Was Mussolini really that bad?

Griante, on the western shore of Lake Como

Mussolini participated in one of the darkest chapters of the twentieth century. Is that it? As a tour guide, I seek a deeper understanding that one-line summaries, so went looking for Mussolini and his Italy, on the shores of Lake Como, where he met his end. (Part one here)

Back then, Italy was a newly minted country with no sense of unity or identity, and a barely functional economy. Regions didn't trade, cooperate, or even speak the same language, and there was no one around who seemed able to make much progress. Picture morning delivery traffic in Venice’s canals, truck parking in the warrens of Rome, or crossing the street in the gladiatorial arena that is Naples. All shouting mouths and no ears, not a lot of progress going on. One of the things I’ve learned about the world is that some places need a strongman to get anything done. (The phenomenon of democratically-elected pseudo-dictators in Latin America is no surprise.)

Mussolini began under legal constitutional law, made Prime Minister by the king when everyone else was frozen into inaction. They feared his movement (which had taken over the Po River Valley) and thought he’d be content with a minor position, where he could be controlled and manipulated. By the time they realized their mistake, he’d outlawed or murdered most of the opposition. Then he got to work.

Looking at rampant unemployment in places like Venice, he created industrial zones and jobs. (That this industry greatly accelerated the sinking of Venice was unforeseen.) Realizing a nation that can’t talk amongst itself can’t function very well, he imposed a standardized Italian language, and nowadays most Italians can understand each other. WWI hit Italy extra hard, despite its peripheral position, because it was an underdeveloped nation; Mussolini developed it. He built roads and rail lines, creating jobs for a desperate populace and paving the way (yes, pun intended) for Italy’s current role as an important transportation corridor for the EU.

The streets of Varenna, on the east
shore of Lake Como

A chugging diesel piece of that transportation equipment came around the bend in Mezzegra, above the sparkle of Lake Como, and forced me to step back into a bland little parking lot. When it had passed, I looked across the unremarkable street and saw the unassuming wooden cross that marks where Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed after being caught trying to sneak into Switzerland. It’s basically a driveway. Fancy house, gorgeous area, but still, a driveway.

Italian politics are murky these days, when refugees and immigration are putting a strain on a continent already pushed, and this country already stretched thin. In these times it’s easy for the less courageous, less compassionate sides of ourselves to say “This is ‘Their’ problem. ‘They’ are different. ‘We’ need a strong leader to resist ‘Them.’” So it’s not entirely surprising that the more racist elements of the Italian political establishment have begun invoking Mussolini.

A cemetery near where Mussolini died. Townspeople
memorialized with much more care and remembrance
than the fascist dictator.

He got stuff done and guided the nation during a time of crisis. He was also a murdering thug, from boyhood when he stabbed classmates and girlfriends, to adulthood, when he ordered the murder of an untold number. It’s tempting to call for a leader to make things go away, and let their soul pay the price, but to do so would be a grave injustice to our own humanity, and a surefire way to create a monster.

Not the sort of thing that can be solved with a simple....Mi scusi.

(And now the painful part. I somehow deleted a large chunk of photos from that part of the trip, including the walk up to Mussolini's marker. It's the sort of thing that drives a photographer, a writer, a blogger, and a tour guide insane, so I'm fourfold pissed about it, and I can't show you the photos I carefully composed of the marker, but trust me, it's not much. A waist-high wooden cross tacked to a garden wall with a little info sign and one photo each of Mussolini and Clara Petacci. The graves in a nearby cemetery for townspeople were much more loving attended to. That makes sense to me.)

I'm naked, with special guest: Benito Mussolini

Lake Como's not hard on the eyes.

“Mi scusi” is Italian for “Excuse me.” You might hear it when someone interrupts, or steps on your foot, or when the maid opens the door to your hotel room without knocking, two hours before check-out, right as you step buck naked out of the shower four feet in front of her. The words are the same, though in the last case they’ll be said with an edge of housekeeping panic that transcends linguistic boundaries.

My Best of Italy tour hadn’t even started yet and I was already learning. What else might I learn, before the 17 days were over? That it is impossible to find a gondolier in Venice who’s not a self-satisfied schmuck, but we love them anyway? Yes. That you can be in one country, politically, and another, culturally? Yes. That wine tastes good if you’re ready for it to taste good? Pretty much.

Cadenabbia, on the west side of Como is
near the town where Mussolini was shot

How about fascist dictators? Everyone-worth-listening-to agrees that Hitler was a terrible, terrible human being. Probably the worst ever. And Mussolini? Again, it’s obvious that teaming up with Hitler and sending thousands of people to the concentration camps is about as evil as humans get. Add violent political repression, oppressive morality laws, and the murders of countless political opponents and you have a pretty good grasp on Mussolini’s soul.

Is that it? Black and white? I wondered this as I hiked around Lake Como, looking for the place where the Italian dictator met his end. What would I find there? I’ve been to the parking lot in Berlin that they think is over Hitler’s bunker, now a place of oil stains and dog poop, and found it appropriate. Would I find something similar here?

In Spain you used to hear the lament "It was better against Franco." Nostalgia for the simpler days, when things worked, courtesy of the leader you hated. (Versus now, when things half-work, courtesy of leaders you scorn.) I imagine Americans would have a similar nostalgia for the Cold War if Russia weren't still so willing to destabilize the world. (Invading a sovereign nation and annexing it? That's so crass and 19th century. Nowadays we do it with Trade Agreements, Vlad.)

Sorry to interrupt you from your phones, but could I
interest you in some info about the place you crossed
the planet to see? How do you feel about Mussolini?

So when some Italians reminisce about Mussolini and say "He made the trains run on time" I figured it’s just those not-entirely-thought-out rose colored glasses for a black & white age, when enemies were obvious and tangible, and you could comfortably reassure yourself that there was nothing you could do about it.

But a good tour guide should have a deeper understanding than the average traveler, so I went looking for Mussolini, and his Italy.

What I found, and what I think it means...on Friday.

Community of strangers, on one last night in Rome

I'm developing...not traditions. Not rituals. Habits. I'm developing habits, perhaps tendencies, at different points of these current trips and travels.

Before coming home, I tend to eat my last dinner at a sub-par restaurant, invariably in a city known for its delicious cuisine. Pizza by the slice in Paris. A pasta place in Rome that waits until I sit down to begin breaking my rules. (The non-Italian hustler talking people into coming in must have been in the WC when I arrived.) After weeks of great food, I have to stumble at the finish line.

I get up on time, with eagerness in limbs not fully rested, and take a thorough shower. I've saved one entirely clean shirt, like gold by that point, an aspiration for the most pristine pre-travel hygienic state possible. I will NOT subject my neighbor to Traveler Armpit, nor arrive stinking and disheveled! Then I walk to public transit, and arrive soaked in sweat, ready to ferment for 12 transatlantic hours, wearing my soggy garb and a rueful smile at the familiarity of it all.

I also book an extra night's accommodation so that I'll have time to go over end-of-tour paperwork and processes with the other guide, only to watch them depart immediately for their next gig. So I spend a day with myself, listening to the music of my headphones and the recriminations of my head at further delaying my return to the arms that are waiting for me. And I walk. I walk past the sights I will someday show, and the sights I have not yet seen. I find a museum I should know about, and a restaurant I can comfortably forget.

With fealty to no schedule, I stop and watch the chestnut vendors, islands of desperate stillness among the casual frenzy of the crowd. I stroll the intermittent museum of city walls and subway tiles, their art that says things more modern than most masters. Feeling minimal membership with the tourist mob, I find myself harboring feelings of kinship with the vendors, milking a living from the gargantuan teat of tourism. They flick their flimsy lights and hawk their imitation purses, ready to run if they see the gray uniforms of the Guardia di Finanza, having already run from the camouflaged terror and violence of their homelands.

They have a community these men, since men they nearly always are. (What happened to their women? Where were they left?) They have formed a new edition of an ancient tradition, society's subtext of foreigners who do not pertain, but belong anyway. I find these men fascinating, annoying in their machinations and beautiful in the tragedy of their existence, maybe hopeful in the pursuit of their own salvation. I can not imagine their lives. And I assume they cannot imagine mine.

When my eyes have seen enough, and feet have walked too much, I return to that last night of foreign home, on sheets I won't have to wash, and sleep my waiting sleep, filled with gratitude for the Home to which I can return.

Okay fine. I give up. I love Paris too.

Locks, love, cathedral landmarks, history, yada yada yada
I get it, Paris is beautiful.

There’s something terribly cliche about loving Paris. It’s like loving chocolate, puppies, and The Princess Bride. Of course you love those things. So does everyone else. Not interesting. After reading the 10,000th love poem to the City of Obvious, I had decided I wasn’t going to comply. I was going to snob the snobs.

On my big Europe solo wander, I spent a couple days in the city. Just long enough to meet some of the smelly fellows who shared my dorm room (including one who didn’t seem to have packed anything but underwear), walk rain-soaked streets where fancy people were being fancy, and disprove the stereotype of delicious Parisian cuisine: the kebabs were just as greasy and gross there as everywhere! Take THAT!

Finding a copy of The Tropic of Cancer on a hostel shelf a couple towns down the road made me more kindly disposed...but only to Paris of the 1930s. That age of Gallic elegance amid crass ennui and the inherent decline of being on top was past; the 21st century could keep its tourist temple!

Then I got this tour guide job, and where must I guide, every tour? Friggin Paris! Of course. So I went to Paris. Ready for snobs, stinky cheese, and pretentious wine. Over-dressed fashionistas sipping café in a café, staring at ca-mé. Grandiose museums with grandiose price tags and inscrutable art that we come see because They have told us we should.

“Yup.” I’d say, snarky and justified. “That’s the Mona Lisa. Just like it always looks, on every postcard and dorm room wall.”

What did I find? Precisely poignant cheese to go with eloquently savory wine that tastes like the place it grew. A city so dedicated to living well that they dress well just to go to the café, where they make no pretense of isolationism but angle all the chairs straight out to overtly people-watch. Just the way I love to do. And if I now have nicer clothes by several notches than when I came around as a vagabond? Feels good. Doesn’t mean I’m superficial now. And the museums? Succulent with centuries of creativity and culture, enduring manifestations and reflections of the historical, or spiritual, or emotional, or sexual, or tragic, or any number of the other passions in human life. All it took was a little education, a little context, a little knowledge of how to look, some kind of (ahem) guidance, and it all came alive. Not inscrutable. Beautiful.

And the last piece? The snobs? Did I find them? I found one. But then I stopped being him.

So next season I’ll go back to Paris. I’ll walk those gorgeous boulevards, thinking about Baron Haussmann, past the Hotel de Ville (which was never a hotel) and the Conciergerie prison (which kind of was) until my feet ache with satisfaction. Then I’ll sit on a wicker chair beside a mid-sized stream of joie de vivre, and eat the flavors that tell me where I am. (I know a great place for boeuf tartare if you want to come along.) I’ll watch petanque, sit by the Seine, mirror the emotions Rodin placed in clay, and get the chills when I hear Emmanuel ring out of from Notre Dame’s south tower, the way the 13 ton bell did when it announced the end of Nazi occupation.

And best of all, I’ll sit down to dinner, or lean back to a coffee or stroll around with a gelato, visiting with the friends I’ve found in that city. In that city which I’ve found to be a friend. Yes, I admit it, I love Paris.