Il Duce and His Women

by Roberto Olla

  The camera’s panning shot over the crowd reveals that they look like the audience in a cinema; we see all their faces, since all of them have taken up positions from which they have a direct sight of Mussolini. They’re not just listening to him, they want to see him, and so, as the camera moves over them, from Mussolini’s perspective on the balcony, we see all their upturned individual faces gazing on the Duce. The Duce’s body was, after all, the main communicative element in a speech which otherwise consisted of nothing more than a rudimentary association of a few simple ideas. Four minutes have passed since Mussolini began to speak, but in terms of content he’s said only that he’s kept his promise to come back on a fifth visit to the town to inaugurate its new monument for the Fascist martyrs. The four minutes have had more pauses in them than ideas, and yet they have been vital in establishing a rapport with the crowd. Like an actor having to improvise a monologue in some makeshift open space rather than in the usual confines of a theatre, Mussolini waits for the crowd to settle itself, for each person to move to get the best sightlines so their vision is not obstructed. Anyone watching the film today will find his posturing ridiculous – the way he juts his chin out, puffs out his chest with hands on hips, the caricature-like expressions of anger and satisfaction which play over his face – but that is because we are used to a televisual representation of reality, seen on our small screens every day. We might add that Mussolini himself was aware of the absurd effect of some of his expressions when they were projected onto a cinema screen and ordered them to be cut. But the spectators in the crowds which filled the piazzas of Fascist Italy were “mere grains of sand”, in Le Bon’s expression; the visual message communicated by the body of the Duce had to reach them even if they were standing at a great distance.

  Mussolini is now sure he has caught the attention of the crowd packing the square and continues:

  “It was a hard time [pause] when [pause] our fertile and productive land [pause] was racked by disturbances [said with theatrical effect, the Rs explosively rolled] from extremists [pause], from Bolsheviks [pause]. It was hard to tell which were more dangerous and more harmful [applause and acclamation] like the difference between white and black…”

  He’s made a mistake, and someone in the crowd shouts it out: Fascists wear black but Mussolini has inadvertently used the image of white and black to describe his opponents. His puffed-out chest collapses and he laughs, turning towards the area of the crowd where the shout came from. He replies as though in a normal conversation among friends, bringing the situation under control without the least sign of embarrassment. “You should know how to retrieve your steps, if necessary, and above all to stay alert at every moment to the emotions which can suddenly arise.”13

  Mussolini waits for silence to settle again before resuming his stance as actor-orator.

  On the first occasion I came [pause], there were the early groups of Fascists [pause] formed around an energetic leader who has been with you for twenty years [a reference to Farinacci: Mussolini can now afford to pay this benevolent tribute to a former rival – and his followers who are in the audience – he has now been definitively marginalized], who [pause – he gesticulates and strikes the air with his right fist] undertook the first fighting [pause] and inflicted the first defeats on our enemies [pause]. The second time I came was just before the March on Rome [pause]. I announced it in this very piazza [pause]. Since [pause] the time was ripe [here he raises his right hand as if plucking a fruit which is hanging from the branch of a tree]. A new and powerful political class was emerging [pause], which grew out of the radiant victory of Italian arms in the world war [ovation] and was inspired [pause] by a new political credo [pause] which summed up all the best hopes of the Italian people.

  Fifteen years had passed since the end of the First World War and Mussolini in his speeches continues to repeat that Fascism – and Fascism alone – was the rightful inheritor of the honours of victory, the only political movement which had proved capable of understanding the feelings of the returning soldiers. We know that this is untrue, that the Fasci attracted only a minority of veterans after the war and that Mussolini himself had attempted to join the left-wing interventionist movement but had been rejected. But now it is enough to say something in order to make it true; whether it is or not no longer matters. “Assertion, pure and simple, untouched by reasoning and evidence, is a foolproof method of instilling an idea into a crowd. […] Yet assertion only acquires real influence if it is repeated continuously, as much as possible, and always in the same terms. […] Thanks to repetition, assertion can penetrate people’s minds and stay there with all the force of demonstrable truth.”14

  Every advertising agency knows that you need to repeat the same message innumerable times to get it to stick in the public’s mind; it’s a fundamental rule in publicity for any product – a drink, a gadget, a perfume or soap – including a political idea. Mussolini can now allow himself a sudden flourish and bring the crowd to a new pitch of excitement by calmly telling them how he deprived them of their freedom, abolished democracy and eliminated his democratic opponents:

  You [here he lifts a pointing finger to the sky as if about to warn the entire piazza] sensed [pause] that the die was cast [pause], that we had reached the Rubicon [and now he begins to shout out an unstoppable stream of words while his fist punches the air], that we had to take the old class of politicians who had proved inadequate during the war and inadequate during the peace which followed it and eliminate them [he slices the air with his hand], forcing them [pause] decisively [pause], courageously [pause], to sacrifice themselves [pause] so that the way could be cleared for the new and enthusiastic forces which were springing from the eternal and inexhaustible and unfailingly youthful spirit of the Italian people [a wild ovation which turns into the usual chant of “Duce, Duce…”].

  Mussolini continues his sally against his enemies by attacking the last form of democratic opposition he faced – or what he calls the “attempt” to oppose him – the so-called “Aventine Secession” when, following the murder of the Socialist leader Matteotti, the democratic parties formally withdrew from parliament in 1925. By now whatever Mussolini says triggers a wave of enthusiasm in the crowd: no one gives a thought to the concepts of liberty or equality or fraternity, because the communicative technique quite simply ensures that such thoughts become impossible. “Individuals in a crowd lose their individual wills and turn, instinctively, to the one man who is in control of his.”15

  Once again for the purposes of self-aggrandisement, Mussolini then compares Italy’s situation to that of other countries afflicted by “political disorder” and “economic travails”. He boasts that the programme of public works – such as the draining of marshland – initiated under his rule has to some extent alleviated the effects of the global economic depression; indeed its success has been imitated by Roosevelt and his “New Deal” in democratic America. Before he reaches his conclusion, he turns his attention specifically to Cremona:

  And since [pause, and again he slows down] I am speaking [pause] to a gathering [pause] largely made up of rural workers [he places his hands on his hips, a long pause], I wish [pause] to praise [pause] the steadiness [pause], the tenacity [pause], the courage [pause], the patience of these rural labourers [pause]. I want to add that there are already signs of a new dawn on the horizon [pause]. Yet there remain two questions [he points his index and middle fingers at the crowd], two problems [pause, still pointing the two fingers], two very serious issues [pause, still holding the gesture] which are of particular concern to you [pause], which are [pause], land for grazing and milk production [applause; pause]. Two fundamental aspects of farming production [pause], two problems [pause] that can and will be swiftly resolved by means of discussion in the relevant corporation.

  Just as Le Bon’s “manual” describes, the two local problems of agriculture and stock-farming are not discussed or analysed in any way; Mussolini simply repeats – four times – that there are
two issues and that they must be dealt with. Talking about how he might try to resolve them was certainly not the right way to keep the crowd’s enthusiasm alight. In Le Bon’s view, in a crowd which has become a single entity, whose constituent individuals have lost their identities, this can only be achieved by invoking such things as glory, honour, religion, fatherland, and indeed Mussolini launches the conclusion of his speech with a verbal fireworks display woven around such matters:

  Comrades of Cremona [long pause], I won’t let another ten years pass before I return to visit you [huge applause, he swells up, with jutting jaw and hands on hips, but someone in the crowd shouts out a comment which makes him laugh, and he returns to normal. He laughs in a relaxed manner, but then gathers himself up and with swelling chest starts again]. Blackshirts of Cremona [pause], at the head of us, as we march along [pause], we see our fallen martyrs [pause], just as their memory [pause] is preserved religiously in our hearts [pause, and then the final uninterrupted flourish]. Led by such a glorious advance company of men, Blackshirts of Cremona, we will march on towards all the goals we have set ourselves, and we will achieve them! [Ovation followed by a chant: “Duce, Duce, Duce…”]

  When Mussolini seized power in 1922, he had a small group of thirty-five parliamentary deputies – the “new men” he refers to in his speech – but precisely because they were “new” they were also inexperienced politicians. Despite the smallness of their numbers, in the parliamentary chamber Mussolini behaved as if he had the immemorial right to run the place. He was supported by a personal army of individuals who with their violent and sadistic behaviour resembled a gang of brigands rather than professional soldiers – and professional troops of soldiers could easily have broken them up. Yet it was not only the Fascists who used strong-arm tactics in the country’s streets and squares; the political left and the right-wing nationalists also had their own semi-militarized squads. Mussolini was also the sole owner and editor of a newspaper, and a number of associated periodicals, which were bankrolled by industrialists and landowners (the funding was highly irregular and obscure, of the kind likely to dry up at the first sign of any problem or difficulty). When Mussolini was appointed by the King as the head of the national government and proceeded to transform the position into a personal dictatorship, he was in effect fundamentally a journalist, a practised communicator. He realized the potential of the new radio technology as soon as it appeared on the scene and he poured money into the film industry with the aim of making it a highly effective propaganda tool – Italian cinema audiences were convinced the documentaries and newsreels they watched every week were true. And he was also interested in encouraging the development of television, with its possibility of live relays of the public ceremonies organized by the regime.

  In short, in today’s language, Mussolini was a mass-media expert, perhaps one of the leading experts of his time. And his interest in the new possibilities of communication presented by the mass media stemmed from his understanding that they could be exploited to his own advantage: in this field he was working for himself, so to speak – he wrote the script, played the leading role, directed and produced. But it was the display of his own body which was fundamental to his public appearances: with his torso stripped naked as he harvested the wheat, wearing a white suit at country dances or swimming trunks as he strolled along the beach, sporting a cocked hat as he greeted the King on official occasions – the primary consideration was always to draw attention to his physical presence, his shaven head alla romana, his swelling chest, his determined jaw, his deliberately menacing – or in the regime’s propaganda-speak, “magnetic” – gaze.

  One of the regime’s leading gerarchi, Giuseppe Bottai, asks in his memoirs how it was that Mussolini’s physical presence became so important for Fascism, in a sense quite literally embodying it. He freely admits that Mussolini was not tall, yet managed to give the impression he was. He also writes that Mussolini’s eyes were quite normal in size but as he gazed at you they seemed huge – in reality Mussolini practised this effect of staring eyes in the belief that it helped to communicate his single-minded strength of purpose. (Later research into advertising techniques has shown that in publicity images consumers are always instinctively attracted to models with large eyes, just as cartoon characters – from Disney to Japanese anime – are drawn with wide eyes to make them more appealing.)

  The possessed eyes of the syphilitic subject (both inherited as well as acquired on his own initiative), the jaws – like an illiterate navvy’s – of the acromegalic rachitic were already adorning the pages of the Italia illustrata weekly magazine; already, still dewy from the priestly unction bestowed in their confirmations, little Marias all over Italy were beginning to gaze longingly on his features; already, as Magdas, Milenas and Filomenas all over the country stepped down from their wedding altars, their vulvas were beginning to throb at the thought of him; in their white veils crowned with garlands of orange blossom, posing before the photographers for photographs as they passed out of the narthex, they were dreaming of the splendid and audacious whirl of his edifying truncheon.16

  Clearly there were Italian women who had no interest in Mussolini’s body or any wish to submit themselves to his normal – abrupt to brutal – sexual tactics, but they did not and could not make their refusal explicit. Those who had a different view of the matter were all too visible – the women who would willingly have offered their bodies up to Mussolini in dance halls and on beaches, the middle-aged ladies and the young girls who wrote to him enthusiastically offering to bear his children.

  “I’m not a professional lecher,”17 Mussolini once remarked to his last mistress, Claretta Petacci, who, as was her wont, duly recorded the remark in her diary. “I’m not an old lecher,” he repeated, as he tried to convince her that casual penetrative sex with this or that woman meant nothing to him, it was nothing more than a habit, just a way of relieving himself. But there were many young Fascist women at the time who would have been content to give themselves to him even for that. People still remember how the Fascist gerarchi took to shaving their heads alla romana, tried to make their jaws look prominent, stood with their hands on their hips – attempting to imitate Mussolini’s postures when he spoke to the crowds. But they could never succeed – and it wasn’t because he was better-looking. He wasn’t good-looking, nor was he tall. It wasn’t a question of appearances but of “aura” – similar to what happens between lovers, that beguiling attraction made up of looks and returned glances between the one who observes and the one who is observed, which perhaps depends more on the person desiring rather than on the object of desire.

  The endless number of Mussolini’s metamorphoses – orator and journalist, horseman and peasant, motorcyclist and aviator, family man and libertine – were not merely the product of the dictator’s own self-presentation and the regime’s propaganda machine. They came into being also because the wish to create these mythopoeic constructions was instinct in the Italians themselves. As in Stendhal’s psychology of love, Italian men and women who lived under Fascism first imagined the object of their desire and then ensured that the actual Duce corresponded to the ideal they had constructed for themselves.18

  “Travel light to reach your destination” was one of Mussolini’s mottos, but when he finally achieved power he had acquired a lot of baggage – he was at the head of a government made up of various political tendencies, he had rivals within the party, he was faced by a democratically elected opposition which, while demoralized, was still numerous: the Church was keeping a close and wary eye on him, and the country’s aristocracy could barely stomach him. But if he didn’t travel light on his path to power he certainly travelled alone, and remained so throughout the long years of his dictatorship. He trusted no one apart from his brother Arnaldo, and was incapable of delegating jobs, apart from the editorship of the newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia – which, again, he handed over to his brother. “I cannot have friends, and in fact I’ve got no friends – partly
because of my temperament and partly because of my view of others and the way they are. So I don’t feel the lack of intimacy or of friendly discussion. If an old friend comes to see me after a long time, any mutual embarrassment we might feel just dissolves away. I follow the careers of my former comrades from a distance.”19

  But Mussolini travelled light on his way to power in another sense: he discarded all sense of principle, every ideal, any concept of the primacy of moral or ethical claims. By the time he took power he had become (what is rare in history) a purely political politician, so to speak, one who wanted power for power’s sake. The motto he lived by was at once simple and arduous: “Survive”. Mussolini’s reign lasted for twenty years, nine months and three days, to which can be added the one year, seven months and two weeks represented by Fascism’s dark finale, the Italian Social Republic, which Hitler had wanted Mussolini to create.

  Writing on the death of his brother Arnaldo, Mussolini reflected on what would happen to himself after his own death: “I’ve only one wish: to be buried in the family tomb in the San Cassiano cemetery. I’d be a fool if I asked to be left alone after my death. Round the tombs of those who’ve led the huge transformations we call revolutions there can never be any peace. But all that’s been done can never be cancelled; my spirit, immaterial at last after this brief earthly interlude, will go on living the immortal and universal life of God.”20 This was written at a time when his sexual activities were still frenetic and the sheer physicality of his public image had enabled him to cast his rival in Italy’s duopoly of power, the puny King Victor Emmanuel, into the shade. Bleaker thoughts on his death were jotted down by Mussolini in the notes he wrote while in captivity after he had fallen from power on 25th July 1943. It is worth looking more closely at this episode in his career, when as a prisoner he was moved from the carabinieri barracks in Rome at first to the island of Ponza and then to the island of La Maddalena off the north-east coast of Sardinia.