At the Italian Fascist Party’s fourth party congress in Rome, Mussolini says the party’s new slogan is “All power to Fascism,” and the Constitution must be changed because it’s just a hindrance now. He demands the Senate not obstruct him, or else. The NYT fails to note the reference in his speech to “our ferocious totalitarian will,” which is his first use of the recently coined word “totalitario.” The word “totalitarian” will not arrive in the English language until next year. “Totalstaat” will arrive in German in 1927.
The lower house of the Italian Parliament has passed a bunch of laws giving the Duck powers to pass laws without its approval, purge the civil service, suppress newspapers, etc etc.
In a radio address, Pres. Coolidge calls for yet more tax cuts. The tax burden has been reduced, he says, but “the reduction has not reached the point where taxes have ceased to be a burden.” Pretty much by definition. “Wastrels, careless administrators of the Government’s substance, are out of place in the Federal service. They will not be tolerated.”
Remarkable how similar Mussolini is to Trump. "And we have brought executive power to the fore, intentionally, because bringing executive power to the fore is really one of the main points of our doctrine; because the executive power is the omnipresent and operating power in the life of the Nation, it is the power that exercises power at every minute, it is the power that in every moment is faced with problems that it must solve; it is, gentlemen, the power that decrees the greatest things that can happen in the history of a people; it is the power that declares war and concludes peace." And this:
ReplyDelete" that which is called our ferocious totalitarian will, will be pursued with even greater ferocity: indeed it will become the obsession and dominant preoccupation of our activity. We want, in short, to Fascistize the Nation so that tomorrow Italian and Fascist, almost like Italian and Catholic, are one and the same thing."
I've been watching this excellent Italian series on the Duck: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19386538/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_1
ReplyDelete