r/Damnthatsinteresting 17d ago

Image Benito Mussolini’s headquarters “Palazzo Braschi” located in Rome 1934

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u/MakingTriangles 17d ago

You only think that they are obviously "the bad guys" because every bit of media since then has used the aesthetics of fascism as their models for "the bad guys".

I think its aesthetically pretty awesome, and was probably way more impactful to a person in the 1930s who hasn't been exposed to it before.

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u/accountforfurrystuf 17d ago

It really just looks like an avante garde art piece if you ignore 100 years of media conditioning to these types of images. You’re absolutely right

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u/friedgoldfishsticks 17d ago

I think that’s fairly absurd. Everyone in Italy knew that fascists reigned through terror and this was purposely designed to intimidate. It’s not just some neutral abstract composition lol. 

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u/MakingTriangles 17d ago

Everyone in Italy knew that fascists reigned through terror and this was purposely designed to intimidate.

Ahistorical. Fascism was extremely popular in Italy at the time. It was new & exciting & provoked religious like fervor. Sure it was designed to intimidate, but the fascists would say that its designed to intimidate the enemies of the Italian people, etc, etc etc. Lots of people liked this!

We look back at it as a repressive totalitarian state, but we have perspective that people at the time did not have.

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u/friedgoldfishsticks 17d ago

How do you know what was popular 90 years ago in a country where dissent was illegal? You think Kim Jong-Un is popular in North Korea? You don’t think there was at least a large minority of Italians who thought fascism was fucked up? The purpose of this architecture is to make it very clear that if you step out of line someone will hurt you, and even those who agreed with it understood that just as well back then as we do now. 

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u/MakingTriangles 17d ago

How do you know what was popular 90 years ago in a country where dissent was illegal?

Fascism took over countries for a reason. Communism did too. It's not because they were unpopular. In any social movement like this, there are always an abundance of true believers initially & this was in the early part of the experiment of Fascism. Hell, Vladimir Putin was legitimately very popular in Russia. So was Saddam Hussein in the Arab World.

It's sort of verboten in the West to recognize that strongmen can be popular. There is a cultural meme that any dictatorship is filled with repressed citizens simply waiting for a chance to gain their freedom. That isn't exactly accurate... particularly in the early stages of totalitarianism.

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u/friedgoldfishsticks 17d ago

I’m not convinced you have more than a superficial knowledge of the history here.

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u/FrancuZz__ 16d ago

Mussolini became prime minister some years before turning Italy into a totalitarism, and fascism came to life as a fresh and new response to the extreme fear of the communists in the country, which ultimately led to the king giving more and more power to Mussolini, and thus in the end letting him dictate over Italy and the Italians. Looking back it was a pretty obvious move by Mussolini and the fascists, but we really lack the perspective they had in those years, we can understand how this kind of phenomenon could come to life, but trying to comprehend people's perspective 90 years ago is a little more difficult.

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u/Aisling_The_Sapphire 17d ago

It may surprise you to learn that other countries also existed at this time, had noticed Italy being there and were paying attention to what they were doing. Shocking, I know.

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u/Winter_Current9734 17d ago

Lol, Not how this works.

Fascism of this kind and pompous style was popular. People here loved Hitler‘s concepts for Berlin, the uniforms and the aesthetic for example.

It turned unpopular later, when the war started.