35 A Pamphlet Distributed on the Island, Entitled with the Fascist Slogan `Believe, Fight, and Obey'
Italians! Let us celebrate together the life and achievements of Benito Andrea Amilcare Mussolini, Who from unpromising beginnings has led us to perdition.
In His infancy He was thought to be dumb, but later proved to be incorrigibly garrulous and more full of wind than all the herds of cows that browse the pastures of the Alps. As a boy He blinded captive birds with pins, plucked the feathers of chickens, was deemed uncontrollable, and pinched little girls in school in order to make them cry. He led gangs, started fights, sought quarrels without provocation, and refused to pay up on bets that He lost. At the age of ten He stabbed a boy at supper, and then stabbed someone else shortly after. He let it be known that He was at the top of His class, when He was not, and at the onset of puberty took to visiting the brothel at Farti on Sundays. Amid what clouds of glory did He therefore begin his life!
He committed a rape against a virgin in a stairwell, and when she wept for her honour He reproached her for mounting an insufficient resistance. Misanthropic and eremitic, He was scruffy, ill-mannered, unemployable, and only went out after dark. How splendidly did He continue to develop His talents! As a schoolteacher He was known as `the tyrant' but could not control His classes. He took to alcohol and cards, undertook an adulterous affair with the wife of a soldier who was away on duty, stabbed her, and acquired a knuckleduster. In order to escape from His debtors, His affairs, and military service, He fled to Switzerland, where He declined to work. Instead He began to beg with menaces, and upon being arrested as a vagabond, protested to the police that He hated other camps, and therefore could not be one of them. In this He displayed the graft for reasoned oratory which has since become so well known to us.
He went to work for a wine merchant, but was sacked for drinking all the stock. His official version of this story is that He was at the time having meetings with Lenin, who professed the profoundest admiration of His qualities. In 1904 He began to encourage Italian soldiers to desert the Army, which was entirely consistent with His later demand (with which all of us are presently familiar), that all deserters must be shot.
He moved to Paris, where He earned a living by telling fortunes. He affected an interest in philosophy, and has more recently disclosed that He studied at Geneva and Zurich Universities. This is of course true, even though there is no record of His attendance or enrolment. It is also true that He did not abandon his mother to a death in penury, or His father to imprisonment. As we all know, the DUCE believes His own propaganda, and so, therefore, do we.
He took another teaching post and was sacked after one year for holding riotous parties in cemeteries. He also contracted syphilis during an adulterous affair. This cannot be accepted as a reason for His current insanity however, since He was already mad when He contracted it. It was at this time that He wrote His superb history of philosophy which He says was torn up by a jealous lover, but which all our professors know to have been a work of genius, even without ever having seen it. He was dismissed from another teaching post, and discovered a new political ideology, consisting of the notion that one should as first, and think up the reasons afterwards, this being the only way in which His doctrines conflict with those of Stalin, who has always known in advance what he was intending to achieve.
The DUCE took to pulling His hat down over His eyes in order to avoid having to recognise anyone and converse with them, deliberately crumpling His clothes and using foul language, and wrote an excellent novel in the manner of Edgar Allen Poe, which was inexplicably refused publication by all the publishing houses to which He sent it. It was a work of genius, and was possibly too sophisticated for their tastes. Shortly afterwards He became a sub-editor of Il Popolo, and discovered that he could economise on journalists by concocting the news Himself. Ten editions were confiscated for libel, and He was arrested for defaulting on a fine. Originality has always thus been persecuted.
The DUCE gained much notoriety by accusing Jesus Christ of copulating with Mary Magdelen and by penning a pamphlet entitled `God Does Not Exist', and
shortly afterwards was imprisoned for encouraging sedition within the Army. He married His own half-sister, she being the illegitimate child of His own father, thus adding incest to the list of His accomplishments, and then fathered an illegitimate child in Trent. Dutiful sons should always so emulate their fathers, and in this way will one generation be a light that shines in perpetuity to every other. At this time it was said of Him that He could not look people in the eye when in conversation, possessed no sense of humour, was delinquent and paranoid, and was known by all as `The Madman'. This, of course, is not true, even though everyone who knew Him in those days remembers it perfectly. In 1911 He opposed the war on Libya, and on achieving power in later years followed a policy of bestial oppression in that same country, thus displaying His extraordinary adaptability in the face of an unchanging situation.
Whilst editor of Avand He began an affair with Ida Dalser, who had His child and allowed Him to live off her money. He abandoned her and later imprisoned her in a mental institution, in this way displaying His incredible capacity for loyalty. Similarly He made Margherita Sarfatti his mistress, and later had her imprisoned under anti Jewish legislation. It should be noted that every single one of His scores of mistresses has been extraordinarily hideous, and no doubt the DUCE has been indulging His charitable impulses by consorting with them. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and possibly the DUCE is astygmatic. At this point we should note that Leda Rafanelli declined to become one of His women on the grounds that He was a madman and a liar, and for this slander He later subjected her to police harassment that was entirely justified and had nothing to do with petty and vindictive motives connected with revenge.
The DUCE refined His ideology into one wherein He agreed completely with the last person to whom he had spoken, and in 1915 tried to avoid conscription into the war which at different times he had both opposed and advocated. He was unaccountably rejected for a commission, and claimed that the Austrians had specially shelled the hospital where He was being treated for shrapnel wounds with the single intention of eliminating Him, since He was the most important man in Italy. By this time His newspaper was being funded entirely by advertisements from arms manufacturers, which had nothing to do with His sudden conversion to the allied cause.
The DUCE diverted funds intended for the Fiume adventure, and used them for His own election campaign. He was arrested for the illegal possession of arms, sent parcel bombs to the Archbishop of Milan and its mayor, and after election was, as is well-known, responsible for the assassination of Di Vagno and
Matteoti. Since then He has been responsible for the murders of Don Mizzoni Amendola, the Roselli brothers, and the journalist Piero Gobetti, quite apart from the hundreds who have been the victims of His squadristi in Ferrara, Ravenna and Trieste, and the thousands who have perished in foreign places whose conquest was useless and pointless. We Italians remain eternally grateful for this, and consider that so much violence has made us a superior race, just as the introduction of revolvers into Parliament and the complete destruction of constitutional democracy have raised our institutions to the greatest possible heights of civilisation.
Since the illegal seizure of power, Italy has known an average of five acts of political violence per diem, the DUCE has decreed that 1922 is the new Annus Domini, and He has pretended to be a Catholic in order to dupe the Holy Father into supporting Him against the Communists, even though He really is one Himself. He has completely suborned the press by wrecking the premises of dissident newspapers and journals. In 1923 he invaded Corfu for no apparent reason, and was forced to withdraw by the League of Nations. In 1924 He gerrymandered the elections, and He has oppressed minorities in the Tyrol and the North-East: He sent our soldiers to take part in the rape of Somalia and Libya, drenching their hands in the blood of innocents, He has doubled the number of the bureaucracy in order to tame the bourgeoisie, He has abolished local government, interfered with the judiciary, and purportedly has divinely stopped the flow of lava on Mt Etna by a mere act of will. He has struck Napoleonic attitudes whilst permitting Himself to be used to advertise Perugina chocolates, He has shaved His head because He is ashamed to be seen to be going bald, He has been obliged to hire a tutor to teach Him table manners, He has introduced the Roman salute as a more hygienic alternative to the handshake, He pretends not to need spectacles, He has a repertoire of only two facial expressions, He stands on a concealed podium whilst making speeches because He is so short, He pretends to have studied economics with Pareto, and He has assumed infallibility and encouraged the people to carry His image in marches, as though He were a saint. He is a saint, of course.
He has (and who are we to disagree?) declared Himself greater than Aristotle, Kant, Aquinas, Dante, Michelangelo, Washington, Lincoln, and Bonaparte, and He has appointed ministers to serve Him who are all sycophants, renegades, racketeers, placemen, and shorter than He is. He is afraid of the Evil Eye and has abolished the second person singular as a form of address. He has caused Toscanini to be beaten up for refusing to play `Giovinezza', and He has appointed academicians to prove that all great inventions were originally Italian and that Shakespeare was the pseudonym of an Italian poet. He has built a road
through the site of the forum, demolishing fifteen ancient churches, and has ordered a statue of Hercules, eighty metres high, which will have His own visage, and which so far consists of a part of the face and one gigantic foot, and which cannot be completed because it has already used up one hundred tons of metal.
Everything in His speeches is contradicted somewhere by another speech, since He has acutely observed that we Italians only pick up the points with which we ourselves agree, and in this manner He has made Himself all things to all men. He has burned books and doctored the texts of our schools, He has persecuted the philosopher, Benedetto Croce, He has appointed revolutionary courts with the power to pass sentence of death, and He has turned idyllic islands into prisons where His opponents can be tortured. He has made us all swear oaths of obedience at the age of eighteen, so that only the insincere hypocrites and the terminally stupid may make progress, and He has tried to turn us all into puritans by telling us that it is virile to remain unsmiling except when expressing extreme sarcasm.
He has violated the islands of the Dodecanese, even effacing the tombstones of Greeks, He has opened a school in Parma to teach terrorism to Croats and Macedonians, He has subverted the League of Nations by infiltrating its administration, He has blocked peace negotiations between Albania and Yugoslavia, He has re-armed Germany, Belgium, and Austria, leaving His own army to fight scandalously unjustifiable wars without weapons, and yet has signed the Kellogg pact that outlawed the use of force as an instrument of foreign policy.
This Promiscuous Syphilitic has made the transfer of syphilis an imprisonable offence, this Father of Innumerable Stunted Bastards has made contraception illegal, this Foul-Mouthed Peasant has proscribed swearing and has regulated dancing and the consumption of alcohol in an attempt to make us more serious. He has legislated to make women into battery hens, He has suppressed all freedom of religion, He has caused all pronouns referring to Himself to be capitalised, and the word DUCE to be printed in newspapers in the upper case, He has set up concentration camps in Libya, and He has at one time or another decided to invade France, Yugoslavia, French Somaliland, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Corsica, Spain, and Greece. The DUCE has said `Better one day as a lion than one hundred years as a sheep,' and therefore He has become a cardboard lion and we Italians have become the sheep who follow Him into the slaughter house and tell each other that we too are lions. He has said `The more enemies, the greater the
honour,' and so we have created enemies out of thin air and gone out to fight them without boots on our feet, and in armoured cars whose barrels are made of wood.
This Ludicrous Buffoon, owner of a thousand florid uniforms covered with spurious medal ribbons for acts of valour that he has never performed, has caused us to take photographs of our own babies dressed in black shirts, He has made us rehearse the applause at His speeches by means of prompt-cards and bells, He has inaugurated a 'move towards youth' that has placed thugs and the disastrously inexperienced in positions of power. Against the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Church He has introduced sterilisation for the 'racially inferior', He has signed non-aggression pacts with the USSR and Britain, with both of whom we are now at war for no obvious reason, He has made military training compulsory at the age of eight so that our children are turned into toy soldiers. He has named Hitler as a 'tragic clown', 'a horrible sexual degenerate', and 'disloyal and untrustworthy', and yet this is the man from whom He takes His orders. He has let it be known that His name is to be used as an anaesthetic in hospitals prior to operations, and, as though His own intellect were anaesthetised, He has foolishly declared that the British are too decadent to oppose us. The British have since then decadently sunk half our fleet, which is why we have everywhere been left to starve, and they have defeated us in North Africa, where our coloured troops have unanimously defected. We invaded Ethiopia at the cost of 5,000 Italian lives, an entire year's revenue, and the equivalent of the equipment of 75 divisions, and in this way directly caused the decadent British to re-arm with the very weapons that are now being used against us.
This Moral and Intellectual pygmy has caused the Felix Mater prayer to be addressed to His own dead mother, He has caused us to lose 6,000 troops in the civil war in Spain, for no return whatsoever. Because we have been lions led by a donkey, we were defeated by an army of amateurs at Guadalajara, and worse than this, He has blotted our name forever by ordering the massacre of Spanish prisoners in Majorca. Equally shamefully He has ordered the torpedoing of neutral ships and refused permission for survivors to be picked up, He has entered an alliance with Japan and ordered the newspapers to refer to them as `Aryans', He has made us the lackeys of Germany by forcing us to march at the goose-step, He has performed the semantically impossible feat of appointing both Himself and the King as `First Marshal', He has persecuted Italian Jews in order to please Hitler, and He has declared that we cannot lose against the British because they effeminately carry umbrellas.
Soldiers! We have no uniforms to wear because the DUCE has ordered that they must be worn by all teachers and government employees, we have been abandoned in North Africa for lack of transport, having marched 600 kilometres across the desert in full summer. We have lost one-third of our merchant marine because He forgot to order them home before declaring war, we have been persuaded that halving the size of a division means that we have double the number of divisions, we have been made to invade Greece from the north in the rainy season, without winter clothing, having been demobilised, through ports in the Adriatic where it was impossible to disembark, without the knowledge of the Army Chief-of-Staff, who first heard about it on the radio. All our Albanian soldiers immediately deserted, and we only know what is happening to us by listening to the BBC. Our Navy, for lack of air cover and aircraft carriers, has been annihilated at Taranto and Cape Matapan, for the loss of one British plane, and in North Africa our 300,000 troops have been defeated by 35,000, because we have no Air Force, our light tanks are made of paper, and our motorised units have no motors. Whilst we die for nothing the DUCE has set up His Headquarters near the Vatican, so that it will not be bombed.
Soldiers! We have been made to invade an innocent country of brave people, knowing that we could never feed them in the event of victory, so that their starvation is worse than ours. Against all rules of war and conscience, the DUCE has ordered us to kill twenty of them for each of ours that is lost, and to our eternal credit, most of us have ignored Him.
Soldiers! La us weep for what has happened at home, where 350,000 of us have been transported as slave labour to Germany, where the DUCE has created the impossible condition of there being unemployment during a war, where there is hopeless inflation and where three-quarters of food is obtainable only on the black market that is run by His own officials, where ration cards are forged without restraint, and where there are forty distribution agencies with overlapping functions that ensure that nothing can ever happen.
Let us weep for our country, where medals are awarded for the imaginary sinking of non-existent British ships, where we are obliged to stand and salute during radio news bulletins, where the speeches of a lunatic are treated as sacred texts and a million copies printed, where the Lunatic in question is like a conductor Who Himself attempts to play simultaneously all the instruments of the orchestra, Who is like a power station connected to a single broken bulb, Who has had Himself filmed winning tennis matches against professionals in
games umpired by the Minister for Propaganda, Who is the Most Disobeyed Man in History because everyone knows that every order will be shortly countermanded.
Soldiers! This is the Man who commanded us to use mustard gas and phosgene against savages armed with spears. This is the Ridiculous Man whose malicious blackshirted bandits and arsonists nun away in battle but kill our fathers, mothers, and uncles by making them drink castor oil laced with petrol. This is the Man who has destroyed the economy and has made us ashamed forever.
Soldiers! It has been well said that every nation gets the leaders it deserves. VIVA IL BUFFONE. VIVA IL BALORDO. VIVA L'ASSASSINO. VIVA IL DUCE.