Ill Douché

Let us not be glib and careless with our historical comparisons.

Call me a retrograde, MAGA, OnlyFans power user, but I’ve had it up to here [points to socks] with comparisons of Trump to Hitler. How does the radical Marxist cult of the Bill of Rights, Social Security and non-murder expect to be taken seriously if it trades in such tired rhetoric?

Can we please, can we please, keep our wits about us and compare the president of the United States to Benito Mussolini?

Did Il Duce not emigrate from Italy briefly in his youth to avoid military service? He did, in 1902.

Did he not renounce his democratic and modestly left-wing roots to found a movement he called “revolutionary nationalism”? He did, in 1914.

Did he not vilify “inferior peoples” threatening the ethnic purity of Italy? He did, in 1922. “When dealing with such a race — inferior and barbarian — we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy …,” he pronounced 105 years ago to this very day. “We should not be afraid of new victims ... I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians.” Slavs! Quaint, no? Not a sombrero among them.

Did he not declare that the United States was doomed by the increasing population of black Americans who would inevitably achieve the great replacement of white hegemony? He did, in 1928:

“The Negroes are extremely prolific. Already they reach the imposing total of 14,000,000 souls, or one-sixth of the total population of the United States. There is a great quarter in New York called Harlem populated exclusively by colored people. A grave riot in this quarter last July was with difficulty suppressed after a night of bloody conflicts between the police and solid masses of blacks …. The alarm is sounding.”

Did he rail against liberal democracy? Yes, he did, as early as 1922. “Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual. Fascism reasserts the rights of the States as expressing the real essence of the individual.”

Did he not avenge real or perceived political opposition with thousands of murders and many thousands more imprisonments? He did, most notoriously engineering the murder of Yugoslavian King Aleksandar I in Marseille in 1934, but mainly with lawless jailings and kangaroo prosecutions.

Did he cultivate comparisons to ancient emperors and Jesus Christ as savior of the Republic? He sure did, with a little boost from Pope Pius XI, who in 1929 declared that Mussolini was “sent by Providence.” The tribute did not age well, any more than Marjorie Taylor Greene’s slightly hyperbolic deification of our very own Ill Douché will.

Did he not organize bands of black-clad thugs to terrorize supposed enemies of the nation? Yep, the Black Shirts, from 1923 on.

Did he not further empower a fascist “Iron Prefect” of homeland security to enforce order in recalcitrant regions? Yes, he did, declaring, “Your Excellency has carte blanche; the authority of the State must absolutely, I repeat absolutely, be re-established.” Italian ICE, you might say.

Did he not, by executive order (I guess I should say “fiat”), reward rich and powerful landowners, financiers and industrialists even as he dismantled trade unions, protections for tenants and the limited social-welfare architecture for the poor and vulnerable? Yes, as a first order of business upon taking power in 1922, he did.

Did he not construct and maintain a cult of personality that put him at the epicenter of the cruel society he fashioned in his belligerent image. Yes, he certainly did. Sadly, his youthful mug shot photo was unremarkable. But (see above) in unconstrained power he found his vibe.

So, I must confess, Mussolini set high the bar for totalitarian aspirations. We do not have Il Duce here quite yet. For one thing, bully that he was, Mussolini was an extremely well-read intellectual. We are led by a megalomaniacal traffic pylon. A bronzer-stained empty suit animated by only cruelty and malignant self-interest. An animatronic blob of toxic id. He should be bottom-feeding on plankton in the frigid, black depths of the deepest sea. Or playing the drums at Chuck E. Cheese, Pyongyang.

But do not sell our guy short. He may be stupid, ignorant, cruel, corrupt and soulless, but his own cult aspires to and cherishes Trump’s one and only gift: that all-consuming black hole of resentment and narcissism, a gravitational force sucking in all the light and empathy in the galaxy. A creature like that could go far. Far too far.

And he has. And he will.