Cautionary Lessons from Mussolini's March on Rome

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. You don't have to look far to find the influence of ancient Rome on American culture. Our laws are riddled with Latin terms from alibi to subpoena. Our forefathers wrote using Roman pseudonyms. All of our coin it says E Pluribus Unum, Latin for out of many one. Why am I talking about this today? Well, exactly 98 years ago today, roughly 30,000 members of the Fascist National Party convened in what is now known as the March on Rome.

They demanded that the Office of Prime Minister be given to their leader, a 39-year-old son of a blacksmith named Benito Mussolini. One of their slogans was another Latin phrase, dux mea lux, I don't know if I'm saying that right. Maybe it's dux mea lux, which meant the leader is my light. Mussolini was also inspired by ancient Rome, saying the "Much of that which was the immortal spirit of Rome, resurges in fascism," from Mussolini.

The March on Rome ushered in a new era, at least it helped to usher in of strong singular dictators, who ruled around the world in the 20th century. These strong men, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein, are known for their ruthless regimes and for being responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in the history of mankind. Why do we talk about it?

It's because it's the anniversary and because joining us now, on the legacy of the March on Rome, its consequences, and its lessons for today is Kenneth C. Davis, the historian, author of the Don't Know Much About History series, his new book is Strong man: The Rise of Five Dictators and the Fall of Democracy, which covers the lives of these five dictators, who I mentioned, and has lessons for right now. Hey, Ken, welcome back to WNYC.

Kenneth C. Davis: Good morning, Brian, it is always a pleasure to be with you. Thanks for having me. Right off the bat, I have to add to that list of things that were taken from ancient history that show up in America is something called the fasces. The fasces was a bundle of rods bound together around an exit.

Mussolini, of course, used this symbol, it was magistrate's-- Actual the magistrate in ancient Rome in the Republic carried this around as a symbol of authority, a symbol of power, or symbol leadership, Mussolini adapted it as the name of his party. One can find this symbol, of course in America as well, including in the House of Representatives. Next time you see Nancy Pelosi standing up there, there's a fasces on the wall behind her.

If you go down to Wall Street, you'll see fasces on the statue of George Washington. If you go to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, Lincoln's chair includes the fasces. This was a symbol like many things from the Roman Republic that the early American Republic admired as well. Certainly, the founding fathers appreciated what ancient Rome meant. That's why we have a president and a Senate. Both words, of course, coming from ancient Rome.

Brian: There you go. Today is the 98th anniversary of the March on Rome, a date in history that a lot of Americans never learn about in school. Give us a thumbnail, what was the March on Rome, and what was its significance at the time?

Kenneth: It was largely in the end, a very theatrical event. Mussolini was a theatrical person. First, I have to say, right off the bat, many people don't understand or don't know because we don't teach this history that Italy in the 1920s was a constitutional democracy, was a constitutional monarchy, but it had become a democracy, a republic in the 1860s.

Mussolini was an elected member of the legislature, he did not come to power at the head of a column of tanks. This is one of the very important lessons of Strongman. I love the Washington Post and read it, but democracy does not die in darkness, it usually dies decapitated it in broad daylight, while thousands cheer. That's when [crosstalk]

Brian: Just for people who don't know the Washington Post slogan these days is "Democracy dies in darkness."

Kenneth: That's correct. They introduced that in early 2017. Apparently, had no connection to the recent election so we're told. The point is that we tend to think of democracy as something that ends in a revolution or a coup, but it's not.

It's often 1,000 small cuts. Both Mussolini and Hitler are the two ideal examples of that both men coming to power in a constitutional democracy and moving very, very quickly, to destroy that democracy, and erase it, and move their countries to a one-party state. The word totalitarian, in fact, was invented in Italy, for Mussolini, and he actually liked the word.

Brian: You make a point early on in the book of separating and defining democracies and republics. In fact, in this country, Republicans do like to say, "This is a republic," more than Democrats do, and are more likely to say, "This is a Democracy." Why is it important to make this distinction?

Kenneth: What I try and do is make the point that there's a distinction without a real difference, at least when it comes to the American, we are a democratic republic, one can't exist without the other as it's constituted in the United States. I traced the fact that both words, democracy, of course, comes from the ancient Greek meaning the power of the people. The word Republic, again, goes back to Latin, from the Roman Republic, and a means of the people.

Both words mean the same thing, but there's been this created distinction. Every piece of American democracy, over more than 230 years, every change to the Constitution, to be more precise, has been towards more democracy, not less. The founding fathers as much as they admired the Roman Republic didn't like too much democracy. They thought the Republic was an ideal situation because it was essentially a collection of elite men who made all these decisions.

They believed in 1787 when they were writing the Constitution, that democracy was one short step removed from mob rule. Their concern was much more about the tyranny of the majority, perhaps not anticipating the tyranny of a minority. Of course, this all goes back to the very beginnings of democracy as we think about it in western civilization in Athens. Of course, Plato in the Republic writes about democracy. He lists the five forms of government. He says, "Democracy is imperfect."

He didn't think it was the best form of government. He thought or predicted that a democracy would ultimately fall to a tyrant, to a dictator. Throughout much of history, that was the case. Certainly, the founders, the framers of the Constitution looked at that history, they understood history, and they were afraid of that. That's one of the reasons they built in the so-called checks and balances we have in the Constitution.

Brian: What the framers were afraid of, and what Plato was afraid of when it came to democracy was a tyranny of the majority led by a strong man, but with the backing of the majority who would oppress minorities?

Kenneth: Absolutely. You certainly see that I think in Italy, and Germany as the first two examples that I write about in Strongman. These were very popular governments. These were popular movements. Mussolini and Hitler both had the support of large numbers of people. They had the support of the business world, the industrialists, the military eventually, and in Mussolini's case, the Catholic Church, and in Hitler's case, certainly the large majority of Christians in his country, especially conservative Christians.

These totalitarian states were not unpopular at first. In fact, populism and the nationalism that both of these leaders express are very much a part of what goes into what I call the strongman's playbook.

Brian: Without something like the Bill of Rights that we have that guarantees individual rights, at least on paper, or other provisions that guarantee minority group rights in some way, tyranny of the majority is a real risk. Obviously, the most extreme example would be from those who write about in the book, would be the Holocaust in Germany. Even when we look at our own founders, as you remind us, and I don't think this was in the Lin-Manuel Miranda play. Hamilton talked about the imprudence of democracy, not what we would think of with respect to “Founding father”.

Kenneth: That's right. As I said, they did not think that democracy was ideal, certainly in a pure form. That's what the difference is between a representative democracy and a direct democracy. Obviously, we have direct representative democracy, although listening to the preceding segment about the election, and the incredible difficulties Americans face in voting. The notion of a democracy is certainly under threat, which is something else I write about in Don't Know Much About History. There's a book that we've talked about many times, Brian, it's 30 years old, it's hard for me to believe.

I really write in the new edition about the end of democracy, we are in an era in which democracy is under threat. In part, because of the attacks on the election system that have been going on in this country, for a long time. Of course, I'm reminded when we talk about the problems of elections and electing people, it reminds me of what Mark Twain supposedly said, “Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Everybody's been complaining about elections for a long time, but it seems that we don't do anything about it. I think that's a separate issue, but an important one.

Back to this idea of the framers, yes, Elbridge Gerry, the man for whom gerrymandering is named, was one of those who believed that democracy was one step removed from mob rule. This is the reason, of course, that they came up with this compromise, that we are stuck with today called the Electoral College. They wanted to diminish, they certainly didn't want a popular vote. That was an idea that was put forward in 1787 but rejected by the large majority of the members of the Constitutional Convention.

Brian: My guest is Kenneth C. Davis, whose latest history book is Strongman: The Rise of Five Dictators and the Fall of Democracy. Let me ask the obvious and pregnant question, did you write this book now, because you're afraid of where Donald Trump and his supporters might lead us?

Kenneth: Actually, it was begun and written before that, or started before that, because I don't think that the threats to democracy in this country is something that started three years ago. As I mentioned, a moment ago, in the new revised edition of, Don't Know Much About History, I write about the threats to democracy and an end of democracy in America. This has been a long-standing problem, the gerrymandering, the voter suppression, the Supreme Court decisions like citizens united, go back long before four years ago.

I think that democracy has been under assault, we never have been a very good nation when it comes to voting. In a good year, we get to 60%, in a presidential election, typically, it's around 50%. It falls off to 40% in the midterms. We are not a nation of voters by tradition, even though we celebrate this so-called sacred act and right of voting, most of us sit on the sidelines, usually. I think that this is more worrisome now than ever before. As I mentioned, we've had a history of opening up the electoral process over 230 plus years.

The amendments to the Constitution, 27 of them 17 after the Bill of Rights, many of them affect voting. Obviously, the vote for Black men after the Civil War, then, 100 years ago, finally the vote for women. I was the beneficiary when I turned 18, in 1972 of the changing voting age. We've had a long, long process, slow, painful as it may be of opening up democracy, but unfortunately, too many people take it for granted. I think that one of the reasons I wrote the book was, in 1990, we thought we had this moment where communism had ended, the Berlin Wall had come down, the Soviet Union was crumbling, apartheid ended in South Africa.

This was this grand new moment where rights and democracy was flourishing around the world. It lasted about 10 years. Since 2000, for a variety of reasons, we've seen much more of a swing towards authoritarianism. Freedom House, which monitors this has said, democracy has fallen backwards every year for the past 15 years. That's a dangerous and sad reflection on our times, and it's certainly true in the United States as well.

Brian: One of the reasons that people started applying the word fascist to Donald Trump when he started running for president was he was doing so explicitly on trying to exclude Muslims and calling Mexicans criminals. That reminded people of 20th-century European fascism. A recurring thread in the rise of fascism is that the political establishment tends to underestimate it, as you point out. What made liberal governments susceptible to fascist infiltration, when figures like Mussolini are gaining steam, and what are the lessons of that for today, just in case?

Kenneth: Let me expand that a little bit beyond specifically fascism, although that's certainly the case we're talking about Mussolini, who really never had a very good definition, by the way, for what fascism-- He basically said, “It's what I want it to be, I am the state.” Mussolini [foreign language], used your Latin I'll use my bad Italian. Mussolini is always right. This is from the commandments that they taught children in Mussolini's children's brigade, it’s called the Balilla.

When we’re looking at these five strong men, in the course of this book, four things come right off the bat that you talk about with the ability of these strong men, and certainly in our own time. Extreme nationalism, combined with populism, usually for restoring a country's past glory, placing blame on a single group, scapegoating. Obviously, in Hitler's case, there were many. Mussolini, who had been a socialist himself early in his life became an avowed anti-socialist. That's one of the reasons that the business world, the industrialists, and the church were so eager to go along with Mussolini, he was going to stop the spread of socialism and of communism in Italy.

Warning of an emergency or responding to severe economic distress. Certainly, both true in Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany. This is another popular one, calling for Law and Order, eliminating corruption. All the problems of the country are due to these outside groups or some collection of immigrants or a religious group, you can go down the list of usual suspects. We're going to restore law and order. Without my book, ever mentioning the current president of the United States, you can go down that list and he's 44.

Brian: Let me throw in one more which got a lot of people writing Mussolini in the news just in recent weeks, with respect to Trump. It has to do with the imagery of him returning to the White House from the Walter Reed Hospital, and standing, ripping off his mask slowly and dramatically on the Truman balcony of the White House, right?

Kenneth: Yes.

Brain: That balcony shot.

Kenneth: The balcony shot. I've been in Rome and I've seen the balcony where Mussolini stood and gave those speeches to adoring crowds that looked up to him. After a while he was Il Duce, the leader, and there's this joy on their faces, the same kind of joy you see in Hitler's crowds 10 years later. The reason, of course, I talk about Mussolini and Mussolini first in this book, is that Mussolini proceeds Hitler nearly by a decade, and Hitler watched what Mussolini had done and borrowed from his very excellent playbook.

The thing that you just mentioned, I would say that tends to follow after once the strong man is in power, and that would fall into the category that I would call, creating the cult of personality. Mussolini was very good at doing this. There were plaques of Mussolini all over the country. You couldn't go to the theater, the movie theater in Italy, and watch a movie which were becoming very popular, and Mussolini's son was in charge of the movie studios.

You couldn't go to the movie theater without seeing a newsreel that was produced by the fascist party first. The creation of a cult of personality is something that's true for all of these strong men as well. It goes down the line, as well as, the move to control the courts, legislature, and elections. I mean, does that sound familiar? Heightening of emergency that may not exist, control of the media or threats against the media and of journalists in particular. So the phrase enemy of the people is not a new phrase. It was not created in the past four years, but it's certainly been used.

This book was not meant as a partisan book of this moment. It's really meant to say, "This is the history of these, these are the facts, these are how these men come to power, and then how they cement their power and utterly destroy any sense of freedom, rights, liberties that we may have come to expect or certainly expect, as Americans." Germany had a constitution. 1919 Weimar Constitution was a model of a progressive constitution at the time, women could vote, there were protections for labor unions, there was freedom of religion guaranteed.

In fact, Jews had started to move to Germany because of that constitutional protection of religion. Of course, that all disappeared overnight practically once Hitler is given the power of the chancellorship then the Reichstag fire, which I also write about in the opening chapter of this book, how you take a crisis like that, and turn it into a moment where you accrue more power to yourself. These are really important lessons from history, and we talked about this idea of learning history, so we don't repeat it, and we just don't do a very good job of it.

Brian: With the recognition from history that today is the 98th anniversary of Mussolini's march on Rome, we thank Kenneth C. Davis, author of the Don't Know Much About History series, and now his new book, Strongman: The Rise of Five Dictators and the Fall of Democracy. Ken, thank you.

Ken: Thank you, Brian. Go vote.

 

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