Future generations would take the Renaissance beyond the realm of art and sculpture and change man’s understanding of the universe for ever. ibid.
His name was Galileo Galilei and he would come face to face with the most terrifying weapon of the age – the Roman Inquisition. Empires Special: Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance IV: Power v Truth
Cosimo de Medici was only seventeen ... He received his summons to Florence. ibid.
After years of chaos the city of Florence was in decline. ibid.
Cosimo was elected the new Duke of Florence. ibid.
Michelangelo’s fresco was declared indecent. ibid.
Galileo had written the first book of popular science. ... He was the last in a galaxy of Medici stars. ibid.
They had been the patrons of genius. Renaissance men who had changed the Western world. In their name daring new artists had created the greatest works of the Italian Renaissance. ibid.
Italian police estimate that half a million works of art have been stolen in Italy over the last four decades. Alastair Sooke, The World’s Most Expensive Paintings, BBC 2013
1819 was Turner’s year. He finally made his much-postponed journey to Italy. And the pictures he makes on this trip are the foundation of his reputation. This Green and Pleasant Land: The Story of British Landscape Painting, BBC 2011
Mussolini and his fascist movement will bring about Italy’s darkest hour. Mussolini will eventually betray his country. Mussolini: The Rise of Italian Fascism, Channel 5 2007
At school he was a violent bully. He was even expelled for stabbing a fellow pupil. He became a schoolteacher, but despite his tough reputation he was sacked for failing to control his class. He volunteered when Italy joined the war in 1915. He fought at the front but was seriously wounded in a training exercise. ibid.
After the humiliation of the First World War Italy was in political turmoil. On March 23rd 1919 Benito Mussolini and two hundred supporters – many disillusioned former soldiers ... formed a new nationalist movement – Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. ibid.
The black shirt became the iconic symbol of fascism. It summed up everything the movement wanted to represent: uniformity, youth, action, glamour, violence and death. ibid.
One in three Italian Jews later joined the Fascist Party. And Mussolini’s mistress was Jewish. ibid.
The black shirts saw themselves as the front line against the Socialist threat. ibid.
Thirty-eight fascists including Mussolini were elected to parliament. Fascist support was surprisingly widespread. The socialists were beaten, the government was weak, and the army sympathetic. ibid.
The Pope proclaimed that Mussolini was sent from divine providence. ibid.
Once the Allies held Italy the West once again saw communism as a far greater threat than Italian fascism. Senior Judges, civil servants, military leaders and police chiefs who had served under fascism were allowed to slip quietly back into office. And fascism as a political force did not die with Mussolini. Mussolini’s belief in fascism, violence and a desire for empire left Italy with a terrible legacy of death and destruction. And together with Hitler, Mussolini plunged Europe into the most destructive war in history, and changed the world for ever. ibid.
He has decided to strike and strike he will. The fate that might befall us does not interest them in the least. Galeazzo Ciarno
I returned to Rome completely disgusted with Germany and its leaders. They have betrayed us. And lied to us. Galeazzo Ciarno
The adventure begins. May God help Italy. Galeazzo Ciarno
Fascist goons effectively ended labor agitation with government help, and the democratic deviation was terminated. The United States watched with approval. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
As fascist darkness settled over Italy, financial support from the US government and business climbed rapidly. Italy was offered by far the best postwar debt settlement of any country, and US investment there grew far faster than any other country as the fascist regime established itself, eliminating labour unrest and other democratic disorders. ibid.
Large-scale CIA interference in Italian politics has been public knowledge since the congressional Pike Report was issued in 1976, citing a subsidy of over $65 million to approved political parties and affiliates from 1948 through the early 1970s. In 1976, the Aldo Moro government fell in Italy after revelations that the CIA had spent $6 million to support anti-Communist candidates. ibid.
In July 1990, President Cossiga of Italy called for an investigation of charges aired over state television that the CIA had paid Licio Gelli to foment terrorist activities in Italy in the late 1960s and 1970s. Gelli was grandmaster of the secret Propaganda Due (P2) Masonic lodge and had long been suspected of a leading role in terrorism and other criminal activities. In those years, according to a 1984 report of the Italian Parliament, P2 and other neo-fascist groups, working closely with elements of the Italian military and secret services, were preparing a virtual coup to impose an ultra-right regime and to block the rising forces of the left. ibid.
Close links between Washington and the Italian ultra-right can be traced to the strong support for Mussolini's fascist takeover in 1922. ibid.
During May, the US pressured political leaders in France and Italy to form coalition governments excluding the Communists. It was made clear and explicit that aid was contingent on preventing an open political competition, in which left and labor might dominate. ibid.
A centre-right government was established with neo-Fascist participation, and the left soon excluded. ibid.
Here too, the plan was for the working classes and the poor to bear the cost of reconstruction. ibid.
The Communist Party was labelled ‘extremist’ and ‘undemocratic’ by US propaganda ... The Vatican announced that anyone who voted for the Communists in the 1948 election would be denied sacraments, and backed the conservative Christian Democrats under the slogan ‘O con Cristo o contro Cristo (Either with Christ or against Christ). A year later, Pope Pius excommunicated all Italian Communists. ibid.
A combination of violence, manipulation of aid and other threats, and a huge propaganda campaign sufficed to determine the outcome of the critical 1948 election, essentially bought by US intervention and pressures. ibid.
The US planned military intervention in the event of a legal Communist political victory in 1948 ... Washington’s intention to resort to violence if free elections came out the wrong way is not very easy to deal with, so it has been generally suppressed, even in the scholarly literature. ibid.
The CIA operations to control the Italian elections, authorized by the National Security Council in December 1947, were the first major clandestine operation of the newly formed Agency. As noted earlier, CIA operations to subvert Italian democracy continued into the 1970s on a substantial scale. ibid.
In Italy too, US labor leaders, primarily from the AFL, played an active role in splitting and weakening the labor movement, and inducing workers to accept austerity measures while employers reaped rich profits. In France, the AFL had broken dock strikes by importing Italian scab labor paid by US businesses. The State Department called on the Federation’s leadership to exercise their talents in union-busting in Italy as well, and they were happy to oblige. The business sector, formerly discredited by its association with Italian fascism, undertook a vigorous class war with renewed confidence. The end result was the subordination of the working class and the poor to traditional rulers. ibid.
The United States used undemocratic tactics that tended to undermine the legitimacy of the Italian state. James Miller, cited Chomsky
Race! It is a feeling, not a reality. 95% at least is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today. Amusingly enough not one of those who have proclaimed the nobility of the Teutonic race was himself a Teuton. Benito Mussolini
But which race? Does there exist a German race? Has it ever existed? Will it ever exist? Reality, myth, or hoax of the theorists? Ah well, we respond, a Germanic race does not exist. Various movements. Curiosity. Stupor. We repeat. Does not exist. We don’t say so. Scientists say so. Hitler says so. Benito Mussolini
Yes, madam, I am finished. My star has fallen. I work and I try, yet know that all is but a farce ... I await the end of the tragedy and – strangely detached from everything – I do not feel any more an actor. I feel I am the last of spectators. Benito Mussolini
A very upstanding chap [who had] done a great job in Italy. Thomas Lamont, J P Morgan partner, re Mussolini
In Italy, as throughout the world, fascists and collaborators were restored to power and influence by the Allied liberators. The general goal was to destroy the anti-fascist resistance, undermine the popular forces on which it was based, and reconstruct the traditional conservative order, now under US dominion. David Schmitz, United States and Fascist Italy