In 1935 my father, Jimmy the Barber, escaped the clutches of Mussolini just weeks before he was to be drafted into the fascist Army. In the U.S., he was a resident alien from Italy — a country that entered World War II on the side of the Nazis. He and the other Italians in his Hartford tenement were under a strict curfew at night and weren’t allowed to own a radio.
If my father were alive today, he would, sadly, recognize what this country has become. He lived through it before, as a boy in Sicily.
As a first generation Sicilian American, I’ve been plagued by the thought that the Italy I love was swept up in the cult of Mussolini and violence of fascism. My questions were brought into focus when Donald Trump urged his followers to storm the U.S. Capital and install him as president. Nearly five years later, the worry grows.
Distraught, I looked at how Italians had made the radical choice to follow a fascist cult hero in the 1920s. There are clear parallels in the rise of both Mussolini and Trump.
Mussolini’s rise was rooted in the aftermath of World War 1. Italy was in shambles, its infrastructure destroyed, and food was scarce. Moreover, Italy, and especially Mussolini, felt the country had been ignored and humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles.
Mussolini promised new factories, railroads, and jobs for everyone. Men lined up for a chance to work and feed their families, but unless they joined the Fascist Party they were turned away.
Mussolini rose on another promise, too: that he would make Italy great again by bringing back the “glory” of the Roman Empire. He pledged to bring prosperity, and to recreate a pan-Mediterranean empire.
Within months of taking power, Mussolini invaded the Greek island of Corfu. He went on to invade Libya and Ethiopia, with a savagery that was exceeded only by the Nazis.
Upon his second inauguration, Trump outlined plans to take over the Panama Canal, annex Greenland, and make Canada the 51st state. Trump’s insistence that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America mirrors Mussolini’s impulse to rename the Mediterranean “Our Sea.”
Mussolini admired Hitler and wanted an alliance that would make him Hitler’s equal. Hitler considered Mussolini a useful buffoon, similar to the way Putin sees Trump. Both Mussolini and Trump made strategic use of the methods of Nazi leader Hermann Goering. Goering declared, “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism.”
I began to wonder, too, if the downfall of Mussolini might give some clues as to how Trump will inevitably fall.
In the autumn of 1943 Italians found themselves crushed after three years of Mussolini’s inept wartime fascism. The economy had been decimated, half a million Italians had been sent to Germany to work in Hitler’s labor camps, Italy was on the edge of starvation and in the absence of quinine, malaria was spreading. The Allies had landed in Sicily and were making their way up the boot of Italy. In the north the partisans were rising up. The liberation of Italy was on the horizon.
Mussolini had initially promised the people a quick victory followed by prosperity. Instead, he had to call his Fascist Grand Council together to prop him up. He insisted the Italian people still loved him, but no one believed any longer in his stories of victory and heroism. The Grand Council accused him of being indecisive, of failing to rid the government of incompetent and corrupt members, and of pursuing a disastrous foreign policy. In their words, Mussolini had imposed a dictatorship on Italy, and created an immoral regime.
After years of sycophantic obedience, none of his fascist leaders supported him. Mussolini was taken to a prison on the island of Ponza. After transfer to a prison in the north, the Germans rescued him. Then, in April 1945, Mussolini tried to escape to Switzerland, but partisans captured him hiding in the back of a truck.
The world was shocked at how quickly the end of Mussolini’s regime came. Italians greeted his fall with a frenzy of celebration. Photos of Mussolini were torn from classroom walls and statues of him were toppled.
The U.S. may be at that kind of tipping point. Though Trump’s ascension had parallels to that of Mussolini, there is no way to predict whether his descent will come as suddenly and completely as Mussolini’s did.
I do believe we’re approaching a point when this disunited country will admit that the emperor has no clothes.
Dan Lombardo lives in Westhampton.