Benito Mussolini

[laughs]

How much of this is Ayn Rand? How much of this is like, um, some kind of Mussolini thing, and how much of it is like kind of this innate primal desire to be like a dictator or a king? Like, what's your view? What's driving the-

I, I think, I think it's more, um, techno-fascism as a term didn't exist then.

What I saw more was the, um, cypherpunk crypto anarchist kind of thing.

They did not find any of that after the war.

So if you got the money, you can start funding corporations, starting new ones, buying these huge tracts of land for your micro-nations, and even bringing down their high-tech UFO, uh, backward-engineered technology that, uh, Hermann Oberith, who was a paperclip Nazi in America, when asked, "How did Germany become so advanced so quickly?" He said, "Well, we had help from our friends from above." Pretty much indicating that they were not only using the crashed discs that they got from the Black Forest area of Germany in the 1933, but also an intact UFO that went down, uh, in the Lombardy region of Italy in the late 1930s that Mussolini turned over to the German engineers.

Right.

So they were able to use these craft to very rapidly advance, and that is what, uh, most researchers now would agree were the craft that, um-

But I'm talking, when I say figurehead, I mean in terms of outward appearances.

One of Hitler's challenges with balancing Italian demands on the Balkans, and specifically Croatia, in order to placate Mussolini, over, among other things, the murder of Dolfus and the subsequent Anschluss and other things.

Early on, he agreed to cede the Dalmatian coast to Italy, at least as a sphere of influence and an event of general war as a territorial imperative that they would be permitted to capture.

This caused intense resentment in Zagreb, but Hitler realized it was a necessary evil.

Now, Pavlovich, having spent so many years in Italy and having courted really since 1932-33 alliance with the Italian fascists, he was kind of Mussolini.

He wasn't Mussolini's man, as is sometimes alleged, in Zagreb, but he was Italian.

And frankly, when it became clear that Italy was going to do Croatia, it was kind of like this exploitable asset that was brought published in the National Socialist camp so firmly.

Canaris' adjutant was a he was an officer by name of, uh, LaHausen.

Great man shit.

The problem is you don't get your name on the currency when you're, uh, you know, someone like Hitler or Mussolini, right? You go down in history, but your name gets pried off.

You go down.

That's about

This meant that photographs of him wearing lederhosen, the short trousers worn particularly in Bavaria and Austria, were not widely distributed, despite Hitler's praising of traditional German garb and the fact that he was in fact captured wearing them in a photo dating to around 1930.

Elsewhere, the Führer was critical of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, being photographed swimming or surrounded by women.

Yet the most persistent element of the photographic censorship that Hoffmann was ordered to impose was the injunction that Hitler should never be photographed wearing glasses.

The Nazi leader had developed problems with his eyesight during the First World War, as he came into contact with mustard gas.

Hoffmann's continuing promotion during these years reflected his close relationship with Hitler.

Hitler often visited the Hoffmann household in Berlin.

It is important to remember that the Nazi dictator had been an unsuccessful artist himself in his youth, and that after becoming leader of Germany he continued to display a strong interest in art and architecture.

in line with this he surrounded himself with many figures like hoffmann and the architect albert speer who subsequently became one of the foremost ministers in the german government when he visited hoffmann's household the pair would drink tea into the late hours and converse about photography and art Hoffmann even tried to convince Hitler to have a drink with him on occasion, but Hitler, who was not a teetotaller, but almost never drank alcohol, did not often acquiesce.

Nora, uh, Feternik were, uh, were, were ciphers.

Uh, they both wielded tremendous power and clout, but I'm talking when I say figurehead, I mean, in terms of outward appearances, um, One of Hitler's challenges with balancing Italian demands on the Balkans, and specifically Croatia, in order to placate Mussolini over, among other things, the murder of Dolfus and the subsequent Anschluss and other things, Early on, he'd agreed to cede the Dalmatian coast to Italy, at least as a sphere of influence and an event of general war as a territorial imperative that they would be permitted to capture.

This caused intense resentment in Zagreb, but Hitler realized it was a necessary evil.

Now, Pavelic, having spent so many years in Italy and having courted, really, since 1932-33, alliance with the Italian fascists, he was kind of Mussolini.

He wasn't Mussolini's man, as is sometimes alleged, in Zagreb, but he was Italian.

And frankly, when it became clear that Italy was going to do Croatia, it was kind of like this exploitable aspect of it.

published in the National Socialist camp so firmly.

He was very good at this.

Yes.

I mean, one of the things that I talk about at some length in the book is when fascism first came on the scene in 1922 with Mussolini's March on Rome, Many American elites welcomed him and thought, gosh, this Mussolini fellow is a fascinating character.

Fascism, as he describes it, is simply trying to govern an unruly Italian country that's always been broken and backward.

Let's let this guy give it a shot.

driving in a dictator.

But no, so fascism was popular... much later than is comfortable to admit.

But that was Mussolini's version.

Hitler's version of it, of course, more racialist and exterminationist was not popular.

Time of Monsters is a reference to the way I start and end the essay, I guess, which is around this quote that everyone is attributing to Gramsci, the...

Italian Marxist philosopher who was in prison under Mussolini for a long period of time and wrote all these prison notebooks.

Anyway, he said something that people quote as, along the lines of, the old order is dying, the new one is not yet born, now is the time of monsters.

And he never said that.

I don't know if perhaps at the start of the 20th century when Melville Dewey was doing this and all of his drugs, they were a closer bond, but they don't seem particularly aligned at the moment.

I think we all know that basically the underlying Western philosophy of the United States... is the one that was written by a certain Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini in their book The Principle of Fascism.

Canada and all that's about, I must admit.

Yeah.