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Quote by Antonio Pennacchi

“Non c'era verso di tenergliela ferma quella mano - gli era presa proprio la frenesia - perché come dicono gli antichi, gli Dei rendono ciechi coloro che hanno già deciso di perdersi.”

Quote by Antonio Pennacchi

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Canale Mussolini

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Antonio Pennacchi

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“The once anticlerical Mussolini, who had written a youthful novel called The Cardinal’s Mistress and, at twenty-one, in a debate with a Swiss pastor, had given God—if He existed—five minutes to strike him dead, had submitted in 1925 to a belated church marriage to his longtime common-law companion Rachele Guidi and to the baptism of their children. In elections on March 24, 1929, the Church’s explicit support helped produce a vote of 98 percent in favor of the Fascist list of candidates (there were no others) for parliament.90 Fascism paid a high price in the long term for the Church’s aid to consensus: as the hare of Fascist dynamism wore itself out, the tortoise of Catholic parish life and culture plodded along to become the basis of Christian democratic rule in Italy after 1945.”

“When Mussolini sacked Farinacci a little more than a year later, however, in April 1926, and replaced him with the less headstrong Augusto Turati (1926–29), he was again strengthening the normative state at the expense of the party. It was at this point, most significantly, that he entrusted the Italian police to a professional civil servant, Arturo Bocchini, rather than to a party zealot on the Himmler model. Operating the all-important police force on bureaucratic principles (promotion of trained professionals by seniority, respect for legal procedures at least in nonpolitical cases) rather than as part of a prerogative state of unlimited arbitrary power was Italian Fascism’s most important divergence from Nazi practice.”

“While making studies of the revolutionary movement, I was aided for a time by Angelica Balabanoff. This restless, diminutive Russian knew almost everyone engaged in socialist and communist activities. Aflame with the spirit of revolt, she spared no effort to infect others with her hatred for the capitalist regime. She was very useful as she not only brought me in contact with everyone I wished to meet, but she also spoke fluently many of the European languages. She would often sit beside me at conferences and in restaurants, translating into my ear, in a soft and to others almost inaudible voice, everything of interest said by the various speakers, no matter from what country they came. She was afterward one of Mussolini's chief aids and became his assistant editor when he took control of *Avanti*. In 1917 she went back to Russia with Lenin and other communists in the train so kindly provided by the German government, which expected them to augment the chaos already paralyzing its enemies on the East. Revolutionists talk fast and are often well educated. In some groups at dinner three or four languages would be spoken and, of course, at all the socialists and labor conferences delegates from many countries delivered their addresses in their native tongues. These different languages were laboriously translated by official interpreters. It was unnecessary to follow these dreary repetitions when Balabanoff sat beside me. She was often the official interpreter at the larger gatherings and her translations were never questioned — although she often excelled the orator in eloquence when he was expressing some of her cherished and more violently revolutionary views. Although she was a valued aid to both Mussolini and Lenin — I believe she brought them together at one time — and the most impassioned revolutionist I have ever met, she left Russia in 1921, ill and thoroughly disillusioned by the Reign of Terror.”

“Though he never actually joined it, he was close to some civilian elements of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was the most Communist (and in the rather orthodox sense) of the Palestinian formations. I remember Edward once surprising me by saying, and apropos of nothing: 'Do you know something I have never done in my political career? I have never publicly criticized the Soviet Union. It’s not that I terribly sympathize with them or anything—it's just that the Soviets have never done anything to harm me, or us.' At the time I thought this a rather naïve statement, even perhaps a slightly contemptible one, but by then I had been in parts of the Middle East where it could come as a blessed relief to meet a consecrated Moscow-line atheist-dogmatist, if only for the comparatively rational humanism that he evinced amid so much religious barking and mania. It was only later to occur to me that Edward's pronounced dislike of George Orwell was something to which I ought to have paid more attention.”

“Mussolini ha combattuto la massoneria, cioè il grande ordine d'oriente d'Italia, più o meno nei termini pagani del progetto del signor José Cabral. Non so se abbia perseguitato molta gente, né mi interessa saperlo. Quello che so con assoluta certezza è che il Grande Ordine d'Oriente d'Italia è uno di quei morti che godono di ottima salute, Permane, si riunisce, si è depurato, e sta ad aspettare; se ci sia qualcosa da aspettare è un'altra questione. Il piccone del duce può distruggere l'edificio del comunismo italiano, ma non è abbastanza potente per abbattere colonne simboliche, fuse in un metallo che proviene dall'alchimia. Primo de Rivera ha combattuto la massoneria spagnola in modo più blando, secondo la sua indole fidalga. Anche qui so per certo che risultato ottenne: il grande sviluppo, numerico e politico, della massoneria in Spagna. Non so se alcuni fenomeni secondari, come ad esempio la caduta della monarchia, abbiano avuto qualche relazione con questo fatto. Hitler, dopo essersi appoggiato alle tre grandi logge cristiane di Prussia, ha agito secondo il lodevole costume ariano di mordere la mano che gli aveva dato da mangiare. Ha lasciato in pace le altre grandi logge, quelle che non lo avevano sostenuto e che non erano cristiane, e tramite un certo Göring ha intimato alle prime tre di sciogliersi. Esse hanno detto di sì - ai Göring si dice sempre di sì - e hanno continuato a esistere. Per una coincidenza, è stato dopo l'adozione di questa misura che sono cominciati a sorgere in seno al partito nazista contrasti e altre difficoltà. Nella storia, come il signor José Cabral saprà bene, ci sono molte coincidenze del genere.”

“Los Hitler, los Mussolini... ¡Balas! ¡Balas! ¡Balas! ¡Balas! Las dos víboras de Europa que con la muerte se pactan. Pero ... allá vienen las viudas, las madres y las hermanas. El aire se va salado con la sal de tantas lágrimas. El agua del río huele a un millón de puñaladas. Por allá vienen las viudas, las madres y las hermanas. Subiendo la cuesta vienen todas ellas enlutadas, y su dolor canta el himno que hará el futuro de España. ¡Ochenta mil hombres muertos! The Hitlers, the Mussolinis... Bullets! Bullets! Bullets! Bullets! The two vipers of Europe who pact with death. But...there come the widows, the mothers and the sisters. The air leaves salted with the salt of so many tears. The water of the river smells of a million stab wounds. There come the widows the mothers and the sisters. Climbing the hill they come all in mourning and their pain sings the hymn that will make the future of Spain. Eighty thousand men dead! (From "Ochenta Mil/Eighty Thousand")”