MUSSOLINI: THE WILD MAN OF EUROPE
CONTENTS:
(1) ODE TO THE LITTLE LIBRARY
(2) IL DUCE MEETS THE KU KLUX KLAN
(3) JOHN BOND IN ROME
(4) THE MUSSOLINI MOMENT IN AMERICA
(5) WHO WAS JOHN BOND?
(1) ODE TO THE "LITTLE LIBRARY"
After decades abroad, one of the great joys of life back in the United States is the proliferation of Little Libraries —chockful of fun things to read, all for free and in English too!
I love having the fates guide my reading, tossing me into literary byways I barely knew existed.
Still, I live only a few blocks from Politics and Prose, in the raised-consciousness bubble of Ward 3 (Upper Northwest Washington DC).
So, my discoveries —while endlessly intriguing— often run through predictable local channels.
This is Washington after all, a strangely unquantifiable place.
It is perpetually at the center of the world's attention, superpower capital and all that.
Meanwhile, it remains an oddly shapeless town, craving a unique sense of place that might or might not exist.
God knows, they try!
I could easily fill my living room— floor-to ceiling— with eager Washingtoniana from Little Libraries within a one-mile radius of my home.
There are serious historical studies, for sure, and shrewdly observed novels —but far fewer of the latter than you might expect.
But above all, Little Libraries overflow with bright-eyed feel-think from the talking heads of yesteryear (often concocted on their way out the door).
Also "inside glimpse" picture books from every presidential administration, now looking more or less alike.
Then— perhaps most intriguing —we have a steady stream of "collectibles" with the shelf life of unrefrigerated crème fraîche.
You can't imagine how much DC whimsy I scoop out of Little Libraries and then —coming to my senses —quickly offload in others before returning home.
At times, however, I wish that I had held on to the Bill 'n Hillary Bobbleheads, the Road to the White House Board Game and and a few of those recurrring sets of DC Politicards.
(2) IL DUCE MEETS THE KU KLUX KLAN
Washington's Little Libraries can be endearingly silly.
In their randomness, however, they sometimes crack open the past and make us rethink what we thought we knew.
Like it or not, this qualifies as Washingtoniana too.
Who? What? Where?
Let's start with The Fellowship Forum and the Independent Publishing Company —joined at the hip in the Nation's Capital nearly a century ago.
The Times sets the stage in their very first sentence, "The Fellowship Forum, alleged Ku Klux Klan publication, devoted in large part to attacks on the Roman Catholic Church..."
James S. Vance, general manager of The Fellowship Forum, fires back when his plan for a "Patriotic Protestant America" broadcasting station stalls out.
SHIFT THIS TO MUSSOLINI MOMENT?
In 1927, the Klan reference was far from idle. That virulent white supremacist organization was riding high, an inescapable presence in the media and a commanding force in the corridors of power.
On August 8 1925 and September 13 1926, tens of thousands of Klansmen massed in the Nation's capital—staking their claim to a particular kind of America.
They were robed and hooded but not masked (by DC law), but the "Knights" scarcely needed to hide having entered the mainstream.
On the title page of Mussolini: The Wild Man of Europe, author John Bond identifies himself as "The European Correspondent of the Fellowship Forum".
The book itself was issued by The Independent Publishing Company, which also produced the "National Weekly Newspaper" he represented.
Bond's Fellowship Forum was founded in 1921. Closely associated with both the Masonic Order and the Ku Klux Klan, it was devoted to the "fraternity" of Protestant Americans (presumably white).
The Independent Publishing Company was located in the heart of official DC, at 219 G Street NW— just a few blocks from the Capitol in one direction and Union Station in the other (on the current site of the Georgetown University Law School Campus).
The Fellowship Forum was not merely a quirky footnote to history. By 1927, this "National Voice for Protestant Fraternal America" had attained a circulation of over a million.
How did that happen? General Manager James S. Vance combined America First boosterism with a cash pay-off to their subscription agents —as he describes in his own sales pitch (right above).
Where does Benito Mussolini fit into this picture? And how about John Bond?
I trudged through all 206 pages of Wild Man's numbing prose.
Then I dredged up his other Roman opus from a year earlier— and this is what I found.
(3) JOHN BOND IN ROME
Bond was not a born wordsmith— dithering out half thoughts and piling up limp paragraphs where single sentences would serve.
But as an American Nativist Protestant, he did have a point of view — and Rome was Ground Zero if you were hunting Catholics and exposing all that.
Bond signed off on his preface in December 1926:
There is more than one Chamber of Horrors in the Museum of History, but none like that of the Borgia. The central figure is that of Roderigo Borgia, who as Alexander VI sat on the papal throne for upward of eleven years; around him are grouped his mistresses; a brood of bastard children; a retinue of henchman and an endless procession of victims. It was the darkest period in the life of Christianity, just before the dawn of the Reformation. Rome had become a sink of unspeakable corruption where, in the words of Dante, "Christ was sold every day."
However alarming his language, Bond seeks to distance himself from anti-Catholicism of the more vulgar sort. His argument is not with that faith but its authoritarian abuses—especially in the political sphere.
They... recognize the distinction between Catholicism as a religious creed and Popery as a fraudulent and un-Christian institution. Our warfare is directed not against Catholics, whether they are of the Roman or the Greek or any other persuasion-it is directed solely and wholly against the Neo-Caesarism of the popes. Our quarrel is not with the profession of any religious faith but with a political system invented and kept alive to enslave the minds of mankind and to destroy the freedom of conscience.
Bond ends his preface on a rousing note:
The Borgias are dead and gone but they are still brewing poison in the Vatican.
In Mussolini: the Wild Man of Europe Bond, tells us exactly who and what he has in mind.
Not easy to get from the Borgias to the more than sporadically anti-clerical Benito Mussolini
The Catholic mind-set that has fueld Latin authoritariansim over the centuries
As we can deduce from various chapter titles (Vanity and violence, Unpleasant Traits, The Old Ego Remains), Bond had the Duce stuck in his craw, right out of the gate, concrete objections aside.
Bond did not know what to make of Mussolini (who seemed to be coming from all directions at once) except that he was a product of "all that" and thus a threat to the American Protestant Way.
Signed off his introduction in1928 and dated 1929 on thetitlepage--before the Conciliazione of date 1929 consolidated a strategic relationship
Like many others, probably had a shrewd guessof where things were headed
Patti Lateranensi dell'11 febbraio 1929, che risolsero la "Questione Romana" nata nel 1870.
First of Bond's priorities
(3) THE MUSSOLINI MOMENT IN AMERICA
Where is Bond coming from?
Where is Bond not coming from?
In the old days, anti-Catholicism was directly overwhelmingly at the Irish--and Anti-IItalianism largely left Catholicism out of the argument
The bloodiest AntiItalianism came out of New Orleans -- with a dominantly Catholic history and culture.
Bond was more right than wrong when it came tio Mussollni's workings in America
This sort of anti-Italian demagoguery has a long history, going back to the 1890 Italian lynchings in New Orleans and beyond.
Bond's obsession with the Catholic menace might seem quaintly old-fashioned in the 1920s, harking back to the Know-Nothing furor before the Civil War— except the enemy then was distinctly Irish.
As for Bond's fellow travelers in the Ku Klux Klan, the author of Pillory and Wild Man has not a word to say about the African American problem.
William McKinley
fare le corna
The rise of Mussolini coincided with advent of the Star System in Hollywood (not to mention Cinecittà in Rome).
The Mussolini regime was brilliant when it came to harnessing star power...in fact, it began with the ultra charismatic Duce himself
Marconi
Balbo--the most compelling of the Duce's surrogates (so compelling that there wasn't room for both of them on the same stage in the same regime)
Not just top-notch celebrities but also everyday Italian Americans
Ray Tucker, Washington Correspondent for the New York Telegram, published three-part article that appeared in more than 50 papers in July 1927 including an italian translation in Il Nuovo Mondo (July 29, 30 and 31 1927)
Which is why the external captioning of the Engliosh-language cartoon is in Italian.
Il Nuovo Mondo was an Italian language anti-Fascist daily newspaper which was published in New York City and then, in Chicago between 1926 and 1931. The paper was the first anti-Fascist daily published abroad by the Italians.[1]
childlike figure delivering laundry
"This isn't our style"
"Il fascismo non è merce da esportazione" Mussolini
Liberal columnist & an Italian-American Socialist newspaper
Playing up the Italian connection
Bringing it back to Washington
Alfred E Smith iss the big story
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.