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Welcome to the Overlap podcast. We're the show that tears down the walls between disciplines, connects the dots you never thought to connect, and unearths the concepts that shape our world.

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Lately, we've noticed a word being thrown around like a political hand grenade. Fascism. You hear it everywhere. In protests, on cable news, in your uncle's Facebook rants.

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But what does it even mean anymore? Has it become so watered down that it's nothing more than a lazy label for anything you disagree with? We think so. And that's a problem.

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Because when a word with such a terrifying history loses its meaning, we lose our ability to recognize the things that it describes, right?

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When we confuse a political movement with a bad personality, we mistake a system of thought for a personal insult.

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And in that confusion, we risk forgetting what it truly represents.

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This new series is a journey to reclaim that meaning. We're going to travel back to the source to the very moment this ideology took its first steps.

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We're going to explore its origins, its core beliefs, and the political and social conditions that allowed it to flourish.

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We'll ask why it's so appealing and how it was so successful.

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We're going to trace this road to its logical conclusion.

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And it all begins in a post-World War I Italy with a revolutionary socialist named Benito Mussolini.

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And welcome back, everybody. If you have not followed us on the socials, make sure you're doing that.

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Click like and subscribe right now for the podcast.

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Will, thank you so much for being with me today. How are you doing?

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I'm well, Joshua. Thank you for asking. And thank you so much for having me.

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Yes. As you know, I am your co-host, Joshua. This is my co-host, Will.

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And we are both very happy to be with you today. We hope you enjoyed our last two-parter.

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We put a lot of work into it. We put a lot of effort into the research and understanding these things to put them out there.

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And our goal is to make them more widely proliferated.

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So, if you wouldn't mind, if you liked this podcast or you liked the last one, share them out to a friend that you think could really benefit from an understanding of the kind of things we put out there into the world.

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So, William, fascism, right?

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Very, very commonly heard around kind of all parts lately. Wouldn't you agree?

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I would. And I kind of just feel uncomfortable just having my name that close to the word, like William fascism.

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I know. And there's reasons that we should all be a little bit afraid of that, right?

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Yeah. It's not a pretty word.

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It's not. It's a scary word. And I think one of the things that I saw when I kind of brought this up to Will was it doesn't really have a meaning anymore.

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I asked a couple of people across the aisle, and it seemed to be this cultural idea of fascism just meaning somebody who espoused ideas that I didn't agree with, right?

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Or in the most extreme case, someone who espouses their ideas or puts their ideas out into the world using violence as a tool to spread their message.

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I don't think that's true. I understand the historical relevance of the word fascism and who actually created it.

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And that's kind of what we wanted to talk about today.

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Before we get started, Will, do you have any—what's your personal definition of fascism?

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If you had to really put it into meaning, you know, in a blurb, something that we could easily, you know, quote you on on Facebook and tie you in with all kinds of other government organizations to specifically tie you, your one view on this very particular thing.

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So I wanted you to pin me down and take everything I say and put it through the lens of this definition.

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I think I'd probably say it's something like a consolidation of power in the central government is mainly run by one person using the threat of violence to enforce or enact their policies.

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Something along those lines.

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I don't think that that's an unfair or an inaccurate summary based upon the research I've done.

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But let's go ahead and do kind of a deep dive into Mr. Benito, Mr. Mussolini.

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I want to apologize ahead of time.

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I mean the muscle Mussolini.

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Yes.

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Putting the muscle into Mussolini.

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Is that dad joke number one?

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That's dad joke number one.

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If you had a guy who's thinking that shirtless ski film, a photo shoot, you know, you had to give him something.

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You had to get a nickname in there somewhere.

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That's all I got.

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I do want to apologize ahead of time for my Italian pronunciations here.

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I'm going to apologize on Will's behalf as well for our Italian pronunciations.

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Grazie.

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It's going to be prego, prego.

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Sometimes it can even be comical.

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You know, we hope you get a laugh out of it.

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We're not intending to be offensive to anyone, especially to Italians, either the language or the country.

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We just do the best we can.

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And sometimes we do anglicize these words because we're speaking an anglicized language.

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So look, picture this.

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Post-World War I.

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It's 1919.

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Italy as a country has just gotten done with the Great War, right?

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World War I.

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It was the first ever worldwide war.

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They fought alongside the winning team.

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They bled.

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You know, they died.

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They even vanquished their old nemesis, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, right?

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Which at that time was sort of like their high school football rival.

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And you finally get to beat them as an adult, right?

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Maybe you win that contract against your old enemy.

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But over a half a million Italian soldiers did not make it home from the Great War, from World War I.

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So you'd think the streets of Milan would be like one big party.

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Everybody would be celebrating.

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You'd be wrong.

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It was more like a funeral, a national wake.

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The country was, to put it mildly, kind of a dumpster fire, right?

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To pay for the war, the government basically just hit print on the national currency.

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So lira is the name of their currency, was worth literally less than the paper that it was printed on.

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By 1920, less than a year later, it was worth just a sixth of its original value.

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For your average person, let's call him Giuseppe, right?

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This meant that your life savings could now barely buy a week's worth of just pasta.

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The big companies in Italy that had been cranking out ships and guns went bankrupt, leaving millions of employees, leaving millions of citizens of Italy,

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including two million soldiers who were promised, you know, the whole kit and caboodle of a hero's welcome, standing in an unemployment line, standing in bread lines.

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It wasn't just about money, too.

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I mean, obviously, from a capitalist perspective, money always tends to bubble up as one of the most important things.

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But I think at this time, it was also about respect.

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A big shot poet named Gabriele D'Annunzio came up with a killer catchphrase for it.

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It was the Vittoria Mutilata, the mutilated victory.

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Italy had been basically promised a bunch of new territory, like land, to join the war.

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To convince them to join the war, they had been promised specific areas.

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But when everybody actually sat down at the peace conference, the other big players, especially the United States, basically were like, yeah, sorry, we're not going to do that.

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We can't do that.

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We don't have the ability to do that.

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We would have to go in and take it by force.

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It would be a really big deal.

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Their prime minister basically got played.

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I mean, he couldn't actually deliver to his people what he was promised and what he had promised them and was pretty humiliated at a really world stage kind of level.

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The whole country had been kind of hoodwinked by its allies and even worse, by its own leaders.

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So you've got a nation that's broke and humiliated and scared of the future.

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The old school politicians in Italy were masters of a system that was all about creating these do-nothing kind of mushy coalitions.

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And they were completely paralyzed by this problem.

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In the four years after World War I, Italy went through five prime ministers.

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Five.

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That is essentially like the U.S. going through a president as fast as we go through underwear.

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Five prime ministers basically creates total chaos.

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Nobody knows what's going on.

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Nobody knows who the leader of the country is.

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The years 1919 and 1920 were actually – they created a name for them.

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They were called the Two Red Years because inspired by the revolution that was happening in Russia, socialist unions went on a striking spree.

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Right?

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So they looked at their government and they saw all of these politicians who essentially were paralyzed, kind of spineless, do-nothings.

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And they looked at the streets and they saw crime and anarchy and thievery and people were getting killed on the streets.

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And they were basically just desperate for someone.

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Anyone.

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Please.

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Just come and fix it.

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Right?

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Someone who could restore order, could bring back national pride, and, you know, like, make Italy great again.

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Very much like they remember from the Roman Empire.

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Enter a person with all of the answers.

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Will, do you want to –

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And it's just to bend you the muscle, Mussolini?

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Yes.

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Yes, I'd love to.

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Mussolini is – well, his background is a little bit unusual, to say the least, for an Italian politician.

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He started off as a journalist, which maybe that's not so unusual, but then he was a former schoolteacher and actually a former star of the Socialist Party, which, if you're keeping track here, kids, is not the fascism, not the home of fascism.

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Yes.

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In fact, it's often quite the opposite and the direct enemy of fascism.

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So, we have a former star of an opposite political party with a background as a teacher and journalist who eventually became an editor of the newspaper for the Socialist Party, the primary newspaper.

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And that's where he sort of began to learn, I guess, the rhetoric and the political machinations, if you will, and how to promote those.

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So, he became sort of a firebrand to the cause of socialism.

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He loved to talk about his humble roots as a blacksmith's son, even though his family wasn't, by any means, like, poverty-ridden or anything like that.

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But he wanted to come across as a real man of the people.

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So, he sort of embraced that story of himself as, you know, a poor blacksmith's son.

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I can imagine him talking about, you know.

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I always think of Steve Martin in these scenarios.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Go back to the Steve Martin quote, you know.

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Yeah.

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Yes, I mean, I could just see him talking about quenching the steel, you know, with, like, hauling the heavy buckets around and the steaming water and the temperature of the forge burning his young eyes and, you know, whatever.

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That's, that's most funny where he starts out.

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And, you know, to be fair, he was using his real gift, which is his mouth, right?

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Gift of gab.

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Gift of gab, as they say.

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And he was a master of the new political brand, the new political game, which is crafting a brand.

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You think of this as more marketing than politics, but in these sorts of times, this is what people do.

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They craft a brand, they build a following, and they turn that following's anger into personal power.

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Kind of like Instagram.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Mobilize your TikTok forces and then tell them where to point them in the right direction and where to go to make change.

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Exactly.

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But it turns out that Mussolini was much more vocal than he was, let me say, his mouth was writing checks, his political rear end couldn't pass.

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He couldn't pay.

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But his own politics, it turns out, were flexible.

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He came from being a fierce anti-war guy to a chest-lumping nationalist overnight, arguing that the Great War was Italy's big chance.

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So this got him started.

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He figured the way to mobilize his forces and get the people behind him was to advocate for some big goal like the Great War.

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And so, unfortunately, that made him unpopular with his own crowd, the socialists.

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So they basically booted him.

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They said, yeah, we're not looking for that kind of stuff here.

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And, unfortunately, by booting him, they gave him sort of his own stage.

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And they set him up as an independent figure.

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And with a little seed money from some industrialists, this is also a fairly common part of the playbook, a play out of the playbook.

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With a little seed money from industrialists who won Italy in the war, can't imagine why.

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Maybe they can build tanks, boats, all sorts of stuff.

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He started his own newspaper.

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So Mussolini's paper was, of all things, and this is so great to read his titles, but it's the people of Italy.

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The people of Italy.

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That's, you know, he's just speaking for the people.

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Just the voice of the people, you know?

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Yes.

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Kind of like it is.

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Meanwhile, we got our funding from industrialists.

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That's okay.

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We're the voice of the people.

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And this became the sort of engine that drove his rise to power, where it basically was his mouthpiece, right, in the form of a newspaper.

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So it allowed him to spell whatever he wanted to.

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He could make it to headlines.

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You know, he had total control over what was on page one.

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So that's where he positioned himself as the ultimate anti-establishment outsider, right?

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So now he can write about these people and comment on the weakened politicians who are part of the old-school political group.

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He can rail against them from the safety of his editorial office with the backing of his industrialists and call them out for their corruption, their broken system.

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They're not real Italians.

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Right.

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They're not like us.

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They're not like, you know, they're not the people of Italy.

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Then he, of course, had to come up with a name for his movement, which this is where, you know, again, keep in mind, we apologize up front about the pronunciations, but...

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Combatimento.

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Combatimento.

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Yeah.

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So we'll go with the English translation of that, which is Fighting Bundles.

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His platform was sort of just that a bundle of ideas, a mess of ideas.

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And as Mussolini himself would say, his was not a party of programs.

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It was a party of action.

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So he's basically saying right up front, we're not here to write policy or make policy.

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We're here to act.

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And act he did.

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Yeah.

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So the bundles is the important part here.

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The idea, so FASCI, F-A-S-C-I, FASCI, is the part that is actually bundles.

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And it's this concept.

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And you can see, even if you look at, like, Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., these little sticks, right?

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It looks like a little bundle of sticks that have been tied with a vine or tied with...

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It was to signify that individually a stick was easily broken, but a pile of sticks or a bundle of sticks was a lot stronger.

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So from the very beginning, he was creating this idea that together we are stronger.

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And so he was building, in effect, a stick man or a straw man.

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But his message was really delivering in his paper his trash mag and at gigantic rallies, right?

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They were very, very, like, rowdy.

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And they were pretty simple, right?

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And pretty effective.

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It's something that we're all familiar with.

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It was a cocktail of fear and grievance and this big, beautiful promise.

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First, he sort of went after the establishment, like Will said.

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He talked about the...

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And we're going to quote him.

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I kind of want to do air quotes.

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How do you do air quotes in an audio format, Will?

216
00:17:38,400 --> 00:17:39,360
I think you just have to...

217
00:17:39,360 --> 00:17:40,600
I guess I'll just say quote.

218
00:17:40,980 --> 00:17:41,300
Yeah.

219
00:17:41,300 --> 00:17:48,180
Quote, the miserable ruling class that needed to, quote, be taken by the throat.

220
00:17:48,480 --> 00:17:52,040
He railed against the incompetent politicians in Rome.

221
00:17:52,280 --> 00:17:57,140
He promised to clean house, to really get rid of the bloated bureaucracy.

222
00:17:57,140 --> 00:18:04,760
He talked about bonifica, or reclamation, which is a word that he used for, like, radical transformation,

223
00:18:05,080 --> 00:18:09,760
but also for reclaiming the country itself, right?

224
00:18:09,860 --> 00:18:17,040
A human reclamation that involved firing tens of thousands of government workers, right?

225
00:18:17,760 --> 00:18:20,680
You might even say he wanted to drain the swamp.

226
00:18:21,540 --> 00:18:27,680
Second, he weaponized the fear of those two red years that we talked about earlier

227
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by painting this, like, horrific picture of a nation about to be swallowed by a Bolshevik menace

228
00:18:36,780 --> 00:18:40,420
that would destroy property and family and God.

229
00:18:40,420 --> 00:18:44,780
And who was the only one that was tough enough to stop it?

230
00:18:45,320 --> 00:18:46,960
Obviously, it was him, right?

231
00:18:47,120 --> 00:18:53,760
His fascisti, or the fascists, were really, from his, what he was espousing,

232
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the only thing between Italy and an entire anarchy, like, just a country of every man for himself.

233
00:19:01,020 --> 00:19:06,160
This played really, really well with rich people and with business owners

234
00:19:06,160 --> 00:19:13,500
who were absolutely terrified of having their factories taken over by the people who were working in the factories.

235
00:19:14,880 --> 00:19:18,180
Finally, he promised a national rebirth, right?

236
00:19:18,260 --> 00:19:24,960
He poked at this very raw nerve from the World War I era of the mutilated victory,

237
00:19:25,380 --> 00:19:27,300
which we said earlier.

238
00:19:27,360 --> 00:19:31,280
I'm not going to say it again because, yeah, I'm going to do the English quote, the mutilated victory.

239
00:19:31,440 --> 00:19:39,620
And he swore he'd restore Italy's honor and he would make it a feared and respected world power again.

240
00:19:39,980 --> 00:19:50,420
He said he'd replace the weakness of democracy with discipline and unity and strength in a single simplified purpose, right?

241
00:19:50,460 --> 00:19:55,880
His speeches were full of references to glory and destiny and sacrifice.

242
00:19:56,080 --> 00:20:01,000
And he told the Italians that the country didn't need more plans.

243
00:20:01,220 --> 00:20:04,340
It didn't need more visions of the future.

244
00:20:04,580 --> 00:20:07,120
It needed men and it needed willpower.

245
00:20:07,460 --> 00:20:09,060
The program was pretty simple.

246
00:20:09,180 --> 00:20:17,240
He told in Naples a crowd of 60,000 or so that, quote, we want to rule Italy.

247
00:20:17,400 --> 00:20:19,280
Of course, it wasn't just talk, right?

248
00:20:19,320 --> 00:20:24,900
Like he backed up all of these things with his own private army of thugs.

249
00:20:25,040 --> 00:20:29,240
They were called the squadristi, better known as black shirts.

250
00:20:29,420 --> 00:20:30,680
You've probably heard this before.

251
00:20:30,960 --> 00:20:33,920
You might even be hearing it now about a particular group of people.

252
00:20:34,120 --> 00:20:51,820
These were guys, angry veterans, jobless kids, hardcore nationalists who got a cool uniform, a sense of purpose and a green light to beat the shit out of anyone who the movement saw as an enemy.

253
00:20:51,820 --> 00:20:58,220
For the average Italian, this wasn't like a debate on TV, on ideals and beliefs.

254
00:20:58,460 --> 00:20:59,460
It was like real.

255
00:21:00,040 --> 00:21:05,500
They were literally the sound of boots marching through the center of town.

256
00:21:05,820 --> 00:21:16,060
It was seeing a political opponent get held down physically and force fed a bottle of castor oil as a public humiliation.

257
00:21:16,280 --> 00:21:18,020
Now, that doesn't make sense to me, right?

258
00:21:18,100 --> 00:21:29,820
Like in this day and age, we don't take castor oil, but it would be like being force fed Metamucil in the town square by people who were faceless and nameless and just to punish them.

259
00:21:29,820 --> 00:21:30,060
Right.

260
00:21:30,060 --> 00:21:31,140
It was.

261
00:21:31,940 --> 00:21:36,620
The smell of a socialist newspaper office burning down.

262
00:21:37,120 --> 00:21:38,020
People were beaten.

263
00:21:38,520 --> 00:21:39,460
They were stabbed.

264
00:21:39,620 --> 00:21:41,000
And ultimately they were killed.

265
00:21:41,160 --> 00:21:41,380
Right.

266
00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:51,320
This violence being produced by the Esquadristi wasn't a side effect of this movement.

267
00:21:51,480 --> 00:21:53,160
It was an unfortunate side effect.

268
00:21:53,260 --> 00:21:54,540
It was the whole point, right?

269
00:21:54,560 --> 00:21:57,220
It served kind of two competing purposes.

270
00:21:57,700 --> 00:22:02,640
One, it physically crushed the opposition by physically crushing them.

271
00:22:03,440 --> 00:22:11,740
Second, it created the type of chaos that Mussolini was actually claiming that he could fix.

272
00:22:11,860 --> 00:22:18,760
It was it created what he said intrinsically already existed and that only he could figure it out.

273
00:22:18,860 --> 00:22:19,040
Right.

274
00:22:19,480 --> 00:22:33,680
So the more the Esquadristi rampage, the black shirts, the more it looked like the country was actually falling apart because there's all this violence and there's this giant group that's hurting people physically in the streets.

275
00:22:33,680 --> 00:22:37,440
The cops, the army, the local city council.

276
00:22:37,680 --> 00:22:43,420
They often just look the other way because they were too scared to get caught up in the problem themselves.

277
00:22:43,420 --> 00:22:51,960
They figured that the black shirts were a handy tool for smashing the socialists that they were scared of.

278
00:22:52,180 --> 00:23:00,940
They didn't realize that the violence that they were cheering on wasn't just aimed at the people on the left side of this left right spectrum.

279
00:23:00,940 --> 00:23:07,000
It was actually aimed at democracy as a concept within Italy.

280
00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:10,180
So where do we go from here, right?

281
00:23:10,900 --> 00:23:17,920
Starting the violence, he's starting to burn newspaper offices, humiliate individuals.

282
00:23:19,200 --> 00:23:21,140
But he's got to take power, right?

283
00:23:21,160 --> 00:23:22,900
He's got to have the seat of power at some point.

284
00:23:23,580 --> 00:23:34,120
So in October of 1922, Mussolini decided it's time to really cash in his chips or, you know, go for pro, so to speak.

285
00:23:34,120 --> 00:23:37,160
And he announces a march on Rome to seize power.

286
00:23:38,300 --> 00:23:44,660
So this is later painted, of course, in retrospect, as in a brief time that Mussolini was the victor.

287
00:23:45,660 --> 00:23:48,780
It was painted as a heroic revolutionary time class, right?

288
00:23:49,360 --> 00:23:56,340
This is like, you know, the man of the people leading his armies of the people to the seat of power to take control.

289
00:23:57,160 --> 00:23:59,520
The reality is it's more like a political poker game.

290
00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:02,380
Well, one guy had a terrible hand, but bluffed so hard, everybody else folded.

291
00:24:02,380 --> 00:24:04,020
He wasn't exactly packing heat.

292
00:24:04,140 --> 00:24:06,440
He was just, you know, he just started his pocket pair.

293
00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:09,400
And it turns out that the other guys were holding even less.

294
00:24:09,480 --> 00:24:11,080
So they all folded.

295
00:24:11,380 --> 00:24:20,360
While Mussolini himself chilled out in Milan, conveniently close to the Swiss border in case things went south, meaning Mussolini had a knight's plan.

296
00:24:20,700 --> 00:24:24,220
He sent his goons, his black shirts, headed to the capital of Rome.

297
00:24:24,220 --> 00:24:26,520
And there were maybe 30,000 of them.

298
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:31,380
And their armaments, they weren't, again, they weren't, this wasn't a tank battalion or anything like that.

299
00:24:31,480 --> 00:24:33,620
People armed with clubs and farm implements.

300
00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:42,640
Meanwhile, the actual Italian army, which had, again, been decimated in the Great War, the First Great War, had about 30,000 professional soldiers with machine guns and armored cars.

301
00:24:43,440 --> 00:24:46,840
So that may appear to be a neat match, you know, numerically.

302
00:24:47,040 --> 00:24:52,100
But machine guns and armored cars versus clubs and farm tools, not much of a competition.

303
00:24:52,500 --> 00:24:56,860
So they, in reality, the Italian army could have scattered the black shirts like bowling pins.

304
00:24:57,740 --> 00:25:06,700
But, again, remember we talked in the beginning of this story, this podcast episode, we were talking about the weak prime minister, right?

305
00:25:07,360 --> 00:25:17,040
Who had been just, you know, everything that he had allowed to happen, even though Italy came out on the winning side of this war, they were worse off for it and lost so many of their young men in war.

306
00:25:18,420 --> 00:25:19,940
He just panics.

307
00:25:20,380 --> 00:25:21,720
He just can't handle it.

308
00:25:22,140 --> 00:25:29,740
So, they decided to declare a state of siege and call in the army, which all they needed was a signature from the king, Victor Emmanuel III.

309
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:38,340
But the king, who was also famously timid and apparently didn't like his stature or what he also liked in courage, he choked.

310
00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:41,320
He just didn't call in the army and he hesitated.

311
00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:43,280
He worried that the army might not even obey him.

312
00:25:43,360 --> 00:25:49,540
So he's worried, like, what if I call in the army and I get them all geared up and then they switch sides, right?

313
00:25:49,580 --> 00:25:50,680
Like that scene out of Braveheart.

314
00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:54,860
So, he's afraid of civil war or his armies might not obey him.

315
00:25:55,020 --> 00:25:57,780
And so maybe, just maybe he thought he could control Mussolini.

316
00:25:57,900 --> 00:26:09,380
So maybe if we get Mussolini in here, like, let's bring him in, let him get a taste of power, and then we'll outsmart him because we're all experienced political maneuvering and maneuvers.

317
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:12,660
So, this turned out to be a big mistake.

318
00:26:12,660 --> 00:26:14,700
A huge mistake.

319
00:26:15,500 --> 00:26:17,060
The king refused to sign the order.

320
00:26:17,420 --> 00:26:18,320
The government collapsed.

321
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:23,080
The king then picks up the phone, calls Mussolini in Milan, and invites him to form a government.

322
00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:31,920
So, now the government's fallen apart and Mussolini is being called up in Milan where he's sitting there waiting to hear if he needs to skip the country.

323
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:37,660
And instead, now he's invited him to run the government, to put together a government with the king.

324
00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:49,000
But instead of marching into Rome, he took the overnight sleeper train and showed up well rested and refreshed the next morning and took power that was handed over to him.

325
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:55,780
Basically, they gave him the keys to the kingdom and he then decided it was time to implement his ultimate plan.

326
00:26:56,040 --> 00:27:02,180
So, now with the title behind him, Mussolini is now prime minister, but he's clever.

327
00:27:02,460 --> 00:27:05,840
He doesn't just come in on day one and declare himself dictator for light.

328
00:27:06,100 --> 00:27:12,540
He has the, he sort of turns up the heat slowly on the proverbial democratic frog in the water, right?

329
00:27:12,720 --> 00:27:17,700
First, he puts on a show of being a normal politician, forming a coalition government with other parties.

330
00:27:17,700 --> 00:27:19,800
This is pretty standard stuff in Europe, right?

331
00:27:20,060 --> 00:27:24,820
Find, find a coalition, find some things that people can unite behind and set up your government.

332
00:27:24,980 --> 00:27:27,620
But behind the scenes, he's building his own power structure.

333
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:30,840
He's taking his goon squads and turning them into a national militia.

334
00:27:31,080 --> 00:27:31,920
National militia.

335
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:34,100
I haven't heard that idea before.

336
00:27:34,300 --> 00:27:39,040
Paid for by the taxpayers, but sworn by oath of loyalty to Mussolini personally.

337
00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:40,360
So, these are...

338
00:27:40,360 --> 00:27:46,560
Not to the Italian government, not to the, the Italian people, to Mussolini the leader.

339
00:27:46,560 --> 00:27:53,900
So, again, paid for by taxpayers, but sworn loyal, sworn to support Mussolini at all costs.

340
00:27:54,300 --> 00:27:57,840
Then he tells big business, don't worry about pesky things like taxes.

341
00:27:58,180 --> 00:28:07,840
And, of course, there's industrial supporters, industrial supporters who are now going to see the benefits of their investment, are all too happy to support him.

342
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:12,340
And then he cuts the deal with the ultimate power in Italy, the Vatican, which then pulls his support.

343
00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:12,980
Yeah.

344
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:14,280
Cue the Hens.

345
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:15,920
Cue the angelic choir.

346
00:28:16,180 --> 00:28:17,200
He goes to the Vatican.

347
00:28:17,360 --> 00:28:18,000
He makes a deal.

348
00:28:18,500 --> 00:28:22,500
And the Vatican pulls his support from the Catholic political party.

349
00:28:23,500 --> 00:28:26,900
It's like they had a political party that was there to advocate for the Vatican.

350
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:30,380
And they essentially pulled their support from that and threw it behind the Muslim.

351
00:28:31,340 --> 00:28:35,040
Which basically, for lack of a better term, kneecapped their own people.

352
00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:38,420
I mean, you can see how he's building this and how he's maneuvering.

353
00:28:38,500 --> 00:28:43,020
But then the real killer move for Mussolini was the Acerbo law.

354
00:28:43,180 --> 00:28:44,160
51 p.m.

355
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:51,580
You know, in the fashion of great autocrats everywhere, a beautiful, simple, evil piece of wood.

356
00:28:52,320 --> 00:28:56,200
Which said that whichever party you get the most votes, as long as it's over 25 percent.

357
00:28:56,960 --> 00:28:58,620
Now, keep in mind, this means you don't have to get a majority.

358
00:28:58,740 --> 00:29:00,260
You just have to get more than anybody else.

359
00:29:01,060 --> 00:29:03,500
And to get more than 25 percent and more than anybody else.

360
00:29:03,920 --> 00:29:07,280
Would automatically get two-thirds of the seats in Parliament.

361
00:29:08,540 --> 00:29:13,580
Win-and-take-all system designed to create the illusion of a mandate while guaranteeing total control.

362
00:29:13,580 --> 00:29:16,220
And how did it pass?

363
00:29:16,780 --> 00:29:20,840
Well, it passed with armed black shirts casually throwing through the aisles of Parliament.

364
00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:21,100
Right?

365
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:22,340
Just there to keep people safe.

366
00:29:22,740 --> 00:29:24,680
Just there to make sure nobody threatened anybody else.

367
00:29:24,780 --> 00:29:24,920
Right?

368
00:29:26,660 --> 00:29:30,800
And just happening to remind everybody what it might mean if they voted against the Acerbo law.

369
00:29:31,600 --> 00:29:38,320
So imagine you're sitting there, deciding whether to hand over Italy to this new upstart who's bringing all this muscle.

370
00:29:38,320 --> 00:29:44,860
And while you're deciding how you want to vote, his thugs are walking around, controlling the aisles and watching what you're doing.

371
00:29:45,060 --> 00:29:46,880
And that's the rest of the following.

372
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:47,480
Absolutely.

373
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:51,860
This Acerbo law is in place now.

374
00:29:52,220 --> 00:29:57,140
He gets it passed because he's got the muscle to make sure that nobody says no.

375
00:29:57,520 --> 00:29:57,680
Right?

376
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:03,760
As soon as it happens, as soon as it passes, Mussolini says, let's have an election.

377
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:07,540
This Acerbo law went really well.

378
00:30:07,620 --> 00:30:09,200
It went exactly like I needed it to.

379
00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:11,260
I wonder how an election might work out.

380
00:30:11,620 --> 00:30:13,720
The campaign was a joke.

381
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:14,040
Right?

382
00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:23,340
The black shirts beat up opponents and literally scared voters away from the polls by showing up and threatening them.

383
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:30,700
Shockingly, the fascist-led ticket won in a landslide 65% of the vote.

384
00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:33,920
I'm always wondering when I see those numbers.

385
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:35,600
Like, is that all they could get?

386
00:30:35,740 --> 00:30:39,180
I mean, with that kind of intimidation, why can't you get to 80% or 90%?

387
00:30:39,300 --> 00:30:39,400
Right?

388
00:30:39,420 --> 00:30:40,040
Get a real mandate.

389
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:40,360
Exactly.

390
00:30:40,560 --> 00:30:42,120
At that point, you'd think it would be 100%.

391
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:43,400
But no, 65%.

392
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:46,160
Which, you know, some people call a mandate.

393
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:49,940
It looked like it was absolutely game over.

394
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:50,240
Right?

395
00:30:50,380 --> 00:30:56,700
But one guy, a tough socialist leader named Giacomo Matteotti, he just refused to shut up.

396
00:30:56,820 --> 00:31:04,440
No, he stood up in parliament and gave this scathing speech, laid out the violence, the fraud.

397
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:07,220
He said, this election is invalid.

398
00:31:07,640 --> 00:31:10,200
He said, because no voter was free.

399
00:31:10,620 --> 00:31:12,040
And he knew what was coming.

400
00:31:12,140 --> 00:31:17,020
He even told a friend, quote, now you can prepare my funeral oration.

401
00:31:17,780 --> 00:31:22,660
Eleven days later, he was grabbed off the street, shoved into a car, and stabbed to death.

402
00:31:23,100 --> 00:31:23,880
That was it.

403
00:31:24,740 --> 00:31:25,720
That one thing.

404
00:31:25,780 --> 00:31:26,700
The moment of truth.

405
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:29,880
The entire country was horrified.

406
00:31:30,780 --> 00:31:32,460
Everyone knew who did it.

407
00:31:32,500 --> 00:31:32,640
Right?

408
00:31:32,720 --> 00:31:34,280
There was no secret.

409
00:31:35,280 --> 00:31:41,540
But for a few weeks, the regime, because of this, actually looked like it was on the brink of collapse.

410
00:31:42,540 --> 00:31:51,520
The opposition politicians walked out of parliament, even, hoping that the king would finally step in and fire Mussolini.

411
00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:54,280
But the king didn't do anything.

412
00:31:54,880 --> 00:32:03,480
And Mussolini, seeing that the king was now essentially kneecapped, he saw his chance.

413
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:04,440
He went on the attack.

414
00:32:04,900 --> 00:32:11,860
He walked into the half-empty parliament building because the other half of opposition had already walked out.

415
00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:17,580
And he gave the speech that officially kicked off the beginning of the dictatorship.

416
00:32:18,020 --> 00:32:20,200
He dropped all of the pretense.

417
00:32:20,460 --> 00:32:22,560
He stopped beating around the bush.

418
00:32:22,560 --> 00:32:24,880
He quotes, says,

419
00:32:24,880 --> 00:32:36,600
I declare here that I alone assume the political, moral, and historical responsibility for all that has happened.

420
00:32:37,100 --> 00:32:44,240
If fascism has been an association of criminals, the responsibility for this is mine.

421
00:32:44,380 --> 00:32:46,920
He basically dared them to stop him.

422
00:32:47,560 --> 00:32:49,240
But of course they couldn't.

423
00:32:49,640 --> 00:32:50,560
The mask was off.

424
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:54,980
And the slow, legal death of freedom was over.

425
00:32:55,460 --> 00:32:58,660
Now, Mussolini's real game could actually begin.

426
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:03,460
With the opposition gone, the establishment is thoroughly intimidated,

427
00:33:03,460 --> 00:33:10,880
it was time to build the world's first fascist state in both title and in principle.

428
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:16,380
For your average Giuseppe, this meant a total lifestyle makeover.

429
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:19,620
The goal was to control everything.

430
00:33:20,340 --> 00:33:27,060
Your job, your kids' education, what you did on Saturday night, and even who you could marry.

431
00:33:27,900 --> 00:33:36,260
The new national motto, which was chanted at rallies and plastered on billboards and I'm assuming baseball caps,

432
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:38,740
was believe, obey.

433
00:33:38,900 --> 00:33:41,120
Like, who is the center of this new universe?

434
00:33:41,720 --> 00:33:42,260
One man.

435
00:33:43,140 --> 00:33:43,580
Mussolini.

436
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:46,600
He wasn't just the prime minister anymore.

437
00:33:46,900 --> 00:33:49,960
He took on a new title, Il Duce, the leader.

438
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:56,040
And did he have an excellent madmen collection of advertising team?

439
00:33:56,380 --> 00:34:04,640
They built the most elaborate, ridiculous, and incredibly effective personality cult you've ever seen.

440
00:34:05,140 --> 00:34:07,900
His face literally was everywhere.

441
00:34:08,300 --> 00:34:10,980
Posters, schools, magazine covers.

442
00:34:10,980 --> 00:34:12,980
The slogans were painted on buildings.

443
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:14,420
Quote,

444
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:16,980
Mussolini is always right.

445
00:34:18,720 --> 00:34:26,380
That propaganda machine worked 24 hours a day to turn him into a 20th century superhero.

446
00:34:26,980 --> 00:34:28,760
He was a tireless worker.

447
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:33,320
They'd leave the light on in his office all night to make people think he never slept.

448
00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:35,400
He was a fearless athlete.

449
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:42,560
Photographed fencing, riding horses, flying planes, and in one absolutely legendary photo op,

450
00:34:42,620 --> 00:34:49,100
and if you see one photo of Mussolini, you have to Google it to see what it is, skiing bare-chested in the snow.

451
00:34:50,240 --> 00:34:51,620
There's nothing cool about that.

452
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:55,560
But at the time, I don't know, he was the ultimate strongman.

453
00:34:55,880 --> 00:34:57,560
He was the man of the people.

454
00:34:57,860 --> 00:35:01,440
He took pictures helping farmers, you know, with their harvest.

455
00:35:01,820 --> 00:35:04,940
It was only ever for about five minutes, you know, just for the photo op.

456
00:35:04,940 --> 00:35:12,300
He was the ultimate ladies' man, a devoted family guy who had many affairs, many affairs,

457
00:35:12,500 --> 00:35:18,200
and they were sort of, like, winking at it to boost his image of, like, this raw masculine power

458
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:21,180
who's just irresistible to the ladies, right?

459
00:35:21,380 --> 00:35:28,460
They gave him this, like, godlike aura with even the press, who at this time, at this point,

460
00:35:28,540 --> 00:35:34,020
was entirely stayed controlled, claiming that he'd done things like stop lava from flowing

461
00:35:34,020 --> 00:35:36,000
and literally making it rain.

462
00:35:37,040 --> 00:35:44,300
After he signed a treaty with the Vatican, the pope himself called Mussolini, quote,

463
00:35:44,300 --> 00:35:46,500
the man of providence.

464
00:35:46,660 --> 00:35:51,300
For a lot of Italians at the time, he wasn't just a politician.

465
00:35:51,500 --> 00:35:52,720
He wasn't just a prime minister.

466
00:35:52,820 --> 00:35:55,120
He wasn't just il ducce.

467
00:35:55,740 --> 00:36:03,880
He was literally the savior of a nation, replete with the Superman logo on his chest and the red cape.

468
00:36:03,880 --> 00:36:09,120
Thank you for listening so far to the Overlap Podcast.

469
00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:11,420
This is part one of a two-part series.

470
00:36:11,560 --> 00:36:15,920
Make sure to check back next week as we continue our downward spiral into fascism,

471
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:17,980
as created by Benito Mussolini.

472
00:36:17,980 --> 00:36:25,620
If you haven't already, please give us a review or a like wherever you're listening to this podcast.

473
00:36:26,140 --> 00:36:36,780
And check out our website in the show notes, as well as how to access our socials with Mastodon and Blue Sky.

474
00:36:37,060 --> 00:36:40,080
See you next week, friends and fellow compatriots.

475
00:36:40,080 --> 00:37:10,060
We'll see you next week.