Military morality: the problem of scruples. – SeanMunger.com

One of the blogs I read, day in and day out, is Padre Steve’s. Steve is a military chaplain with 30+ years experience who has served in Iraq and knows the real face of war inside and out. He is also a historian who has studied and written extensively on Germany in the Weimar and Nazi periods, especially about its military establishment. Very often–in fact, in almost every article–Padre Steve sounds a clear historical warning that the United States is going down exactly the same road of totalitarianism that Germany experienced in the 1920s and 1930s. Steve appears to be a voice in the wilderness, sounding…

via Military morality: the problem of scruples. – SeanMunger.com

Nelly | Greece | Iconic Photos

How do you memorialize someone like Nelly? On one hand, she was a pioneering woman photographer and her photos of Greek temples and columns set against sea and sky shaped – and it can be argued, st…

Source: Nelly | Greece | Iconic Photos

The Mad Monarchist: Making a Prophet of Mussolini

In 1945, in the last days of the war, when his “Italian Social Republic” was in its death throes, Benito Mussolini made the following prediction about the future:

“The present war will produce an alteration in order of rank. Great Britain, for instance, is destined to become a second-class power, in view of disclosure of Russian and American strength…In a short time, Fascism will once more shine on the horizon. First of all, because of the persecution to which the Liberals will subject it, showing that liberty is something to reserve to oneself and refuse to others.”

And, the fact is, the liberals of today are working very hard to prove…

Source: The Mad Monarchist: Making a Prophet of Mussolini

On this day: the executions of Benito Mussolini and Clara Petacci | In Times Gone By…

Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and Clara Petacci, his mistress, were executed by partisans in the northern Italian village of Giulino di Mezzegra on the 28th of April, 1945. Belie…

Source: On this day: the executions of Benito Mussolini and Clara Petacci | In Times Gone By…

Death of a Playboy | toritto

Originally posted on toritto.

She wasn’t a teen beauty but she had a personality to make up for it.

She was bold and confident. She looked directly into men’s eyes when she spoke with them. She was one of the first women in Italy to drive a car, wear make-up and trousers, skimpy bathing attire at the shore.

She was very different from most of the women of her country and her era and for this reason men found her enchanting. And she was old enough to date.

Her father was a very prominent man, well known and feared. He was determined to keep a close eye on her. He ordered his security to monitor her activities and to report on her relationships directly to him. Whenever she began seeing someone he considered “unsuitable” he would bring an end to the affair. What made it worse was that she liked to flirt which could hurt her father’s position.

He decided she should get married. She was first engaged to Pier Francesco Orsi Mangelli, the young son of an industrialist nobleman. The couple seemed happy at first but it was soon apparent to both they were not…

via Death of a Playboy | toritto.

The Introduction

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“Comrade Balabanoff! There is someone here I would like you to meet!”

Angelica turned around to face the voice. It was Franco, one of her colleagues on the Central Committee of the Italian Socialist Party.

“Good evening! How are you!” He gently kissed her on the cheek. With him was a young man rather shabbily dressed, looking somewhat down and out.

Angelica had seen thousands like him. No work and few prospects.

Her life had been so different. Born in Ukraine in 1878, she was the youngest of 14 children, 7 of whom had died before she was born. Her family was very well to do and she wanted for nothing except a mother’s love.

Her mother was a tyrant insisting that the poor peasant household servants bow and scrape, even before the children. Angelica still cringed with embarrassment thinking of grown men humiliating themselves before her because they needed…

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If This is a Man by Primo Levi | Quote

Buy If This is a Man by Primo Levi

Fascism

“We cannot understand it, but we can and must understand from where it springs, and we must be on our guard. If understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative, because what happened could happen again. Conscience can be seduced and obscured again – even our consciences. For this reason, it is everyone’s duty to reflect on what happened.”

If This is a Man by Primo Levi

On this day: Fascist Italy Banned Foreign Words

In Times Gone By...

Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini with Adolf Hitler

On the 23^rd of July, 1929, Italy’s Fascist government banned foreign words.

This was part of a larger act of the “Italianisation” of minorities in Italy and surrounding territories, as well as the annexation of nearby countries.

Naturally, this policy included banning the teaching of minority languages, even for people who were not ethnic Italians.

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Happy 100th Birthday, Max Levitas! | Spitalfields Life

Originally posted on Spitalfields Life.

Today we salute Max Levitas, celebrated anti-Fascist campaigner & veteran of the Battle of Cable St who enjoyed his one hundredth birthday yesterday.

Max Levitas became an East End hero when he was arrested in 1934, at the age of nineteen years old, for writing anti-Fascist slogans on Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. “There were two of us, we did it at midnight and we wrote ‘All out on September 9th to fight Fascism,’ ‘Down with Fascism’ and ‘Fight Fascism,’ on Nelson’s Column in whitewash,” he told me, his eyes shining with pleasure, still fired up with ebullience at one hundred years of age, “And afterwards we went to Lyons Corner House to have something to eat and wash our hands, but when we had finished our tea we decided to go back to see how good it looked, and we got arrested – the police saw the paint on our shoes.”

On September 9th, Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, was due to speak at a rally in Hyde Park but – as Max is happy to remind you today – he was drowned out by the people of London who converged to express their contempt. It was both fortuitous and timely that the Times reprinted Max’s slogans on September 7th, two days before the rally, in the account of his appearance at Bow St Magistrates Court, thereby spreading the message.

Yet this event was merely the precursor to the confrontation with the Fascists that took place in the East End, two years later in October 1936, that became known as the Battle of Cable St, and in which Max is proud to…

via Happy 100th Birthday, Max Levitas! | Spitalfields Life.

The Jewish Fascist

The “John the Baptist” of Fascism

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Italians in Fiume cheering D’Annunzio in September 1919

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There murmur swarming through my drowsy head
In this vast furnace of a summer day
Relentless verses clamoring to be said,
As beetles round a putrid carcass play.

One doesn’t often run into a Fascist poet although Ezra Pound was considered one. Usually poets tend to be dreamers of leftish persuasion – not Fascists.

Yet the “John the Baptist” of Italian fascism was a poet – Gabriele D’Annunzio. He was the model on which Benito Mussolini would later build the full Fascist state.

D’Annunzio was born in the Abruzzi region of Italy in March 1863 as the bastard child of a wealthy landowner. His mother’s name was Rapagnetta and it was his surname until he was adopted by a retired wealthy uncle Antonio D’Annunzio, who sent him to a fine private school to continue his education. It was there, at 16…

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