Guy Gosselin: Modern Mussolinis

Recently, PBS ran a documentary on Benito Mussolini. I am old enough to remember Mussolini and avidly listening to the big Zenith short-wave radio that stood in our kitchen during the war years. Those were anxious times for a kid because the adults were anxious and because the radio commentators often spoke in voices calculated to inspire the conviction that the world was in great danger, which it was.

A principal point of the documentary was that by the time the war ended, Mussolini was considered a buffoon, but that it had not always been that way. The buffoonery began after he was well-established, strutting and posturing before huge crowds that drank in his message and cheered wildly whenever he paused in his oratory. He told the impoverished citizenry what it wanted to hear; that he would fix everything that was wrong with Italy and that he would resurrect in some measure the glorious past of the Roman Empire. His march to power preceded Adolf Hitler’s, but it incorporated the same elements: control of the press, courting of the rich, creation of an enemy or scapegoat, orchestrated violence, control of the army or police and a cult of personality, all of which are common to authoritarians. Control of the press allows one to define what is the truth whether it is true or not. Creation of an enemy allows the populace to focus its fear and anger toward a single, well-defined group upon which can be heaped the blame for whatever is wrong with the country. With Mussolini, it was the communists; with Hitler mostly the Jews. A cult of personality is easily accomplished. For some reason best left to the psychologists, many of us welcome the notion of a superman — someone who can fix anything.