Mussolini, a journalist and activist ousted from the Socialist Party for his support of Italy’s entry into World War I, is undeterred by the fact that there are fewer than 100 of these former soldiers in a drab meeting room overlooking the Piazza San Sepolcro: “Haven’t revolutions always been started this way: by arming the dregs of society?” The Socialist Party also appeals to the disaffected and dispossessed, and socialism seems at first far more likely than fascism to seize power from the elite. But socialist-led peasant leagues and the urban proletariat’s general strikes lead wealthy landowners and industrialists to donate to fascist causes, while recruits materialize from the anxious middle class, “who no longer know what [their] place in the world is.”
Writing in the present tense, Scurati immerses us in the hurly-burly of politics on the ground. Consistently underestimated as a bully and a clown, Mussolini exhibits a malevolent kind of political genius, wheeling and dealing, making and breaking alliances, prevaricating, lying, threatening and bluffing his way into a seat in parliament and then the position of prime minister. Excursions into his thought processes (imagined, but based on extracts from Mussolini’s writings) reveal a double-dealer willing to do anything and sacrifice anyone to get what he wants. His maneuvers are bolstered by murderous assaults on his opponents by the squadristi, armed thugs who think nothing of executing a man in front of his children or clubbing to death a priest who urges Catholics to resist fascism.
Terror and intimidation are indispensable tools, but Mussolini benefits as well from his opponents’ crippling weaknesses. Italy’s government, mired in corruption and unable to get anything done, is hardly an advertisement for the blessings of democracy. The socialists talk about revolution but always back away from actually starting one. (“Those people just didn’t understand brutality,” Mussolini sneers.) Although the author paints an admiring picture of socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, a single voice of determined resistance in a spineless parliament, he bluntly depicts the infighting that prevents the Socialist Party from holding power even though it keeps winning elections. Scurati also acknowledges the dark side of human nature titillated by the squadristi’s barbarity; with every wave of violence, membership in the Fascist Party soars. “The masses are already longing for a dictator,” Mussolini proclaims in 1921, and it’s clear that the “sense of humiliation, failure and injustice” pervasive in postwar Italy fosters a longing for a strong leader and a willingness to turn a blind eye to the sources of his strength.
Scurati invites our deepest contempt for the lack of conviction displayed by politicians charged with preserving democratic government. The most egregious example comes at the novel’s climax, after Matteotti has been murdered. Mussolini’s complicity is so obvious that he’s abandoned by his non-fascist allies, and the previously subservient press calls for his resignation. Brazen as always, the Duce strides into parliament and challenges anyone there to accuse him. “All it would take is for just one person to speak up and he'd be done for,” Scurati writes. Instead, “Silence.” The book closes with Mussolini’s assertion, “No one wanted to shoulder the burden of power. I myself will assume it.”
Regrettably, it’s a long slog to get to this chilling final declaration. European critics who noted that “M” was not precisely a novel had a point. Virtually every narrative chapter is followed by excerpts from period documents that mostly repeat the material laid out. This bumpy mix of fact and sort-of-fiction kills the book’s momentum and makes it much longer than it needs to be. Mussolini’s henchmen and lovers enter and exit the scene without being much more than plot elements. Only the Duce himself, Matteotti and ultranationalist blowhard Gabriele D’Annunzio come across as three-dimensional characters — and D’Annunzio’s abortive military adventure in Fiume gets more space than anyone but the most ardent student of Italian history will care to read. That said, this relentless chronicle of authoritarianism emboldened and empowered offers a painful and valuable reminder that democracy is fragile, never to be taken for granted and always in need of committed defense. “M” may be more interesting to think about than it is to read, but it certainly gives us a lot to think about.
Wendy Smith is the author of “Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940.”
M
Son of the Century
By Antonio Scurati; translated by Anne Milano Appel
Harper. 785 pp. $35
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