Discussion: Steve Bannon Says He's 'Fascinated By Mussolini'

It would be fit for a British officer to do that, after all they have been know to put underwear to statutes. However, Milan was way behind the front and it was unlikely that there were any “passing” british officers.

Fascism in particular holds out an attractiveness to them. Because its a big money maker for private industry. Up till it falls anyway.

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For sure. But there are the intellectuals too. Ezra Pound comes to mind.

I believe they were shot Saturday April 29,'45 and the American army entered Milan on Sunday, so not so implausible.
I will try to see if I can recall the book, where I got it from…

This is another (not necessarily conflicting account), they can both be true

Claretta was not wearing underwear when she died. To preserve her decency, some of the older women in the crowd knotted her skirt between her legs before she was suspended like a slab of meat, next to the body of her lover.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4257958/Mussolini-violent-lover-demanded-sex-constantly.html

O there are more than Ezra.

For sure.

John Dos Passos
Kund Hamsen, the Norwegian writer
Gabriele D’Annunzio who kind of invented fascism…

the beat goes on

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He’s scurrying around Europe because he can’t get the attention — or money— he wants here anymore. He doesn’t have Trump, Breitbart, or the Mercers, so he trying to sell himself on the foreign market.

That’s according to the former Bretbart spokesman who appears on MSNBC sometimes, in an interview a few days ago after Bannon told the French fascists they should be proud of being called racist. Sounded right to me.

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This would be an outstanding book review for basically any conservative screed.

Knut Hamsun

The thirties had a lot of really nasty pseudo scientific eugenetic nonsense going on (forced sterilization of ‘degenerates’, == anyone not conforming to the accepted norms, e.g promiscuous women, homosexuals, alcoholics - also in countries like Denmark and Sweden ). With both Stalin and Hitler around a lot of people felt the need to make choices, they later would regret.

I loved Oriana Fallaci’s book A Man. Plus she was so bad ass. All those interviews with nasty high powered men where she intellectually disemboweled them before them even noticed.

But as she aged, her Islamiphobic/Fascist leanings got stronger and stronger. By the time she died, her writings were off the wall ugly.

I’ve met a number of otherwise intelligent, welll educated Italians with this same “the Muslims are over running Europe! Europe will soon cease to exist!!” message. It’s alarming. I’m only sort of kidding about the Ottoman empire. There is definitely some deep social/political anxiety going on in Italy about the Islamic countries to their south.

I really love some of Hamsen’s books. And John Dos Passos’ U.S.A, is the great American novel.

But d’Annunzio was fucked up.

@edys - the only book I read by Fallaci was A Man.

I’ve actually heard more from Italians about the Rom being a problem than Muslims. I guess it depends on where you are. In Naples I have run into a lot more people who are fine with the Muslim refugees because they want to assimilate which the Rom don’t and never will and that irks them.

And racism is rampant, so African refugees who are also Muslim have been getting murdered in the North. They beat up gay guys in the south.

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Knut Hamsum’s affiliation with Nazism were not undisputed, Thorkild Hansen, mentioned below, wrote some good books (and had a very strange life himself, documented in the biography ‘Djævlepagten’ (The Pact With the Devil) by Poul Behrendt (Gyldendahl, Copenhagen, 1995 , in Danish) , which suggests he was ‘kept’ by a gay French baron, in some kind of relationship, as a impecunious young man in Paris.)

I’m partial to Celine (who was jailed in Denmark after the war, arranged by a Danish admirer of his writing, to avoid him being executed by the French back home in Paris, he was not pleased by that ), his books about the last days of the war and the absurdities going on, are very good,

From Wikipedia’s Hamsun page

Hamsun was forced to undergo a psychiatric examination, which concluded that he had “permanently impaired mental faculties,” and on that basis the charges of treason were dropped. Instead, a civil liability case was raised against him, and in 1948 he had to pay a ruinous sum to the Norwegian government of 325,000 kroner ($65,000 or £16,250 at that time) for his alleged membership in Nasjonal Samling and for the moral support he gave to the Germans, but was cleared of any direct Nazi affiliation. Whether he was a member of Nasjonal Samling or not and whether his mental abilities were impaired is a much debated issue even today. Hamsun stated he was never a member of any political party.[citation needed] He wrote his last book Paa giengrodde Stier (On Overgrown Paths) in 1949, a book many take as evidence of his functioning mental capabilities.[citation needed] In it, he harshly criticizes the psychiatrists and the judges and, in his own words, proves that he is not mentally ill.

The Danish author Thorkild Hansen investigated the trial and wrote the book The Hamsun Trial (1978), which created a storm in Norway. Among other things Hansen stated: “If you want to meet idiots, go to Norway,” as he felt that such treatment of the old Nobel Prize-winning author was outrageous.

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Thanks for all of that - I didn’t know the details at all. Nabokov convinced me that I don’t need to know about the private lives of artists - the works speak for themselves.

But every human is curious about every other human. hahahahaha

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Steve Bannon is not well in the head.

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Been that way since Romulus and Remus.

Not under the Roman Empire it wasn’t. It was unified.

Then the Empire fell and for 1700 years different countries owned different parts of it.

Nice has gone back and forth so many times now it’s a wonder it’s been in France as long as it has this time.

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And I never ever want to see Steve in jodhpurs(shudders).

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Steve Bannon Says He’s ‘Fascinated By Mussolini’

Bannon has his Miss Jean Brodie moment. “Hey everybody, I’m a fascist, AND PROUD OF IT!”

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I’ll file this one under “things that should be surprising but are not”.

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Given Bannon’s typical grooming and dress, I would hardly consider him a “fashion pate.” Rather, he always appears to me to be rather dowdy and rough. More like a homeless town drunk.

Oh good grief…

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