I must admit that at the moment I am a little addicted to listening to Real Dictators on BBC Sounds. It seems very prescient given the re-emergence of the far right in politics. There are so many parallels with today.
For example, one that's quite amusing is ... as Mussolini became more entrenched as a dictator and more and more right wing, the number of people trying to assassinate him (mostly nutters and fanatics) started to increase rapidly. Probably the most famous attempt on this life was that of Violet "God told me to do it" Gibson. Fortunately (or not depending on your viewpoint)
although she got quite close Mussolini jerked his head at the last moment and the bullet just grazed his nose ... although apparently it went through both nostrils....
Mussolini being a great self publicist made the most of this that he possibly could by wearing an enormous bandage over his nose everywhere he went in public.
Gibson, being an English/Irish Unionist created a diplomatic nightmare for the then Italian and British governments and to save a diplomatic incident was safely bundled off to an English asylum where she lived for the next 30 years before dying in 1956.
Anyway, I was wondering if I was the only person to see a similarity between Benito's oversize nose bandage and Donald Trump's rather large ear bandage following 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks failed assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in 2024...?
Also
...although it's not quite an assassination attempt one is also reminded of the time that Massimo Tartaglia (another mentally disturbed person) launched an alabaster model of Milan Cathedral at the face of the then rather right wing scandal prone Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi - inevitably there were comparisons with the bandaged Il Duce ...
...but isn't it odd how the same patterns...
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