranks of the black
Speaker 1: Shirts significantly. Um. And Mussolini doesn't just benefit in that way,
Speaker 1: he also takes a really important lesson away from what
Speaker 1: happens in Fume. And I'm going to read a quote
Speaker 1: from the Warfare History Network, who did a great rite
Speaker 1: up on all of this. This is them describing what
Speaker 1: Mussolini learns from this occupation. The police would often overlook
Speaker 1: fascist depredations in favor of attacking their traditional leftist enemies,
Speaker 1: the socialists. The police would also fire on opponents of
Speaker 1: the monarchy. More importantly, the duche observed, which is Mussolini's nickname,
Speaker 1: so would the military. Therefore, he realized he had to
Speaker 1: win over the king, the police, and the armed forces
Speaker 1: by a clever mix of both public bluster and behind
Speaker 1: the scenes old fashioned political maneuvering to attain appointed or
Speaker 1: elective office by legal means. In other words, do Nunzio?
Speaker 1: He realizes Donunzia was able to get this far and
Speaker 1: occupy the city because the army wasn't willing to fight him.
Speaker 1: The police weren't willing to stop him while he was
Speaker 1: marching there because they're sympathetic. But when do Nunzio put
Speaker 1: himself in opposition to the Italian crown and the will
Speaker 1: of the government, the police in the army cracked down.
Speaker 1: They did their duty because they're loyal to the state inherently.
Speaker 1: So if he's going to win, he can't be fighting them,
Speaker 1: and he can make use of the fact that they're
Speaker 1: sympathetic if he just becomes part of the government. That's
Speaker 1: the way Mussolini realizes Fascism is not going to win
Speaker 1: by a revolution. Fascism is going to win by democratic means,
Speaker 1: because the deck is stacked in our favor. If we
Speaker 1: try it that way, If we try to like lead
Speaker 1: a violent revolution, they'll murder us like they would anyone
Speaker 1: trying to lead a revolution. If we become part of
Speaker 1: the government, they'll help us crush our enemies and will
Speaker 1: gain power. Dude. That yeah, the finessing because it's it's
Speaker 1: when you lay it out, it's pretty logical, you know, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: a monarch about something that's lasted thousands, it's it's in
Speaker 1: their d n a dog like you can't you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like, just it's too It's like it's
Speaker 1: too much to ask. Yeah, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: it's too much to ask these people to try to
Speaker 1: like go against their very nature to be like but
Speaker 1: if you if you include the crown, you keep your king.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna get rid of the left. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: them anyway, do you 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 first he figures it out, He figures
Speaker 1: out how fascists are going to win anyway. So Mussolini decides, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have to um, I can't do what the anarchists
Speaker 1: and the communists and the left to do and try
Speaker 1: to like overthrow the government. That's not going to work.
Speaker 1: My path to victory is going to be finding a
Speaker 1: way into the government. And this was not hard for
Speaker 1: him to do. He runs for office and in May
Speaker 1: of nineteen one he's elected to the Chamber of Deputies
Speaker 1: in Rome, along with thirty four other Fascist Party members. Quick,
Speaker 1: very quick, and they're kind of in the middle of
Speaker 1: the pack in terms of how many elected leaders they
Speaker 1: have um but they're they're in the government now. And
Speaker 1: Mussolini barely ever showed up in chamber because he thought
Speaker 1: any governing body based around him compromising was dumb and
Speaker 1: not worth listening to. But he liked the legitimacy that
Speaker 1: elected office gave him and his party. And it's not
Speaker 1: a coincidence that ninety one is also the year when
Speaker 1: the Royal Italian Army joined the police and cracking down
Speaker 1: on anti fascists, because now the fascists are part of
Speaker 1: the government, right, so we can yeah now. Becoming an
Speaker 1: elected leader also gave Mussolini immunity from prosecution while he
Speaker 1: was in office. This was helpful because while the Fascist
Speaker 1: Party gained electoral power, Mussolini's black Shirts were increasingly committing murder.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote now from a study the Journal
Speaker 1: of Values Based Leadership. Fascists agitated against the left and
Speaker 1: streets and neighborhoods across Italy. Socialist offices, institutions, and party
Speaker 1: newspaper headquarters were attacked and burned, militias organized throughout the country,
Speaker 1: and anti Bolshevik crusades, breaking up strikes and fighting labor
Speaker 1: unions and farmer co ops. The fascist squads, dressed in
Speaker 1: black shirts and uniforms, were supported by the local police, landowners, merchants,
Speaker 1: and industrialists. They used violence to destroy any organization they
Speaker 1: felt could be an opposition to the doctrine of fascism.
Speaker 1: Thousands of people were beaten, killed, or forced to drink
Speaker 1: castor oil and run out of town. Hundreds of union offices,
Speaker 1: employment centers, and party newspapers were looted or burnt down.
Speaker 1: In October of nineteen twenty, after the election of a
Speaker 1: left administration in Bologna, fascists invaded the council chamber, causing
Speaker 1: mayhem and 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 deputy is
Speaker 1: we're run out of parliament or had their houses destroyed.
Speaker 1: The two Black Years ninety two destroyed opposition to the fascists.
Speaker 1: Union organizations were crushed. The FEDA Tera Farmers co Op
Speaker 1: shrank from some one million members to less than six
Speaker 1: thousand in less than five years. Unable to defend basic
Speaker 1: democratic rights or prevent the criminal activities of a private
Speaker 1: militia that operated openly in nationwide, the state had lost
Speaker 1: all credibility. Yo, gang banging. Any of that sounds familiar, Yes,
Speaker 1: it does. It's yes, It's like, uh God dug like you.
Speaker 1: It's something. It's something that fascinated me as you was reading.
Speaker 1: Is is like really helping you get into the brain
Speaker 1: like a fascist to where it's like the government's not
Speaker 1: the head but an appendage, like you're just you're a
Speaker 1: You're a You're a tool that I yield, just like
Speaker 1: 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 or 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 Christy, 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 in 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 and of particularly
Speaker 1: the leadership cast of different fascist organizations. Basically everyone involved
Speaker 1: in planning Unite the Right had their life ruined, and
Speaker 1: most of them are no longer relevant on the streets.
Speaker 1: Nobody talks about Jason Kessler anymore. Nobody talks all that
Speaker 1: much about Richard Spencer anymore. Um, some of them are
Speaker 1: in jail, like, uh funk, what's that guy's name? The
Speaker 1: crying not Chris can't. Well, that's how that was how
Speaker 1: made I got kicked off a tender. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: I think that happened to him too. Um. And you
Speaker 1: know a lot of them, like Richard Spencer's drowning in
Speaker 1: legal fees from lawsuits from people and and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: in two thousand eighteen, not just angry at court cases,
Speaker 1: but angry at the fact that his speeches were continuously
Speaker 1: disrupted by anti fascist activists. Richard Spencer complained that's giving
Speaker 1: these speech like having these gatherings was no longer fun
Speaker 1: and quote Antifa is winning. Um. Now, he wasn't precisely
Speaker 1: right about that, because January sixth showed that the fight
Speaker 1: is very far from But Spencer was beaten. And most
Speaker 1: of the original wave of fascist leaders, the people who
Speaker 1: wanted to do what Mussolini did, whose goal was to
Speaker 1: do what Mussolini did, Guys like Spencer, they've been fucking sidelined,
Speaker 1: Which means that most of the people who are prominent
Speaker 1: now have not been prominent and in the position of
Speaker 1: leadership for all that long. So while you have groups
Speaker 1: like the Proud Boys that have been around this whole time,
Speaker 1: militias that go back quite a while, and more extreme
Speaker 1: groups that go back quite a while. Um, a lot
Speaker 1: of the leaders have been disrupted one way or the
Speaker 1: other have had their lives bucked up, and it's stopped
Speaker 1: them from doing in some ways what maybe they might
Speaker 1: have otherwise done. It stopped them from gaining as much power,
Speaker 1: it stopped their organizations from being as cohesive. UM. Some
Speaker 1: organizations have been shut down, like Identity Europa. UM. So
Speaker 1: it's this has been If we want to look at
Speaker 1: like successes of a modern anti fascist movement, that's been
Speaker 1: one of them. And I think we can credit that
Speaker 1: for the fact that the attack on the Capitol on
Speaker 1: the sixth was not better organized or more cohesive, because
Speaker 1: there has been disruption of these movements, UM. And I
Speaker 1: don't know what else would be a disruption of our
Speaker 1: our movements right now, Robert, because that is going to
Speaker 1: disrupt my train of thoughts significantly. Yet I don't like
Speaker 1: that I decided to do that, But America, that happened.
Speaker 1: How Manny eat a chip. That's a good call. Everybody,
Speaker 1: eat a chip. Conquer your New Year's resolution to be
Speaker 1: more productive with the Before Breakfast podcast. In each bite
Speaker 1: sized daily episode, time management and productivity expert Laura vander
Speaker 1: Camp teaches you how to make the most of your
Speaker 1: time both at work and at home. These are the
Speaker 1: practical suggestions you need to get more done with your day.
Speaker 1: Just as lifting weights keeps our body strong as we age,
Speaker 1: learning new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron.
Speaker 1: Listen to before Breakfast wherever you get your podcasts. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Robert laund and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're the
Speaker 1: hosts of the science podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: where every week we get to explore some of the
Speaker 1: weirdest questions in the universe, Like if sci fi teleportation
Speaker 1: was possible, how would it square with the multitudes of
Speaker 1: organisms that inhabit our human bodies? Can we find evidence
Speaker 1: of emotions in animals like bees, ants, and crayfish? How
Speaker 1: would an interplanetary civilization function just free will exist? Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind examines neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels,
Speaker 1: and the wonders of techno history. Basically, this show is
Speaker 1: the altar where we worship the weirdness of reality. If
Speaker 1: anybody ever told you you ask the weirdest questions, it
Speaker 1: is time to come join us in the place where
Speaker 1: you belong. The Stuff to Blow Your Mind Podcast New
Speaker 1: episodes publish every Tuesday and Thursday, with bonus episodes on Saturdays.
Speaker 1: Listen to Stuff to Blow your Mind on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: What grows in the forest trees? Sure know what else
Speaker 1: grows in the forest. Our imagine Asian, our sense of wonder,
Speaker 1: and our family bonds grow too, because when we disconnect
Speaker 1: from this and connect with this, we reconnect with each other.
Speaker 1: The forest is closer than you think. Find a forest
Speaker 1: near you and start exploring. I discover the Forest dot Org,
Speaker 1: brought to you by the United States Forest Service and
Speaker 1: the AD Council. We're back, So prop I think you
Speaker 1: had you had something on your mind before we uhm it,
Speaker 1: What the hell was I going to say? What was
Speaker 1: I going to say? Um? Oh um? There's something that
Speaker 1: I think the these old school fascists did oh school wow,
Speaker 1: um that these new guys they haven't done it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's why it's It's one of those things.
Speaker 1: It's a fine it's a fine um distinction, because I
Speaker 1: do think there's a lot of value in showing these
Speaker 1: people as as absurd and as sad as they are. Um,
Speaker 1: you have to do it without also making them feel
Speaker 1: like they're not a threat, which is hard. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a and and thankfully, I think one of
Speaker 1: the positives of how bad everything went on the sixth
Speaker 1: is that as absurd as it is in, one of
Speaker 1: the difficulties about talking about this movement to people for
Speaker 1: 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 you should believe them.
Speaker 1: You take you underestimate as something you learned living in
Speaker 1: just the inner city. You don't underestimate anybody 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 I'm serious your situation is. I don't
Speaker 1: think he didn'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 know that is Again one of
Speaker 1: the problems is I think a lot more people are
Speaker 1: 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. It's not done and owned a
Speaker 1: twenty big like we're not done. Yeah, there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of people out there who if they had gotten who
Speaker 1: if they get their hands on you, will do great
Speaker 1: harm to you. And they almost did it once in
Speaker 1: their heads at least. Uh you know. Yeah, So let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about we were going a little bit of
Speaker 1: a tangent there, But I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: Italian anti fascists. So we just talked about kind of
Speaker 1: what I see is one of the big successes of
Speaker 1: the American anti fascist movement. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: why the Italian anti fascist movement did not succeed. Um. So,
Speaker 1: the Italian anti fascists began to raise their own proper
Speaker 1: army in July of ninete, because again, the fascists had
Speaker 1: an army, The black Shirts were an army, and it
Speaker 1: was doing great damage to not just like anarchists, but
Speaker 1: to all left wing movements around the country. So they
Speaker 1: formed their own army, the r d T del Popolo,
Speaker 1: like the People's Areddy I think, um so again they're
Speaker 1: still using that norm. A lot of them are veterans,
Speaker 1: and they were a heterogeneous mix of anarchists, syndicalists, socialists, communists, republicans,
Speaker 1: and other non authoritarian ideologies. The r d T del
Speaker 1: Populo were popular among the lower classes among poor Italians
Speaker 1: because they had no party affiliations than they offered protection
Speaker 1: from the fascists, who were basically a violent gang. Now,
Speaker 1: there were other malicious 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 friends either. Right. This is again
Speaker 1: you see this happening in Germany. Now, there were communists
Speaker 1: 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 were like Stalinists,
Speaker 1: you know, and that they weren't Stalinist yet because it
Speaker 1: was you know, nineteen I was like wait one, but
Speaker 1: like yeah, they that 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 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 gonta
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: that is a great, That is a great. You know,
Speaker 1: that didn't even a credit. You're you're right, like these
Speaker 1: guys are saying, our only goal is to defend you
Speaker 1: from the fascists, but that's not nearly as popular as saying, hey,
Speaker 1: here's what we we're the fascist, here's what we believe,
Speaker 1: here's our platform, here's what change, and we have this army. Right,
Speaker 1: Like that is that is a very good point. Like,
Speaker 1: like you said, they're leaving the platform up to the government,
Speaker 1: who is not on their side, and like you, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Now that's not everybody, right, There's a lot of anarchists
Speaker 1: and stuff who aren't saying, like, I think we should
Speaker 1: leave it to the government, but they are saying like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to I think that fighting fascism with
Speaker 1: these other people is more important than you know, pushing
Speaker 1: my own political beliefs in this necess in this area,
Speaker 1: which is I think a respectable thing to take. But
Speaker 1: it was a problem that there was not a concerted,
Speaker 1: organized um counter left wing movement that was like that,
Speaker 1: that had like a solid platform and the to the
Speaker 1: extent that the fascist did. Right, there were different left
Speaker 1: wing groups that confronted them and had platforms, but it
Speaker 1: was not like what it was, not on the side
Speaker 1: and the same scale, you know, And that's a problem
Speaker 1: that anti fascists still have today. Right, there's a strength
Speaker 1: in saying like, hey, if you're a communist, if you're
Speaker 1: an anarchist, if you're just a libertarian who's not an authoritarian,
Speaker 1: if you're a democrat, like, come join us. We're just
Speaker 1: trying 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. Undefeated boy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the in Italy's FBI equivalent actually did confirm in
Speaker 1: a report to the government that the r d T
Speaker 1: del Populo had quote only one principal aim, that is
Speaker 1: to react against fascism with the same means that are
Speaker 1: employed against them, i e. Arm defense. So the the
Speaker 1: Italy is like FBI equivalent is like, these guys are
Speaker 1: only there too for defensive purposes. But despite this, the
Speaker 1: government orders a crackdown on the r d T del Popular.
Speaker 1: They enforce anti paramilitary laws against them, They dissolve local cells,
Speaker 1: they imprison many leaders and members, and by October the
Speaker 1: organization is essentially defunct. Now no such action were taken
Speaker 1: against the black Shirts, and as a result, by the
Speaker 1: end of nineteen twenty one, the Mussolini's Fascist Party had
Speaker 1: more than a quarter of a million members or member
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um, this is one of those
Speaker 1: situations where like, Yeah, your house is getting broken into
Speaker 1: and you called a police and the police arrest you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like bam, this is my house. Like I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: I'm not the problem. I don't understand this. I'm telling
Speaker 1: you this is the issue, and I We're going to
Speaker 1: book them. Dano. It's like, oh, man like I feel like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, that's what it sounded like to me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you're trading the wronghood right now. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: police cracked down pretty in. The army cracked down exclusively
Speaker 1: on the anti fascists, and the fascists are allowed to
Speaker 1: continue to organize. And they said, like they used the
Speaker 1: same laws against them they could have used on the
Speaker 1: fascist for having the black shirts. They just don't choose
Speaker 1: the shoose. And the part that don't make sense and
Speaker 1: continues to not make sense is, like you said, the
Speaker 1: fascists are telling you the platform, this is our plan.
Speaker 1: We feel overthrow you and put all our guys in power.
Speaker 1: And that's our dude, that's our plan. Oh you want
Speaker 1: our side, okay, cool? Like yeah, it's because they it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's because hatred of the left
Speaker 1: unites the fascists and the people who wouldn't necessarily be
Speaker 1: whole hog in on fascism but are because they hate
Speaker 1: the left, which is you know why this this keeps
Speaker 1: happening and why um yeah, it's it's it's frustrating we
Speaker 1: deal with versions of the same problem today and this
Speaker 1: is why I don't suggest people who are talking about like, well,
Speaker 1: in the wake of the sixth we need a new
Speaker 1: anti domestic terrorism statutes like that's only going to be
Speaker 1: used on the left, like they'll do. They'll use it
Speaker 1: once on a couple of proud boys, and then it
Speaker 1: will be used against leftists for decades. That's the way
Speaker 1: it's going to happen. And Muslims, you know, anyone who's
Speaker 1: not a white conservative man. So as we know, the
Speaker 1: problem is white people play in Italy, white people basically
Speaker 1: everybody's white. So that's really pretty easy to say. Now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm just kidding bhy the bastards listeners, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: I'm much more nuanced than that. I'm not kidding behind
Speaker 1: the bastards listeners. So uh. N early nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: the anti fascist resistance has been heavily like not completely eliminated,
Speaker 1: but very badly broken. Um. The fascists are ascend that
Speaker 1: they have hundreds of thousands of members, they have elected
Speaker 1: leaders in government. Um. Now again they're kind of middle
Speaker 1: rung when it came to their actual number of elected leaders.
Speaker 1: They're not in charge at all. But Benito didn't care
Speaker 1: about how many actual elected deputies, they said. He famously stated,
Speaker 1: I prefer fifty tho rifles to fifty thou votes. What
Speaker 1: mattered to him was having a presence in the halls
Speaker 1: of power, which would enable him to get those rifles
Speaker 1: on his side. And if course, the government's already shown
Speaker 1: that they're going to let him a crew rifles while
Speaker 1: they stopped his opponents from getting rivals. Yeah. Now, Mussolini
Speaker 1: starts in nineteen twenty two, sketching out the dimensions of
Speaker 1: an ambitious and daring plan for a power grap He
Speaker 1: had spent the last year so placing strategic groups of
Speaker 1: fascists around the country, replacing shattered left wing trade unions
Speaker 1: with their fascist equivalent, which allowed him to organize postal workers,
Speaker 1: cab drivers, and other working communities. He expanded the black
Speaker 1: Shirts into a force of tens of thousands, a veritable
Speaker 1: paramilitary army. On October sixteenth, nineteen twenty two, he convened
Speaker 1: a meeting in Milan with his most trusted deputies, including
Speaker 1: the three commanders of the Black Shirts and two retired
Speaker 1: Italian Army generals. He announced that he was planning to
Speaker 1: organize a mass march on Rome. He would gather a
Speaker 1: force of tens of thousands of black shirts and march
Speaker 1: to occupy the capital and force a change of government.
Speaker 1: At this stage, Mussolini did not think that he was
Speaker 1: going to be the head of that government. Instead, his
Speaker 1: goal was to force a coalition a liberal prime minister
Speaker 1: with five fascist ministers basically like um cabinet secretaries kind
Speaker 1: of who would be the real power behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: So he wanted to have a liberal like in front
Speaker 1: and have it all be run by fascists, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So the actual inspiration for the March on Rome came
Speaker 1: not from Mussolini but from the secretary of the National
Speaker 1: Fascist Party, Michelle Bianci. Bianci wanted an armed fascist insurrection
Speaker 1: to force the liberal ruling class to hand over power
Speaker 1: to Mussolini himself, rather than even paying lip service to
Speaker 1: the idea of liberal democracy, and Bianci eventually like convinced
Speaker 1: everyone to go with his plan. Now true to form,
Speaker 1: Mussolini took credit for it, later claiming that the march.
Speaker 1: The plan for the March on Rome had come to
Speaker 1: him after a rally in September when his supporters had
Speaker 1: chanted to Rome to Rome, But in any case, by
Speaker 1: October of nineteen twenty two. He's ready to do this ship.
Speaker 1: So Mussolini gives a speech to about sixty his followers
Speaker 1: at a fascist congress in Naples on October and he
Speaker 1: tells them our program is simple. We want to rule
Speaker 1: Italy now. As he spoke on the twenty four units
Speaker 1: of his acture, its we're fanning out to occupy key
Speaker 1: 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, well 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, sites,
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
Speaker 1: gun boy. Yeah, it's just whatever they can get your hands.
Speaker 1: So that was you actually answered one of the questions
Speaker 1: I had. I was like, so, if they're marching to Rome,
Speaker 1: where are they coming from? So they coming from every where.
Speaker 1: He's in Naples right now. They come in from everywhere.
Speaker 1: They are coming from everywhere, and they have horses and carts,
Speaker 1: trucks and wagons. They even have a race car with
Speaker 1: the machine gun mounted to it, and they have guys
Speaker 1: riding on trains. That style of finesse. There's some style
Speaker 1: in the machine gun races. And a lot of people
Speaker 1: are just marching on foot too. Now, obviously this is
Speaker 1: a cause for concern for some people in the government.
Speaker 1: Two days after the Naples speech, former Italian Prime Minister
Speaker 1: Antonio Silandra becomes aware of Mussolini's plans and he warns
Speaker 1: the current prime minister that the Fascist leader was organizing
Speaker 1: an armed march on the capitol Cilandra's intelligence told him
Speaker 1: that Mussolini planned to demand the prime minister's resignation and
Speaker 1: demand that he be appointed head of the government instead.
Speaker 1: So the prime minister, obviously is also worried by this.
Speaker 1: He goes to the King with this warning, and he
Speaker 1: asks the King for permission to use the police in
Speaker 1: military to suppress the fascists. The King refuses. So the
Speaker 1: reason the King says no is that he had just
Speaker 1: sat down with his Minister of War, General Armando Diaz. Now,
Speaker 1: the general, who was not quite well, who was basically
Speaker 1: a fascist, tells the King that if he asks the
Speaker 1: army to stop Mussolini quote, the army will do its duty,
Speaker 1: but it would be better not to put it to
Speaker 1: the test. Basically, he's like another the army likes these
Speaker 1: guys that you really shouldn't You really shouldn't try so,
Speaker 1: King Victor Emmanuel the Third, the little Sword was not
Speaker 1: like an ideological fascist. I know, it's very silly. Oh man,
Speaker 1: what if that was his like tender profile, a little
Speaker 1: little sword. He's not a fascist in the sense that
Speaker 1: he doesn't believe in fascism. He believes in a monarchy,
Speaker 1: and more specifically, he believes in a monarchy where he's
Speaker 1: the monarch. Now by nineteen twenty two, the Kingdom of
Speaker 1: Italy is in bad financial straits. World War One had
Speaker 1: been a disaster for the country. The Great like not
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, but like an economic collapse has hit
Speaker 1: Europe as a result of the end of a war.
Speaker 1: It's horrible in Munich. In this period of time to write.
Speaker 1: Political violence in the streets had reached a fever pitch,
Speaker 1: largely thanks to Mussolini's Black Shirts, and the king was
Speaker 1: afraid there might be a civil war. More than anything,
Speaker 1: he was worried about the rising Italian left. The Socialist
Speaker 1: Party had a hundred and forty six members in the
Speaker 1: Chamber of Deputies and the Communists had eleven, giving them
Speaker 1: together nearly five times as much elected representation as the fascists. Now,
Speaker 1: Communists and socialists aren't big fans of kings, and Victor
Speaker 1: Emmanuel crudely calculated the fascist would let him continue to
Speaker 1: be the king. He also, and this is important, calculated
Speaker 1: that the middle class would back the fascists if it
Speaker 1: meants 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 and 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: nang you It's like that's I see, that's why, 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, um,
Speaker 1: like in my mind, like I take two weird comparison,
Speaker 1: But if you take like Mike Pence's like position right now,
Speaker 1: like them or President being impeached, it's like he if
Speaker 1: for lack of better term, either way, he's a bit
Speaker 1: because it's like, first of all, it's not like it's
Speaker 1: not like Donald Trump has ever respected you, because you
Speaker 1: do what the hell he tells you to do, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So it's like this man, this
Speaker 1: man was gonna let these they was yelling to kill you,
Speaker 1: and he didn't stop it. And you ain't do ship, Mike,
Speaker 1: you ain't do ship. You let this man and you're
Speaker 1: still gonna back this man. You're a bitch. What I'm
Speaker 1: saying at the one time he publicly disagrees with you,
Speaker 1: and then he calls for your head and they want
Speaker 1: to take it. And then and if they got the
Speaker 1: chance there what and you didn't say nothing? You're a bitch.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. So it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm saying that tonguey, you can understand what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say. Yeah, so it's like you're okay. So then
Speaker 1: so then Nancy Pelosi and and and with it with
Speaker 1: the Democrats, with the impeachment being and so it's almost
Speaker 1: like them saying, yo, get your boy before we do, right,
Speaker 1: So then so now and and then if he doesn't,
Speaker 1: if he doesn't, if he doesn't stop the impeachment, you're
Speaker 1: a bitch again, you know what I'm saying. If you
Speaker 1: don't call for the moment, you're a bit, you feel me.
Speaker 1: So it's just like, no matter what the moral little
Speaker 1: story is, you should have never signed up to play
Speaker 1: with this man, you know what I'm saying. So it
Speaker 1: shouldn't have got here in the first place. Because all this,
Speaker 1: all these people understand it's power brokering. So when you so,
Speaker 1: if you King lit Sword, you feel me, you set
Speaker 1: yourself up to a situation where these people only understand
Speaker 1: power either way, you're a bit you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: I just I don't. I mean, I'm I hate saying
Speaker 1: it like that. I just because it's like I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to like throw shrapnel towards you know, I'm saying
Speaker 1: a derogatory terms sword female, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: That's not what I'm trying to say. But I am saying,
Speaker 1: just in street terms, that's what we mean. There's you
Speaker 1: can't you've put yourself in a position where you can't
Speaker 1: leave this unscathed. Yep. Yeah, And it's yeah, that's kind
Speaker 1: of where we are here. And so the king and
Speaker 1: also a lot of liberal elected leaders are like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's like let's let these people in. Let's let them
Speaker 1: do it. They're not as scary as these leftists. So
Speaker 1: let's left the fascists into the government. Can imagine being
Speaker 1: you imagine being a king, whereas like my bloodline go
Speaker 1: back to the fifteen hunt. It's and I'm no one
Speaker 1: that's about to lose the I'm not gonna lose this crown,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So I get the calculation
Speaker 1: it's just you're it's just you're the you're the punk
Speaker 1: in this. Yeah, you're starting the ball of fascism rolling
Speaker 1: in Europe because you want to keep it thrown and
Speaker 1: because a lot of other elected leaders. So when his
Speaker 1: so his prime minister resigns when it becomes clear that
Speaker 1: the king is not going to stop the fascist and
Speaker 1: a bunch of former prime ministers, many of them liberals,
Speaker 1: start petitioning the king to make them the prime minister
Speaker 1: again so that they can make Mussolini their vice minister
Speaker 1: to play kate the fascists. So like again, establishment politicians
Speaker 1: cannot wait to make a deal with the fascists, like,
Speaker 1: couldn't do it fast enough? Um, Yeah. The King says
Speaker 1: no though, because the King has decided that Mussolini's going
Speaker 1: to be the new premier, right that he's just going
Speaker 1: to give him straight to the big job. And while
Speaker 1: all this is going on, the black Shirts are marching,
Speaker 1: so you're 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, stay back here just
Speaker 1: in case. Well, it's like how Donald Trump tells his
Speaker 1: crowd to like march on the Capitol and then goes
Speaker 1: back home. He's like, that's the problem, Like, do y'all
Speaker 1: see this man behind bulletproof glass. They've got guns over there.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that, you know, Like why you followed
Speaker 1: his man? Yeah? I feel like when you might get
Speaker 1: shot anyway? Good luck? Yeah, yeah, I'm good. Don't you
Speaker 1: see his glass? You? Yeah? So? Uh yeah. He stays
Speaker 1: in Milan. He keeps a getaway car gassed up and
Speaker 1: ready prepared to flee to Switzerland, actually more ready to
Speaker 1: flee for Switzerland than he is to actually go to
Speaker 1: Rome because he's sure they're going to crack down on this.
Speaker 1: He's just making a gamble. He doesn't think it's gonna work.
Speaker 1: Plan B. Eventually, though, after several days, he realizes that
Speaker 1: the king is not going to institute martial law to
Speaker 1: stop the march, and he'd won. Like this is a
Speaker 1: dawning realization while he's in Milan that like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: we're getting away with this. So that has to be
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. He's very there's some similarities where he was
Speaker 1: like wait, wait, wait, what wait, what kind of shocked
Speaker 1: that this had worked? Mussolini starts scrambling to dress himself
Speaker 1: up as the revolutionary leader. It now kind of seemed
Speaker 1: like he was. And I'm gonna quote now from the
Speaker 1: Warfare Historical Network. Mussolini's own Milan newspaper office, where he
Speaker 1: was staying was barricaded with huge rolls of newsprint, paper
Speaker 1: and barbed wire, and guarded by a curious mix of
Speaker 1: fascist police and army troops. His second floor offices featured
Speaker 1: hand grenades and desk trays, and the fluster Ducca himself
Speaker 1: was seen brandishing a rifle. Melodramatically, he wrote in his
Speaker 1: nineteen autobiography, there was a rapid exchange of shots. I
Speaker 1: had my rifle loaded and went down to defend the doors.
Speaker 1: Bullets whizzed around my ears. This is all a lie.
Speaker 1: The reality is that the Milan police chief refused to
Speaker 1: even arrest him. The mayor and commander of the Royal
Speaker 1: Guard asked for a true with the fascists and withdrew
Speaker 1: their men from around his office. Um, there was no
Speaker 1: real crackdown taken on Mussolini directly whatsoever. Now, while his
Speaker 1: militia march, they took over telephone switchboards, telegraph offices, water works,
Speaker 1: and other government buildings. Um very little resistance to this.
Speaker 1: About seven black Shirts are shot dead by the army
Speaker 1: in various skirmishes um during this period of time, and
Speaker 1: about a dozen people die over the course of the
Speaker 1: march on Rome. Mussolini gets increasingly confident. His phone calls
Speaker 1: 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: the 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 ride, 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 had 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. Again,
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 came from battle.
Speaker 1: Uh the buffet like, where are you fighting? Where I
Speaker 1: told the army not to fight you? Yeah? So Victor
Speaker 1: Emmanuel has to have known Mussolini was lying about that,
Speaker 1: but he liked Mussolini. He considered him a quote man
Speaker 1: of purpose, and he appointed him as Premier, Foreign Minister
Speaker 1: and Interior minister. On October thirty one, the day after
Speaker 1: Mussolini's meeting with the King, his black shirts finally arrived
Speaker 1: in Rome. He had them turn around immediately and marched
Speaker 1: to the train station so they could go home. As
Speaker 1: the fascist columns withdrew, the king declared, Mussolini has saved
Speaker 1: the nation. That is hilarious. Yeah, I recap that bus
Speaker 1: set I sent y'all, got what I needed, then I
Speaker 1: sent you back you saying, I said, it's great. It's
Speaker 1: a great position to be in if you're Mussolini. He's
Speaker 1: really right and high right now, because a lot of
Speaker 1: Italians agreed that he'd saved the nation, because people are
Speaker 1: really fucking dumb. And again you have to assume very
Speaker 1: little access to accurate news about what was happening antennas now,
Speaker 1: the Roman middle class was overjoyed by the lack of
Speaker 1: violence and by the fact that the dreaded anarchy and
Speaker 1: the threat of a communist revolution had been avoided. The
Speaker 1: stock market rose on news of of Mussolini's power grab,
Speaker 1: and I should note here that on January six, the
Speaker 1: Russell two thousand index of small capitalization stocks rose three
Speaker 1: point seven percent, while the s and p five point
Speaker 1: six percent. Now, this had less to do with the
Speaker 1: stock market loving the fact that there had been an
Speaker 1: attempt to take over the capital and more to do
Speaker 1: with it loving stability, because January six ended with everybody
Speaker 1: repudiating the president and the certainty that there would be
Speaker 1: a transfer of power. And but that's kind of the
Speaker 1: same reason why the stock markets raised when Mussolini like
Speaker 1: took power. It's because someone was in power, there was certainty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that. I love that. I love that you brought
Speaker 1: that up, because like if you if you want to
Speaker 1: talk about you know, big corporations, you know one percenter's
Speaker 1: high money, they are still beholden to a stable government
Speaker 1: that will um like affirm and support their contracts. Like
Speaker 1: if I got contracts all over the place and you
Speaker 1: breeched this contract, I want to be able to sue
Speaker 1: the crap out of you. So I gotta take you
Speaker 1: to a course that means I have to have a
Speaker 1: government stable enough that says so so so yeah so
Speaker 1: so so. It has no no moral value either way.
Speaker 1: I just need y'all to chill, and if and if
Speaker 1: and if there's somebody that can stop at you. Now
Speaker 1: that y'all agree, cool, I don't care what you agree with,
Speaker 1: just as long as y'all agree so that my money
Speaker 1: can keep coming. So that's that. That that that point
Speaker 1: about the stock market, that's dope, man. That that's the
Speaker 1: type of stuff that like, you know, I always always
Speaker 1: cringe any anytime any leader, I don't care who you
Speaker 1: are saying, well, the stock market rose. This is like man,
Speaker 1: like that guy, I gotta do not they just want
Speaker 1: you all to do. You know what I'm saying like that,
Speaker 1: that doesn't that's not the indicator that you that you
Speaker 1: say it is. Yep, it's not um and it's it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a sign. It's a sign that the people who
Speaker 1: are rich are confident they're going to continue to be rich.
Speaker 1: And that's that's that's where fascism's power traditionally comes from,
Speaker 1: and not as much from the rich as it does
Speaker 1: from the middle class. The middle class of Italy backed
Speaker 1: Mussolini for the same reason he meants stability. Right. Maybe
Speaker 1: they weren't all fascist. Most of them weren't. Most of
Speaker 1: them had never really like, hadn't supported the fascist prior
Speaker 1: to him coming into power, But now that he was
Speaker 1: in power, it means the communists aren't gonna met win.
Speaker 1: Means I'm not gonna lose my business. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: lose like whatever like that because I'm in the middle
Speaker 1: clad got shipped to lose, right, that's what the middle classes,
Speaker 1: you're the ship to lose class um out. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: middle class was in Italy, as it has been in
Speaker 1: every country that's been taken over by fascists, the chief
Speaker 1: base of fascist support. Um And this is true again
Speaker 1: everywhere fascism gains political power. In March of two thousand
Speaker 1: and 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 say it was the same class that supported him. 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 and hands 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 put him in power
Speaker 1: because they hungry. They working, These poor people working, they
Speaker 1: got time for audience anything. It's the fucking what the
Speaker 1: fascists are saying to the middle class, to the comfortable.
Speaker 1: It is saying like, you see that poor motherfucker who
Speaker 1: doesn't have time to think about any of this because
Speaker 1: he's living hand in mouth. The communists are gonna make
Speaker 1: that be you. You know, that's the that's the fucking
Speaker 1: pitch um. And it works every time, or it works
Speaker 1: well enough that it becomes a problem every time. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's not gonna work this time. We'll fucking see um.
Speaker 1: Because Trump was leading middle class support in I don't
Speaker 1: know what he really was man. Yeah, so that's good.
Speaker 1: We owe that too. Behind the bastards, thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I take total credit for Biden's victory. Thank you. So
Speaker 1: um so yeah. Fascism generally cloaks itself as a working
Speaker 1: class movement of laborers and hard men doing hard jobs.
Speaker 1: It's always the image, right, the imagery of like a
Speaker 1: guy working at a steel miller some ship. But that's
Speaker 1: not where their support actually comes from. The support of
Speaker 1: fascism comes from a lot of like the middle class
Speaker 1: and the a lot of the affluent, not all of
Speaker 1: the affluent, because a lot of the very rich are
Speaker 1: more establishment people. They're not gonna back. They'll back a
Speaker 1: fascist when they're in power because again, they don't want
Speaker 1: to lose their ships needs to build, Like yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're up until it becomes clear the fascists are gonna
Speaker 1: win there, you know, they're gonna back whatever the order
Speaker 1: was previously. The middle class is scared and anxious and
Speaker 1: always being pushed from both directions, so they're the ones
Speaker 1: who really will go with a fascist. And the first
Speaker 1: person in history to really lay this out was Luigi Salvatorelli.
Speaker 1: Now he was an editorial writer for an anti fascist
Speaker 1: newspaper named La Stampa. I'm gonna quote now from an
Speaker 1: article on the March of Rome by scholar Emilio Gentile
Speaker 1: talking about Luigi Salvatarelli and how he came to this
Speaker 1: conclusion quote. A year before the March on Rome, Salvatarelli
Speaker 1: understood that fascism was a new revolutionary movement, and that
Speaker 1: it organized and mobilized a new social class, the petit bourgeoisie,
Speaker 1: equally hostile to the proletariat and the upper middle classes.
Speaker 1: Salvatarelli had labeled fascism reactionary Bolshevism, a danger today infinitely
Speaker 1: more real than communist Bolshevism. He had since that fascist
Speaker 1: ambitions went beyond the bourgeoisie, anti proletarian reaction and the
Speaker 1: protection of the middle class. The dictatorial ambition of fascism,
Speaker 1: Salvatarelli wrote in December nineteen one, had already shown its
Speaker 1: face in parts of Italy, where the Fascist Party was
Speaker 1: imposing its dictatorial will by crushing opponents to whom they
Speaker 1: denied any political or civil right, including the right to live.
Speaker 1: In July nineteen when not even Mussolini had thought about
Speaker 1: taking or power. Salvatarelli denounced the ongoing anti state attack
Speaker 1: perpetrated by fascism that was endangering the very existence of
Speaker 1: the Italian state in order to establish a regime of
Speaker 1: violence throughout the country. Immediately after the March on Rome,
Speaker 1: Salvatarelli stated that the fascist government was determined to establish
Speaker 1: a one sided dictatorship because it did not want any
Speaker 1: political activity to be carried out outside of fascism. Salvatarelli
Speaker 1: saw in fascism, as he wrote on November first, nineteen,
Speaker 1: the true and proper characteristic of a political movement, of
Speaker 1: a party organized for its own ends of a specific
Speaker 1: social class, and that aimed at the conquest of power
Speaker 1: on its home was determined to fling itself against the
Speaker 1: existing state in the name of the presumed greater good
Speaker 1: of the nation. Mm hmm, Yeah, it's a lot there,
Speaker 1: There's a lot there. He suggested something that I the
Speaker 1: thought in that that the thought never crossed my mind
Speaker 1: that at as there were so many big words, it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to nail down exactly where I heard it.
Speaker 1: But he almost suggested the possibility of a two party
Speaker 1: system in a fascist state. When he was like this
Speaker 1: fascism impresses. It was almost like he's it sounded redundant,
Speaker 1: where he was kind of like this one party power
Speaker 1: fascist state, as if it's possible to have a two
Speaker 1: party system because that at the time. At the time,
Speaker 1: fascists were a part of the government right, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people, even a lot of like liberals, were like, well,
Speaker 1: they're not that dangerous. They're just one other party. They
Speaker 1: have their view. This is that. That's it's that old
Speaker 1: thing of like, well they have an opinion and everybody
Speaker 1: gets to have their appew and like we have to
Speaker 1: listen to them. They have they get the freedom to
Speaker 1: speak their peace, and what Salvatrelli is saying is their peace.
Speaker 1: What they're saying they believe is that only their opinion matters,
Speaker 1: and they'll kill you if you have a different one.
Speaker 1: Got it. So he's at them in the government. So
Speaker 1: he's trying 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
Speaker 1: class right, and because the a lot of the communists
Speaker 1: at the time had been like, had written off the
Speaker 1: fascists as any kind of real movement, and it even
Speaker 1: written off the March on Rome. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: later in the series. We're gonna do a big episode
Speaker 1: at the end on sort of what we can learn
Speaker 1: from all this. But there was a big failure among
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the left and even anti
Speaker 1: fascists to see fascists as the threat that they really were,
Speaker 1: because number one, they were so darn silly, but number two, like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm looking at this from this Marxist analysis,
Speaker 1: and it tells me that all these classes like it
Speaker 1: forms it. I don't. I don't see this as a
Speaker 1: legitimate political movement that is speaking to a class that
Speaker 1: has a large body of the populace. Hind it. Okay,
Speaker 1: that was the peace I was missing when you add
Speaker 1: the Marxists like glasses on there and you go, oh, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: who's where where do they fit? Like where the cause
Speaker 1: can't be real because they don't fit him, none of
Speaker 1: these Yeah, And there's there's this attitude again we'll talk
Speaker 1: about us later among a lot of Marxists that like well,
Speaker 1: fascism is just the inevitable in the state of capitalism.
Speaker 1: And one of the things Salvatorelli saying, and a lot
Speaker 1: of things will say, is like, that's not exactly true.
Speaker 1: Fascism is pro capitalism a lot of the time. It's
Speaker 1: also anti capitalism a decent chunk of the time. And
Speaker 1: that's how it gets a lot of people on board
Speaker 1: with it. Um it's it's it is speaking to a
Speaker 1: specific class in the country who feels edged out by
Speaker 1: both sides, who feels oppressed by the rich, and who
Speaker 1: feels that the left is coming for what little they
Speaker 1: do have. Right, that still gets on board with this ship.
Speaker 1: And you have to see that they are looking out
Speaker 1: for their own that that that they have legit like
Speaker 1: interests that they see being threatened, like that there this
Speaker 1: is not just some sort of plot by the bankers
Speaker 1: to take our for themselves. Right, the fascists are speaking
Speaker 1: to legitimate um, you know, even if they're wrong, legitimately
Speaker 1: felt exactly like those are legitimate. Those are legitimate emotions
Speaker 1: that that you are actually in your body experiencing, whether
Speaker 1: that's the reality, like I say that about like, um,
Speaker 1: there's this this, you know, this discussion about like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, race is a social construct, therefore it's not real.
Speaker 1: Therefore racism is not real. And I'm like, okay, yes,
Speaker 1: you're right, race is a social construct, but what I'm
Speaker 1: experiencing in my body is real. It's you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So I love it. I love that because
Speaker 1: it's like, that's that's what you can't dismiss about these
Speaker 1: people that are so riled up that they would storm
Speaker 1: a capital is it's that what they're experiencing in their
Speaker 1: bodies exct to what you said is being is you're
Speaker 1: pressed on both sides, and yeah, you feel that. At
Speaker 1: least you feel it. At least this person is saying.
Speaker 1: These group of people are saying, I feel you, and
Speaker 1: I have an answer for you. Yeah, And I have
Speaker 1: an answer for you, and it's let's kill the left
Speaker 1: and take over the government. You know. He's like, yeah, easy, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's why you know the six happened. Um So
Speaker 1: Mussolini uh takes office um two weeks after the March
Speaker 1: on Rome on November UH November sixteenth, nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 1: He stands before the Chamber of Deputies to present his
Speaker 1: new list of ministers. So he picks out all the
Speaker 1: people who are going to run the government, all fascists. Um,
Speaker 1: now the new Prime Minister. Mussolini begins his speech to
Speaker 1: the Chamber of Deputies by attacking the nation's elected leaders,
Speaker 1: calling them old and deaf and incompetent, and he even
Speaker 1: threatened them with violence, stating, with three hundred thousand armed
Speaker 1: men determined to carry out my orders, I could have
Speaker 1: punished those who have vilified and tarnished fascism. I could
Speaker 1: make this deaf and gray hall filled exclusively with fascists.
Speaker 1: I could, but I have not, at least not for now.
Speaker 1: Shut up, Shut up, gramps, I'll slapped the ship out
Speaker 1: of you now. He promised his as symbol deputies that
Speaker 1: his new fascist Italy would ensure law and order, strengthen
Speaker 1: the military, and crushed the left. The next day, the
Speaker 1: Chamber of Deputies conducted a vote of confidence, which Mussolini
Speaker 1: won three hundred and six to hundred and sixteen. So
Speaker 1: again he three, He's like, I can fucking kill you
Speaker 1: if I want to, and they're like, yeah, come up,
Speaker 1: put it, Yes, I voting I for you, now your life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quote from an article by
Speaker 1: Emilio Gentile about um anti fascism in Italy and about
Speaker 1: the March on Rome quote. Benito Mussolini could now claim
Speaker 1: that power was bestowed on him by democratic means, even
Speaker 1: though it was claimed that many votes were cast out
Speaker 1: of terror and intimidation from the fascists, which he had
Speaker 1: literally threatened the entire chamber. Bonito, Benito was the and
Speaker 1: of the hour. He was, in fact, imminently a product
Speaker 1: of a particular crisis, World War One, and a special
Speaker 1: social class, the petty bourgeoisie. Mussolini's capture of power was classic.
Speaker 1: He was the right national leader at the right moment.
Speaker 1: By nineteen twenty three, Mussolini's consolidation of power was complete.
Speaker 1: Italy was a fascist state, and any resistance to the
Speaker 1: regime from then on would take the form of mere insurgency.
Speaker 1: In total, between nineteen eighteen and nineteen twenty three, Italian
Speaker 1: anti fascists killed some four hundred and twenty eight fascists. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Mussolini's Black Shirts murdered at least three thousand people in
Speaker 1: the same period. Most of those people were not anti fascists.
Speaker 1: There were members of trade unions, journalists, local politicians, anyone
Speaker 1: who stood in the way between fascists and ultimate power.
Speaker 1: And again we've talked a bit about why the Italian
Speaker 1: anti fascist didn't succeed, and that's a longer conversation than
Speaker 1: we can have today. I think you're right that a
Speaker 1: lack of a a lack of something with momentum to
Speaker 1: oppose fascism, true momentum, was a part of it. Um
Speaker 1: A lack of uh state support is another part of it.
Speaker 1: There's a thing that some folks on the kind of
Speaker 1: who are are um anti fascist and anarchist activists in particular,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about called the three way fight, which is
Speaker 1: the idea that we're not just fighting against the fascist,
Speaker 1: we're fighting against the state, and we're fighting against the
Speaker 1: fascist because the state is also deeply harmful and deeply
Speaker 1: injurious to life and used. That was particularly very strongly
Speaker 1: felt by people during the blm uh risings. Right like,
Speaker 1: we have these fascists, these proud boys and stuff, coming
Speaker 1: in the street to do violence to us, we also
Speaker 1: have the cops doing it. We're in a three way fight, right,
Speaker 1: very valid way to look at things. It's also an
Speaker 1: almost impossible situation to win because the fascists aren't in
Speaker 1: a three way fight the fascist if they're smart, they're
Speaker 1: not dumb. Fascists sometimes are um and maybe our fascists
Speaker 1: have taken a turn for the dumb, let's hope. But
Speaker 1: the smart fascists get to power with some degree of
Speaker 1: legitimacy and legality and then use the state to crush
Speaker 1: their enemies. But is they don't want a three way fight, right,
Speaker 1: that's a problem. Yeah, because yeah, because yeah, because the
Speaker 1: government is just a weapon. It's not because it's just
Speaker 1: a weapon. Yeah. Wow, she'sh man, I need a shower. Yeah, okay, Dad,
Speaker 1: please tell me you're done. Yeah, no, I'm done. That's
Speaker 1: the end of episode. Dog. It's like the it's just
Speaker 1: the party that feels like these people give you this
Speaker 1: when you're trying to to stop, when you're the ones
Speaker 1: trying to stop an insurrection. It's like, these people give
Speaker 1: you no you have no safe faith, They give you
Speaker 1: no breaks like that. You can never stop and take
Speaker 1: a breath because they're gonna read that as weakness. And
Speaker 1: then next thing you know, somebody tying up Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker 1: And it's not that I'm a Nancy Pelosi fan. It's
Speaker 1: just you shouldn't be able to tie Nancy Pelosi get
Speaker 1: up saying how that should happen? That's not as should happen.
Speaker 1: You feel me like, I just this and it's not
Speaker 1: that I'm a fan of the US government. However, however,
Speaker 1: there are worse things to yes. So it's just like
Speaker 1: there's yeah, like you said, like you feel like you're
Speaker 1: in a three way fight, and my fight is is
Speaker 1: especially as someone who would say organizationally and factually, my
Speaker 1: black life matters, right is that? That's all I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say, is Nigga, can I live? Like God damn it, man?
Speaker 1: Can I live? You know? And so you you my goals.
Speaker 1: I feel like in a lot of ways if it
Speaker 1: comes to like how do I say this, Like, I'm
Speaker 1: not looking for as a as a black person, if
Speaker 1: you will, I'm not. I'm just looking for my rights
Speaker 1: to be honored. Yeah, that's all I'm trying to say,
Speaker 1: Just honor my rights. Like no, there's no platform of
Speaker 1: a read construction of the government short of just stop killing, Like,
Speaker 1: let me be a citizen like you dog, Like, that's
Speaker 1: all tries. Can you just let me be a citizen
Speaker 1: like you? Bro? That's that's all I'm saying. So so
Speaker 1: when you when you try to when you pit me
Speaker 1: against a fascist movement, that's saying, well, no, our goal
Speaker 1: is to overthrow this whole thing and be in charge,
Speaker 1: and no, you don't get rights somehow the government choosing you.
Speaker 1: It's like it's hard. It's almost like all all I
Speaker 1: get to do now is I got homeboys that live
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, And what they saying is they finda just
Speaker 1: grabbed a popcorn and watch the civil war between these
Speaker 1: fascists and the and the police. Like I'm just because
Speaker 1: it's like I don't I want to be on the
Speaker 1: side of the government, but the government on the side
Speaker 1: of me either, you know what I'm saying. So it's
Speaker 1: just you just in this weird predicament. But I know
Speaker 1: who I don't want to win. Yeah, And this is
Speaker 1: where we get to the problem of the side opposing
Speaker 1: the fascists has done a lot of good, uh, And
Speaker 1: it is important to oppose fascists. What's actually needed to
Speaker 1: beat them opposing in this one thing and it can
Speaker 1: slow them down. What's needed to beat them is to
Speaker 1: provide something else that is not the state as it exists,
Speaker 1: because that's Um, but that you can also get people
Speaker 1: on enough. People on board with the fascists don't have
Speaker 1: oxygen anymore, right, the fascist it's like a fire right
Speaker 1: where you've got a bunch of dry fucking brush and
Speaker 1: trees and ship and oxygen, and as long as you
Speaker 1: have those things, the fire is going to spread. And
Speaker 1: the way to counter that is to fucking pour some
Speaker 1: fucking water on it. You know. Um, that's a good analogy, man.
Speaker 1: You need to reduce the area in which it can spread,
Speaker 1: and it's human terrain, right, So by the only way
Speaker 1: to reduce the human terrain the ship can spread in
Speaker 1: is to give pull something else. Yes, yes, because they
Speaker 1: don't have anything right, Yes, that's what I was going
Speaker 1: back to when he was asking me, like, why did
Speaker 1: 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. Do I need I need, I
Speaker 1: need an option deed, Jake, Yeah, I'm poor my government.
Speaker 1: J I have no hope for the future. So Jake,
Speaker 1: this guy is saying it'll be different. Dr Jacob, let's
Speaker 1: see if it's different. Yes, exactly. Uh, It's like it's
Speaker 1: like when you're watching a basketball game and it's your
Speaker 1: two least favorite teams playing and you want both of
Speaker 1: them to lose that there is a way for one
Speaker 1: of them, not like somebody has to win. So there
Speaker 1: has there has to be some sort of interference that
Speaker 1: makes it so that the game can't even happen. Otherwise
Speaker 1: you're going to just pick your your Joe Biden. You
Speaker 1: get stuck with Joe Biden, so you guys, otherwise you
Speaker 1: get Joe Biden. Nobody wants that either, you know, like,
Speaker 1: that's man, That's what I'm like, Look like, do do
Speaker 1: not say I'm glad nobody has suggested that like Joe
Speaker 1: Biden is just a left wing of Trump. To some
Speaker 1: people know, he is a consolation prodecation of the consolation
Speaker 1: we settle for Joe Biden, like this thing ain't to
Speaker 1: come in Messiah. He he to disciple Bartholomew at best
Speaker 1: conscious even he's not even Peter John like son, that's
Speaker 1: a deep cut boy, but it's not even Paul because
Speaker 1: like you, Timothy, you ain't even write no book in
Speaker 1: the New test I'm cheering up in my whole face,
Speaker 1: is right, this is so funny. That's a that's a
Speaker 1: that's a that's a that's an evangelical joke. So that's
Speaker 1: the first part of this behind therection, part motherfucking one.
Speaker 1: Proper Where can people follow you? Oh Lord, please follow
Speaker 1: me at prop hip hop on all them things? Um yeah,
Speaker 1: all the all of the twitters and instagrams. Um you
Speaker 1: could my website proper dot com backslize coffee. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is my website and we do coffee stuff there. Um
Speaker 1: got some pods. Uh politics were prop which is um
Speaker 1: political analysis just from like you know, if you survived
Speaker 1: eighth grade, you could you understand your politics? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of giving you political analysis. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's my that's my thanks, and uh, well we'll
Speaker 1: be back soon, Robert. We will be back soon. We'll
Speaker 1: be back to talk about the Munich Beer Hall push
Speaker 1: um next week UM, and then we'll talk about some
Speaker 1: other ship. And then we're gonna end this talking in
Speaker 1: broad about why fascists win when they win, and why
Speaker 1: fascists lose when they lose. Your gift to the world,
Speaker 1: Robert h like like like socks, A nice pair of socks.
Speaker 1: Robert doesn't know how to take compliments as you. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to run away from my computer now, goodbye.
Speaker 1: That's the episode. What Girls in the Forest, our imagination
Speaker 1: and our family bonds. The forest is closer than you think.
Speaker 1: Find a forest near you and discover the fourth dot
Speaker 1: Org brought to you by the United States Fourth Service
Speaker 1: and the AD Council. On April four, Dr Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King was shot and killed in Memphis. A petty criminal
Speaker 1: named James Earl Ray was arrested. Case closed right. James
Speaker 1: Sylvy was upon for the official story. Some of the evidence,
Speaker 1: as far as I was concerned, did not match the circumstances.
Speaker 1: This is the MLK tapes. The first episodes are available now.
Speaker 1: Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Adoption of teens from foster
Speaker 1: care is a topic not enough people know about, and
Speaker 1: we're here to change that. I'm April Dinuity, host of
Speaker 1: the new podcast Navigating Adoption, presented by adopt us Kids.
Speaker 1: Each episode brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told
Speaker 1: by the families that lived them, with commentary from experts.
Speaker 1: Visit adopt us kids dot org, slash podcast, or subscribed
Speaker 1: to Navigating Adoption presented by adopt Us Kids, brought to
Speaker 1: you by the U. S Department of Healthy Human Services,
Speaker 1: Administration for Children and Families, and the ACT Council.