Mussolini Speaks, and Tells Us How Democracy Dies

When Benito Mussolini founded, on March 23, 1919, the organization that would become the National Fascist Party, Italy’s top newspaper relegated the news to a blurb, roughly the same space devoted to the theft of 64 cases of soap. That’s where Antonio Scurati’s novel M: Son of the Century starts. It ends on January 3, 1925, the date commonly considered the beginning of Mussolini’s authoritarian reign, when he claimed responsibility for the murder of the Socialist lawmaker Giacomo Matteotti. By then, Il Duce had already been the prime minister of Italy for two years, and violent repression of the opposition was rampant, but it was the first time he owned up to it as the head of government, throwing off the mask. “If fascism has been a band of criminals, I am the leader of this criminal band,” he boasted to Parliament. The lawmakers cheered.

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