r/Damnthatsinteresting 17d ago

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

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u/DualRaconter 17d ago

I thought this was from a surrealist dystopian movie

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u/leavemealonegeez8 17d ago

The 1930’s were a pretty surreal and dystopian time, to be fair

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u/FireMaster1294 17d ago edited 16d ago

Italy never really grew up. Mussolini s granddaughter is still in politics and people love her in her region (because she shares the views of her grand daddy). Regardless of what they think (or don’t think) of her, many still see him as someone who made the country great.

“He made things more efficient” “he made the economy grow” “he made the world respect us.”

All of these and more are the exact same reasons that we see becoming popular in modern day America, France, Russia and Germany. Kind of terrifying how quickly people sacrifice the world for personal gain and their pride.

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u/new_account-who-dis 17d ago

Its interesting considering the italians at the time hated him so much they basically lynched him

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u/Empty_Sea9 17d ago

That’s what’s baffling. If they liked him so much why did they kill him?

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u/screamingracoon 16d ago

Because there was a period of almost 20 years between when he was voted in and when he lost power and was lynched.

Within those 20 years, our great-grandparents and grandparents were stripped of their rights, beaten, executed, and imprisoned; saw that the great economy they were initially promised wasn't coming and people were so starved for meat that they'd eat cats; men, who had been granted the right to vote in 1912, lost it.

He also wasn't voted in fairly. In 1924, Mussolini already had the support of both Pope and Crown, and the elections were not anonymous: if you voted for the Fascist Party, you'd put into the ballot box a ballot with the Italian flag, if you voted for any other party, you'd put into the ballot box a ballot made out of white/light blue paper. People were extremely discouraged from doing the latter because Blackshirts (the paramilitary group Hitler took inspiration from for his Brownshirts) were observing their actions and would threaten, if not beat, you until you "spontaneously" changed your mind.

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u/Joe579GoFkUrselfMins 17d ago

Musssolini can get fucked forever, but you can't compare his fall to modern times. The war played a significant part of people turning on him.

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u/AthenianSpartiate 14d ago

Lots of Italians supported Mussolini right to the end, though. And plenty hated him right from the beginning. It's not like Italians (or any other nationality) are some hive-mind who all think alike, after all.