Il Donald
The president knows what Mussolini knew: Some audiences crave images that offer false reassurance and over-the-top displays of power.
For reasons that need no elucidation, I spent a few hours this morning watching Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945, performing in the old newsreel clips that now float around the internet. It wasn’t the verbal content I was after, just the imagery. The staged entrances. The gesticulation, the posturing, the arms raised in salute. The beautiful backdrops, the flags hanging from the ancient stone buildings of Rome, Palermo, Verona, Milan.
Il Duce“the Leader,” the name called out by the crowds in the videos—was a short, balding, unattractive man. But he prepared himself carefully, animal fur, or national insignia.
