Censorship did not allow for ideological and defeatist content in press releases, and any other work or content that wouldn’t encourage nationalist fascism. There was NO free press. My Mom said the Italian journalists were not “profiles in courage” as they censored themselves to accommodate Fascism.

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As per the July 2019 New Republic report by Joseph Loconte, “Fascism Origin: Benito Mussolini, Not Versailles:”

Excerpts:

In fact, the origins of Fascism can be traced (to) Milan, in the Piazza San Sepolcro. It was here, three months before Versailles, that Benito Mussolini, a former soldier who had fought on the winning side of WWI, launched the Fascist movement.”

It was a ragbag of a gathering. On Sunday morning, March 23, Mussolini addressed a group of perhaps 120 men and several women: dispirited socialists, ex-soldiers, futurists, anarchists, and other unclassifiable revolutionaries. What united them, among other things, was a belief that Italy’s horrific sacrifice for the Allied cause in the Great War — over 650,000 killed and 950,000 wounded — demanded national regeneration. She must not be denied the spoils of war: no vittoria mutilata, or mutilated victory. Barely three years later, 25,000 black-shirted followers marched on Rome, sweeping Mussolini into the government. “Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual,” he proclaimed. “Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual.”

Mussolini began preaching revolutionary change in February 1918, after returning from the front and resuming his job editing Il Popolo d’Italia. Although he had abandoned his socialism a few years earlier, he understood its appeal: “It is a question of organizing the state to ensure the greatest individual and social well-being.” Italy’s parliamentary government, he suggested, should be dominated by “a man who is ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep.”

“Bombastic, charismatic, visionary: Mussolini presented himself as that man, ready to seize the historical moment. He organized his followers into a fascio di combattimento, a fighting group, who took the Roman fasces, the term for a bundle of sticks bound with ropes, as their symbol of unity. “We demand the right and proclaim the duty to transform Italian life,” he said at the Milan meeting, “if it proves inevitable using revolutionary means.”

“Italy’s post-war economic situation was ripe for exploitation. The monarchy was unloved. Writes historian R. J. B. Bosworth in Mussolini’s Italy: “For Italy, least of the great powers, poorest of the great economies, most fragile of the great societies . . . the conversion from war to peace entailed a sea of troubles.”

“The Fascists put themselves forward as saviors of the country, the only force by which Bolshevism (liberalism) could be checked and strangled.”

“With government complicity, roughly 3.000 anti-Fascists were murdered between October 1920 and the March on Rome in October 1922. Mussolini did not have to seize power; he was offered it by King Victor Emmanuel III. Immediately after forming a coalition government, he demanded from the Chamber of Deputies unrestricted authority to implement his reforms. He was granted these powers by a majority of 275 votes to 90.”

“It wouldn’t be long before Mussolini articulated his view of the state, which would captivate Adolf Hitler:”

“The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State — a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values — interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.”

“Thus, it was Mussolini, not Hitler, who introduced the Fascist disease into the bloodstream of Europe. And he succeeded not because Italian diplomats failed to deliver the goods at Versailles. Whatever his motives in his campaign to rebuild a battered nation, Mussolini understood something of the human longing for purpose and community. Perhaps our current political culture is not so immune as we think to the cant and propaganda of Il Duce’s Italy.”

“Italian Fascism, after all, promised national greatness, unity, spirituality, and a “third way” between capitalism and socialism. Instead, it brought to the Italians World War II, the bombing and occupation of their cities, widespread poverty, and the loss of basic civil liberties.”

“Benito Mussolini was the first political leader to write the epitaph for liberal democracy in Europe. Yet it was liberal democracy, through a recovery of moral vigor, that managed to defeat Fascism. In the Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan, the building in which Mussolini and his followers first vowed to overthrow the established order still stands. It houses a police station. The rule of law has replaced the rule of the dictator. Once worshipped like a god, Mussolini became a pariah because of his disastrous alliance with Hitler’s Germany. He fled Milan in April 1945 but was caught and executed: Shot in the chest, his body was strung up to cheers.”

Trump resorting to dehumanizing rhetoric regarding immigrants like Haitians in Ohio have been eating pets has a purpose in motivating his millions of cult-like followers to get out their votes in record setting numbers. He’s emulating demeaning rhetoric practiced by Fascists.

As per Anne Applebaum in the October 18, 2024 Atlantic report “Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini:”

Excerpts:

“If you connect your opponents with disease, illness, and poisoned blood, if you dehumanize them as insects or animals, if you speak of squashing them or cleansing them as if they were pests or bacteria, then you can much more easily arrest them, deprive them of rights, exclude them, or even kill them. If they are parasites, they aren’t human. If they are vermin, they don’t get to enjoy freedom of speech, or freedoms of any kind. And if you squash them, you won’t be held accountable.”

“In the 2024 campaign, Trump blurs the distinction between illegal immigrants and legal immigrants—the latter including his wife, his late ex-wife, the in-laws of his running mate, and others. He has said of immigrants, “They’re poisoning the blood of our country” and “They’re destroying the blood of our country.” He has claimed that many have “bad genes.” He has also been more explicit: “They’re not humans; they’re animals”; they are “cold-blooded killers.” He refers more broadly to his opponents—American citizens, some of whom are elected officials—as “the enemy from within … sick people, radical-left lunatics.” Not only do they have no rights; they should be “handled by,” he has said, “if necessary, National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

“In using this language, Trump knows exactly what he is doing. He understands which era and what kind of politics this language evokes. “I haven’t read Mein Kampf,” he declared, unprovoked, during one rally—an admission that he knows what Hitler’s manifesto contains, whether or not he has actually read it. “If you don’t use certain rhetoric,” he told an interviewer, “if you don’t use certain words, and maybe they’re not very nice words, nothing will happen.”

“His talk of mass deportation is equally calculating. When he suggests that he would target both legal and illegal immigrants, or use the military arbitrarily against U.S. citizens, he does so knowing that past dictatorships have used public displays of violence to build popular support.”

See: Making Italy Great Again – Slate Magazine

The Many Links Between Project 2025 and Trump’s World/ NYT