[tharmas]

It's a slippery slope. Mussolini defeated the Mafia in southern Italy. However, his gov't did it in a brutal manner. Lots of innocent people rounded up too.

"The hand of Vengeance found the bed To which the Purple Tyrant fled; The iron hand crush'd the Tyrant's head And became a Tyrant in his stead." --The Grey Monk, William Blake

[pyuser583]

Mussolini is insanely popular in Sicily, which is alarming because not only was he a Fascist, but a Northern Italian.

By “popular”, I mean tour guides will sing his praises to American tourists. Jewish, American tourists.

[wolverine876]

Fascism is popular everywhere right now, so it's not dependant on the location (Sicily in this case). The question is, how did it become popular in so many places simultaneously?

[pyuser583]

This was in the 1990s.

Historical Fascism is unpopular.

It’s made a come back in Italy and India.

But the modern, far-right neofascists admire Israel more than the Third Reich.

The resurgence of the far-right began in the early 2000s when Jörg Haider‘s Freedom Party took power in Austria and Jean-Marie le Pen made the run-off in France.

It got much more powerful during the financial crisis of 2008 and the migration crisis caused by the Arab Spring in the mid 2010s.

It’s not a mystery why people are pissed off and looking for non-mainstream candidates.

A big mystery is why the far-left has vanished.

The Occupy Protests fizzled out, Jeffrey Corbyn imploded the Labour Party, and Jacobin put up a paywall.

[wolverine876]

> This was in the 1990s.

Interesting!

> It’s not a mystery why people are pissed off and looking for non-mainstream candidates.

Why are they? Generally, economies are doing well, there is peace - at least, they were until the fascists started disrupting it.

> It’s made a come back in Italy and India.

Hungary, Poland, US, Russia, Brazil, El Salvador, ... where does it end?

> A big mystery is why the far-left has vanished.

Agreed, and even the moderately left.

[pasabagi]

Inflation in basic goods and exorbitant rents mean that a lot of people are struggling far more than GDP-style indicators would imply.

There's also secular decline in a lot of southern european manufacturing, so the economic basis for stable income and family life in a lot of places just isn't there anymore.

[wolverine876]

That would seem to lean people toward the left wing, which supports workers, not the right, which supports the wealthy and powerful.

[tharmas]

He was popular in Sicily during the time of his reign as well because his regime nullified the Mafia.

[pyuser583]

What the tour guide said was it’s because “he created jobs in Sicily” and “treated Sicily like it was a part of Italy.”

[wolverine876]

It always turns out badly and the dictator is always corrupt. If they aren't corrupt, why wouldn't they hold elections and allow freedom and dissent?

We don't need to, and don't have time to, and absolutely should not sacrifice the victims to, relearning the lessons of democracy.

[seabass-labrax]

It's only 'corrupt' though, if there was any expectation that the resources of the state were to be controlled by anyone but the ultimate leader. Therefore, the view of whether a given absolute leader is corrupt or not depends more on the society's expectations of them than it depends on their actions. A monarch in an absolute monarchy can never be considered corrupt, even if widely seen as wicked.

[wolverine876]

Even if that's true, how is it meaningful? Who cares what you call it, it's corruption.

[seabass-labrax]

The semantics are not very meaningful; I will concede that :) My point was simply that the concept of democracy isn't necessarily an obvious one. Perhaps in early 20th-century Italy, where there was still a technically supreme monarchy, and the tradition of democratic elections itself was only a few generations old, putting trust in one man alone (Mussolini) might have seemed reasonable or even ideal.

[wolverine876]

> Perhaps in early 20th-century Italy, where there was still a technically supreme monarchy, and the tradition of democratic elections itself was only a few generations old, putting trust in one man alone (Mussolini) might have seemed reasonable or even ideal.

Might have? Do we have evidence? And if it did, what do you conclude from that?

> the concept of democracy isn't necessarily an obvious one

Taking a vote is an obvious concept.

[NotSammyHagar]

Also, the mafia came back, maybe not in his time.

[tharmas]

That was due to the Allied Military post-WW2 occupation of Italy. There are a couple of books on that very subject. These Mafioso presented themselves as anti-fascist and anti-communist to help their appointment into positions of power.

[mk89]

Which is ironically the same way as they got "used" by Garibaldi to "unify" Italy in 1860-1861.

Only a fool can actually believe to defeat mafia with plain violence.

[mistrial9]

lots of Mafia in the USA placed in positions of authority in labor unions -- see Teamsters. Some US political thinking was to use these harsh, often effective people as a "lesser evil" versus genuine communist-labor organizers. Due to many abuses of workers (see History of Slave or Indentured Labor) there were many communist labor organizers, for real.

[jowea]

Now we wait to see if Bukele is doing it again.