Here at The Hard Times, a lot of us fancy ourselves to be sort of armchair history buffs. As we’re fond of saying around the office, “There’s nothing illegal about being an armchair history buff.” We’re always just saying that around here.
Say, how about today we take a little break from the norm and just do a little good ol’ fashioned history buffing. Let’s see, what should we focus on today, lots of options, literally everything that has ever happened, top of my head… how about the death of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and the subsequent brutal desecration of his corpse by the Italian people? Seems as good a topic as any, let’s dive in! Again, for no particular reason.
For those of you who didn’t grow up before The History Channel was all Ancient Aliens, Benito Mussolini is considered to be the founder of fascism, and largely responsible for its spread throughout the world during the interwar period. He was the Prime Minister of Italy who, through the installation of loyalists in key positions, radical secret policing, and wild interpretation/manipulation of the law, became the country’s dictator. Sound familiar? Well, we don’t know why, we’re just talking history here, people! Anyway, let’s skip ahead to the good stuff:
Somebody fucking kills him
Towards the end of World War II, as Allied troops advanced on Northern Italy, Mussolini’s bitch-ass tried fleeing to Spain but got his ass unalived along the way. Initially, it was believed that communist partisan Walter Audisio executed him, but this has been refuted over the years, and to this day, there are more theories on exactly who took Duce out than there are about the Kennedy assassination.
I guess the takeaway is, when you’re an authoritarian strongman leader more concerned with staying in power than the welfare of your countrymen, a lot of people want you dead, man. A lot of fucking people just want you fucking dead.
The body of Mussolini is placed in a town square
In order to understand the decision to just dump Mussolini’s corpse in the Piazzale Loreto and its significance, we first have to understand the symbolism of that body.
Mussolini’s physical body was central to much of Italy’s fascist propaganda. A lot of it featured photos and illustrations of him shirtless, engaged in challenging labor. They didn’t have NFTs back then, but if they did, he probably would have released one depicting himself as a buff superhero; the dude was that vain and petty.
Anyway, given the significance of Mussolini’s body as a symbol of authoritarianism, it seemed only fitting that the Italian people had a chance to spend some face time with it.
The body is insulted and ridiculed by the masses
The crowd began hurling insults and blasphemies at the corpse almost immediately. Can you blame them? They had just been living under an authoritarian dictator during wartime, this was the closest they got to speaking truth to power in a long time!
The body is abused physically
Sometimes, speaking truth to power isn’t enough, so you start punching truth to power. The crowd went absolutely savage on Mussolini’s corpse — slapping, punching, kicking — one dude even shot it a few more times just for the fuck of it.
They cut his fucking dick off and stuffed it into his own dumb fascist mouth
This particular desecration was perhaps… overzealous, but we get it. One second you’re living under the rule of a fascist blowhard and the next he’s just this dead stupid punching bag right in front of you and after beating the shit out of him for a few hours and still finding yourself angry you start to think “Well, what the hell else can we do with this thing?” It’s fortunate for the Italian people that McDonald’s didn’t exist back then, because if it did, Mussolini’s member would be too sad and shriveled by fish fillet (but he probably would have called it something stupid like “Fish Delight”) consumption to make a satisfying tableau. If this were to happen to a modern dictator, the crowd would probably just go for butt stuff.
The body is hung upside down, with the dick still in the mouth
Ordinarily, in Italy, hanging a body upside down, with or without it’s severed dick in it’s mouth like a macabre cigar, is the ultimate sign of disrespect. In Mussolini’s case, however, it was honest-to-god done just to get what remained of his remains the fuck away from that angry crowd so there would be something left to bury! That is one hell of a retreat — having your corpse subjected to your culture’s ultimate form of humiliation just to keep what’s left of you SAFE.
We hope you enjoyed this little stroll down history lane, and to any modern leader with aims to follow in Mussolini’s footsteps, we at The Hard Times implor you to turn your history book to page fuck around and find out.