"Fascism Is the Banal Dream of Tiny Men and Deserves Its Place in the Sewage of History"

"Self-described socialists have made many mistakes. Some of these have been brutally tragic and ruthlessly genocidal. Authoritarian socialists like Stalin committed mass atrocities that serve as a chilling reminder of the horrors that can be inflicted by those mouthing well meaning platitudes.. But the ethical core of socialism remains inspiring because, in sharp contrast to fascism, it makes far greater demands of us. Socialists want a world where, even if everyone won't be happy, ordinary human misery will replace unnecessary suffering. This is a goal that is so ethically demanding we've yet to fully build a society that realizes it. Despite all the bombast about heroism and power, in the end fascism resonates because it appeals to our lowest instincts. It is so tempting to imagine one's self a dispossessed racial aristocrat, in part because that makes it so much easier to push aside all ethical demands that get in the way of our greed and lust for power. Fascists strive impotently for a bigness the shrunken aspirations of their soul can never reach."

Matt McManus at Current Affairs explains "Why Fascists Always Come for the Socialists First."

"This Is the Complex Legacy of Modernism"

"Of course, some might say that Mari had it all wrong and Kamprad had it right: that, practically speaking, designers have to dance to capitalism's tune, so they may as well learn to like it. There is certainly variation across the discipline. Graphic design in particular lends itself to gestures of protest, from punk album covers to handmade banners. But architecture and product design, where the big money is, have always been service businesses. And what they serve is profitability. Mari himself was sustained by commissions from Danese and other companies. He did try to infuse every one of his products with humanistic values and make them affordable. But he was still making commodities, and it pained him. In the above-quoted interview, he mused, 'My wife, who is an intelligent woman, totally despises all design. Even what I did.' But what other option did he have?"

Glenn Adamson in The Nation tells the story of "[t]he Communist Designer, the Fascist Furniture Dealer, and the Politics of Design."

"A Simple Definition of Fascism Remains Challenging Even Today"

"At its heart, fascism is an alliance of hardline and moderate conservatives seeking to repress left-wing sentiment. It's a campaign to convert the working classes to nationalism, to make them angry and violent, to convince them that they've been betrayed by their global-elite leaders. It's the resurrection of an illustrious past, an effort to propel the nation forward, to expand with industry, military weapons and technology.
"The danger of fascism lies in its ability to coopt legitimate resentments resulting from inequality and refashion them as hostility towards outsiders. Instead of addressing working-class grievances, fascistic regimes offer their followers a different form of reward by redrawing the lines of inclusion and exclusion, mass-producing myth and arms in equal measure."

At The New Republic, Geoffrey Cain warns that "[u]ntil moderates and leftists can identify these characteristics and talk, clearly, about their costs, fascistic thinking will be hard to challenge."

"I've Seen This Movie Before"

"A press corps obsessed with a complicated judicial investigation. A millionaire television personality turned politician who casts himself as under attack by the courts. A party beholden to that leader, and a base that will stand by him—aware of his deep flaws and his penchant for stretching the truth. A political opposition so divided, it can't easily form a coherent argument for what it stands for, only for what it stands against."

Rachel Donadio at The Atlantic writes that that Silvio Berlusconi "Was Trump Before Trump."

Columbiana

Edward Burmila at The Nation and Heather Cox Richardson at We're History discuss the history of Columbus and Columbus Day, respectively.

The "Homegrown Authoritarian"

"Italians learned in the 1920s what Americans are learning in 2016: Charismatic authoritarians seeking political office cannot be understood through the framework of traditional politics. They lack interest in, and patience for, established protocols. They often trust few outside of their own families, or those they already control, making collaboration and relationship building difficult. They work from a different playbook, and so must those who intend to confront them.
"The authoritarian playbook is defined by the particular relationship such individuals have with their followers. It's an attachment based on submission to the authority of one individual who stands above the party, even in a regime."

Ruth Ben-Ghiat in The Atlantic compares Donald Trump to Benito Mussolini.

And Colin Campbell at The New Republic sees Trump in a character inspired by Mussolini in Thomas Mann's short story "Mario and the Magician."

"Remarkably Alike"

"They are both billionaire businessmen who claim that the government should be run like a business. They are both gifted salesmen, able to appeal to the emotions of their fellow citizens. They are both obsessed with their looks, with their hair (or what remains of it), and with sexy women. Their gross manners make them popular, perhaps because people think that if these guys could become billionaires, anyone could. Most important is that both Trump and Berlusconi made their initial fortunes in real estate, an industry where connections and corruption often matter as much as, or more than, talent and hard work. Indeed, while both pretend to stand for free markets, what they really believe in is what most of us would label crony capitalism."

In a 2011 City Journal article, Luigi Zingales compares Donald Trump to Silvio Berlusconi.

Mondo Video

"Still, it's hard not to mourn for what could have been had the collection remained in New York. As Perry puts it, if the New York institutions that refused to meet Kim's demands knew the alternative, 'They would have just been, like, "Fine, we'll take it" and then put the five copies of Old School in a box in the basement.'"

Karina Longworth in the LA Weekly traces how a vast collection of video tapes and DVDs from New York ended up in a small town in Sicily.

Super Mario's World

"But Balotelli has always been Italian. He speaks the language with a broad Brescian accent, attended local Italian schools and learned his football there. His 'blackness' is therefore the issue, something which has marked him out in a country that has experienced mass foreign immigration since the mid-1980s. And Super Mario is not one to hide from publicity. He is not humble, but extremely sure of himself. He does not bow and scrape, but seems almost to enjoy the notoriety he has received from fans and players alike. He is black and extremely good at football, and he is a winner. He has played less than 100 league games for his two major clubs (Inter and Manchester City) and won four championships in that time (and four other trophies). Not a bad record for a 21-year-old."

John Foot in The Guardian discusses the relationship between Italy and its star soccer player, Mario Balotelli.

Servant of the Servants of God

"[A main] reason they met was to reform the Catholic Church from within. That meant...getting the bishops to get their act together. At the time, many bishops did not even reside in their dioceses. And they often would hold several [posts].... Imagine if the archbishop of Boston were also archbishop of New York, and several other places, and didn’t reside in any of them... [and] the individual in question collected the income from all those places.... If you think we have trouble today with bishops, it was worse, it was a lot worse."

In The Boston Globe, Lisa Wangsness interviews Thomas W. Worcester, co-editor of The Papacy Since 1500: From Italian Prince to Universal Pastor.

From Alfa to Omega

"But from the mid-1970s until 1995, when the company withdrew from the United States, the cars’ sporting nature was often compromised by American smog and safety regulations. With tacked-on bumpers and cobbled-together emission controls, both styling and reliability suffered.
"Why then does Alfa still inspire such a following?
"'Alfa Romeos are distinctive both for their often striking and notably Italian design, and for their engineering, which makes them a joy to drive,' said Brewster Thackeray, president of the Alfa Romeo Owners Club-U.S.A. 'Alfa owners have always been somewhat eccentric; we put up with the cars being demanding and sometimes temperamental in exchange for the joy they deliver.'"

Keith Martin in The New York Times marks the one-hundredth anniversary of Alfa Romeo.

La Divina

"If the Istituto exhibition were an opera, Callas probably would be pleased with the staging. Her costumes have been posed in an eye-catching and realistic manner. Her 1956 La Scala Il Barbiere di Siviglia dress is a vibrant shade of marigold with contrasting black netting and pompoms. White lace drapes from the elbows, which one can imagine enhanced her every gesture."

Julie Neigher in the Los Angeles Times reviews "Maria Callas: A Woman, a Voice, a Myth" at Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Westwood.

One-Dimensional Man

"The rest of the film amounts to a demonstration of Marcuse's ideas about the consumerist conformity of modern man. Glauco returns to his chicly furnished home where his pill-popping wife (Anita Pallenberg) alternates between sleeping and drowsily ogling the goldfish on the bedside table. With talk shows blaring from the television and the radio piping in loungey jazz-pop, Glauco sets about fixing an elaborate meal. (Ferreri would take food metaphors to a grotesque extreme in one of his most notorious films, 1973's 'La Grande Bouffe,' about four men who eat themselves to death.)"

In the Los Angeles Times, Dennis Lim resurrects the 1969 movie Dillinger Is Dead.

Silvio Lining

"Yet by far the most interesting thing about the Italian prime minister is this: Italians keep voting for him. The somewhat ragged coalition he leads—Il Popolo della Libertà, the People of Freedom—won a decisive general election victory in 2008 and trounced the opposition in European parliamentary elections in June 2009. Whether or not you agree with his daughter, who says he 'will go down in the history books as the longest-serving and most loved leader in the history of the Italian republic,' you cannot argue with the fact that he has been the dominant force in Italian politics since he first became prime minister in 1994. But why?"

Anne Applebaum in Slate attempts to explain the political success of Silvio Berlusconi.

Bust a Move

"The myth is ancient, but the narrative is important to the revolution Bernini soon made in the traditional genre of the portrait bust. 'Apollo and Daphne' records a vivacious being who is transformed into a static tree--a living object that's incapable of voluntary movement. That's also a pretty good description of Bernini's goal for a person's portrait carved in stone.
"How did he do it?"

Christopher Knight in the Los Angeles Times reviews "Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture" at the Getty Center.

"Fine Espresso Paints the Tongue"

Dennis Hevesi in The New York Times reports the death of coffee maker Ernesto Illy.

Thin-Crust, Thick-Crust, Stuffed, or...?

Adam Kuban delineates the regional types of pizza on Slice.

Waste Management

"Organized crime appears to have a hand in trash collection all over the world, from Naples to Tony Soprano's northern New Jersey. Why are gangsters always hauling garbage?"

Michelle Tsai explains, in Slate.

Word Perfect

"Sangfroid, French, the ability to stay calm in difficult circumstances (lit. 'cold blood')"

The Times provides a list of common words and phrases borrowed from French, German, Italian, and Latin.

Eclipse

The Los Angeles Times reports the death of Italian movie director Michelangelo Antonioni.

And The New York Times runs an appreciation by Martin Scorsese.