re: #83 William Lewis

Been hearing that crap for years. “See, fascism works! It isn’t inherently racist/violent/etc” while utterly ignoring how that government was barely functional most of it’s existence and depended on violence and their own form of racism (as well as going along with Germany’s demands for antisemitism).

The worst version of this came from Pournelle/Niven’s novel “Inferno” which whitewashed Mussolini in the usual pro-fascist Pournelle manner. It was interesting theologically in a way that fit my sense of Universalism but the final twist was difficult at best.

I don’t love Pournelle either, but he portrayed Mussolini as a penitent, not a good guy — and the only claim he made was that M. wasn’t as bad as Hitler in the beginning, though he became so.

And after all, he was In hell.