Another Mussolini bully
September 7th 2009 04:44
Allesandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, has demanded that a Romanian film be banned from an Italian film festival. The film, she says, insults both Italy and her grandfather.
Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy in 1922 and for a while was lauded as a reformer and political thinker. But nothing corrupts so absolutely as power, and power corrupted him completely. He reinvented totalitarianism, calling it fascism. He took for himself the title His Excellency Benito Mussolini, Head of Government, Duce of Fascism, and Founder of the Empire, and decreed himself equal in power with King Victor Emmanuel III.
But that wasn't enough and he threw his hat in with the Nazis. When the war ended he tried to run away to Switzerland. He was caught and executed.
To insult Italy, one could claim that its people know nothing about food or fashion or sexy cars. You would look a fool, but you might manage to find an Italian or two who gave a damn.
To insult Benito Mussolini would be harder. To call him a bully and a coward would not be to insult him, it would be to tell the truth. This presumably is what the Romanians have done in their film, and this truth, presumably, is what has attracted the Italian film festival organisers to show the work.
The Chinese government recently demanded organisers of a film festival in Melbourne, Australian, ban a film which told some truths about the plight of the suppressed Uyghur people. The Australians refused also, deciding instead that truth was the better option.
Allesandra Mussolini is a former model of the seamy kind turned conservative politician. It suits her to twist the truth about her grandfather because she has spent most of her 47 years cashing in on her family name.
She needs to grow up.
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