Collect Fascist Voices: An Intimate History Of Mussolinis Italy Edited By Christopher Duggan Volume

and disturbing. My mother went to high school in Mussolini's Italy, She was the only girl in her class and took Yugoslav citizenship after the war even though her parents became Italian.


After reading this book, I know why,

Dr Duggan received two awards for it and was honoured by the Italian government with the Commander of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity.
Not quite what it promises to be, The author only used a small handful of diaries, cited very sparingly, and for constructing his narrative relied on the same secondary sources as everyone else, which is to say the nowlargely outdated histories of the fascist period written before Renzo De Felice published his biography of Mussolini, or as a defense against De Felice's theses.


The one diary that is cited frequently is that of Clara Petacci, finally declassified only ten years ago, though discouragingly the manuscripts have only made available to three authors so far.
Heavily redacted editions were published in Italian inby Rizzoli the editors admitted that they were forced to omit over twothirds of the material, and had to redact the entries they did include for space considerations and this book seems to have been an attempt to capitalize on their recent publication.
Unfortunately, the Petacci diaries as published by Rizzoli are completely bizarre and selfcontradictory, either because of mistakes by the editors, journalists Mauro Suttora and Mimmo Franzinelli, or because the diaries themselves are not authentic.


The biggest issue with the diaries is that they put Mussolini in places he was not at on those days another strange thing about the diaries is that Petacci, who came from a bourgeois family, had a good education and by all accounts was not stupid, was an absolutely terrible writer.
Because most of what she wrote makes no sense, the nephew of Petacci believes that she was a British secret service agent, as a way to explain her oftencryptic writing.


Quotemined, as they are in Duggan's book, they appear to make some sense and so the picture you get of Petacci's writing in this book is a paraphrase of a paraphrase of her actual diaries.


Another disappointing thing about this book was that there was no room in this "intimate history" for Mussolini's closest collaborator and lover foryears, the Italian Jewish socialist Margherita Sarfatti.
She was with Mussolini from Forlì into his time as editor of Avanti!, to Il Popolo d'Italia in, to the March on Rome in, wrote his official biography "Dux" in, right up to Mussolini's aboutface in, when he left the AngloFrenchItalian alliance and aligned Italy with Germany, and Sarfatti suddenly found herself no longer welcome at Palazzo Venezia.
The name of Sarfatti only appears three times in this book, Once in one of the quotes from the Petacci diaries, as "the wellknown art patron and critic and Mussolini's biographer," and in relation to two brief quotations from herbiography.
It seems that Duggan doesn't even know who Sarfatti was,

Neither was there much room for his wife, Rachele Guidi, or other collaborators of the early days, like Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, founder of the Fasci d'Azione rivoluzionaria internazionalista which evolved into the Fasci di combattimento, or Angelica Balabanoff, Enrico Corradini, Alceste de Ambris, etc.
All important figures you can hardly write a book about fascism, especially an intimate history, without mentioning.


The theses seem to be that:

a Mussolini was a megalomaniac and a buffoon, the former of which may be partially true, but far from the whole truth, and the second of which is the common result of reading too much into, and projecting onto Mussolini, the worst excesses of Achille Starace's own undeniable buffoonery

b fascism was nothing but propaganda and empty promises.
There was lots of propaganda, and it was very powerful and influential, but again, there was a lot more to it than that, and a lot was built and achieved, for better and for worse, in concrete terms

c the supposed big revelation from Petacci's diaries, that Mussolini was an antisemite, based on one sentence out of a diary of tens of thousands of pages, and contradicted literally hundreds of times elsewhere, not only in speeches but by the fact that he was sleeping with a Jewish woman foryears and a disproportionate percentage of the Fascist gerarchs were Jewish

d restatement of the "Black Legend" alleging that Pius XI and Pius XII were "Hitler's Popes," a conclusion requiring the author to ignore a truly staggering amount of evidence to the contrary.


Having said all of the above, good things about this book were that the author writes in an engaging manner, and the narrative really flows.
For the most part he avoids taking an overly polemical tone, Where primary sources the only primary sources really used are the aforementioned handful of diaries are used, they're wellintegrated into the rest of the narrative.


I think Duggan is a good author, but maybe not an outstanding researcher, I'm going to be honest with you, . . this book was challenging to read and even harder to grade, I feel as this book started as a wonderful concept and idea for a book, but ultimately fell flat due to a lack of ingredients.
I love the idea of using personal narratives, diaries, etc as a window into the cult of personality that was Mussolini.
So I dove into this book with a great deal of vigor and anticipation, hoping for insights into how Fascist Italy came about.


Sadly, the book seems to lack a significant number of those voices, relying on relatively few examples blended with a melange of the commonplace references seen when discussing Mussolini.
There was not nearly enough of these personal views for my taste, and it left me disappointed and hungry for what I was promised.


I'm also not convinced Mr Duggan added a great deal of insight into some of the claims made which mimic earlier positions by other authors and researchers.
I sort of tire of the attempts to link Fascism with the Catholic Church specifically the Pope, when frankly they were doing their best in situations outside of their control.
It is easy to take the moral high ground when you are not the ones with bayonets in your back.
I think there are also some questionable stances on the status of the Jews as well worth noting.


Now I don't want to appear all glum about this book read, as I did find it very interesting.
My struggles reading it were mostly from frustrations over the same folks being used over and over for their "voices" and me wanting to hear from others.
I know you can only use what sources actually exist, but I think hearing more from the common man would have benefited the quality of this book greatly.
I wanted to know what the everyday folk thought, Maybe these people don't have time to write diaries,

The writing itself is easy to read, and I found the reading logical in presentation.
The references were good, albeit very common ones outside the personal sources for the "voices", Vanilla in that regard I guess, That is how I feel about this grade too, . . vanilla. Saying I liked it seems too strong, but saying it was just ok seems too mild,.Stars Well I do like the concept a lot, so I'll round up toStars and hope someday we get a book giving us the voices of the commoners in the Axis, so we can understand more of how they were led down that

terrible path.
Duggan alulról indulva építi fel a Mussolinirezsim élettörténetét nem a döntéshozók érdeklik, hanem levelekre, visszaemlékezésekre és önéletrajzokra támaszkodva azt vizsgálja, az állampolgárok miként látták a fasizmus kirügyezését, virágba borulását, és azt, amikor a végén jöttek az elefántok, és a földbe taposták az egészet.
Jogos megközelítés, hisz egy diktátor önmagában csak pszichológiai szempontból érdekes történelmi tényezővé csak azok által válik, akik hisznek benne.
Mindebből egy nagyon komplett, nagyon erőteljes elbeszélés jön létre, ami számtalan ma is aktuális kérdésre ad nagyon is megfontolandó választ: vallás és rezsim kapcsolatáról, a globalizmusellenes populizmusról és sikerének okairól, liberalizmus és bolsevizmus összemosásáról és persze elsősorban magáról a diktátorról, mint jelenségről.


Az erős kezű vezér” iránti igény persze nem új jelenség, talán egyidős az emberiséggel.
Ám a fasiszta Olaszország példája jól szemlélteti azokat az elemeket, amik a mai napig népszerűvé teszik, és amelyeket nem árt észrevenni, ha nem akarunk megint ötvenhatvan évet visszacsusszanni az időben.
És hát ezeket a kérdéseket tisztábban lehet vizsgálni Mussolini, mint Hitler vagy Sztálin példáján keresztül, mert a felfoghatatlan méretű tömeggyilkosságok nem vonják el a figyelmünket.

. A vezérelv kiemeli a diktátort, és a közösség fölé helyezi, Ennek következménye, hogy a diktátor nemcsak a néptől különül el, hanem a saját beosztottjaitól is a kritika tehát nem ér fel hozzá.
Nyugodtan lehet gyűlölni az alsóbb vezetőket, letolvajozni, lehülyézni őket és ugyanakkor hinni, hogy ha a Nagy Vezér tudna arról, miben mesterkednek, megbüntetné őket.
Mert a Nagy Vezér semmiért sem hibás, A diktatúrák alapvető paradoxonja ez: a vezér mindent tud, mindenre képes, de semmiért sem felelős.

. A vezérelv akkor is nagyon jól jön, amikor a rendszernek valójában nincsen világosan megfogalmazható ideológiája csak retorikája.
A vezér nem fejezi ki magát tisztán, gyakran ellentmond magának, ám ez előnyévé válik így ugyanis mindenki vélheti azt, hogy épp az ő gondolatát és vágyait fejezi ki.
Kereskedelmi kifejezéssel: kimaxolja a vásárlói célcsoportját azzal, hogy a lehető legtöbb embernek engedi, hogy higgyen benne.


És mindezeken felül: a vezér, mint egy gyűjtőlencse, fókuszálja magában mindazt, amit magunkba és a nemzetbe látni akarunk.
A vezér egy óriás, ereje gigászi, szava zengő bariton, és ha csak őt nézzük, azt hisszük, mi is óriások vagyunk.
Még a hibái is a mi hibáink, A vezér segít létrehozni egy illúziót, amiben a külső tényeknek nincs helye, a szavak az üres klisék teremtenek új valóságot.
Csak hát az a helyzet, hogy a külső valóság akkor is létezik, ha mi sikeresen elfeledtük úgyhogy ha a fejünk a falnak koccan, akkor bamm, a fal lesz az erősebb.


Nem értem, miért kell újra és újra megtapasztalnunk ezt a falat, csak hogy elhiggyük: ott van.

this epic history of fascist Italy explores the development and support of Italian support for fascism.
using individual diaries, Duggan exploresthe reaosn for support and trust, more often in Mussolini rather than his ideologically incoherent and oppotunistic Party.
Buidling on the failure of Liberalism to build an ecomomically strong and modern Italy, Mussolini surgeto pwoer was seen as a source of relief by many Italains disnagaed frm politics and looking for a better future.


Duggan's work exxplores the failure of Fascism to deliver the modern, antimaterialistoc and ethical mass nationalism promised and the deepening cyncism of Italians.
finally destroyed by the debt and disgrace if war, this books explains the lack of thorough purge of fascism, the attraction of Italian intellectuals to a very Italian forn of socialism and the relentless cynicism about psrty politics that shaped modern society,.