Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The Death of Mussolini

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

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Hey everyone, what you're about to listen to is a preview of a bonus episode that is available on our Patreon. If you like this clip, you can grab the whole episode, as well as years of other bonus content, at www.patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys. Say what you will about Mussolini, but he did, once upon a time, decorate an entire front of a building with his own face Which is something that previously only super villains have done And I should say not just pictures of his face 3d sculptures of his face like sticking out of a fucking building Angrily to not just like Over his head because it was for an election that wasn't real

Have you ever seen like where he used to give speeches from in Rome? Yes. With a little balcony? Pictures, of course. I've never been to Italy. I went to Italy fucking years ago. And while I was walking past, the poor guy was like, oh yeah, and there's where Mussolini used to give speeches. And it's the most unimpressive fucking thing. You'd see it...

It's one of those things where you always see him giving speeches and it's always wicked zoomed in and there's a reason for it. Because it's just a balcony on a street where it's small and on a normal city street in Rome. It's kind of narrow. It's just like, oh, okay. So you could only look really impressive. Meanwhile, Hitler was doing the big fucking Triumph of the Will, the big Nuremberg rallies and everything and whatever. But Mussolini was using Instagram influencer camera tricks to... If he existed now... Mussolini doing a TikToker face. For Musalini first time listening to fascist speech.

Oh yeah. You could do a Musalini dance where all you do is just swing from your ankles for 15 seconds. I think there's a certain kind of like yoga that just has you swinging from a rope by your ankle. That's Musalini yoga. Well, I mean, I'm just thinking that like, if he existed now, he would definitely be one of those guys who's like constantly going to like a Ferrari dealership

and getting his buddy to come over really quickly to like take a picture of him like leaning on the car to show that he owns it. And then like getting chased off by the salesman because like, Oh God, he'd live in Dubai. Yeah. Yeah.

Or, you know, or he'd be like, he'd be like an Andrew Tate figure, but like kind of like wish.com Andrew Tate He did do some traffic Incredible poster so Mussolini's job amounted to a little more than a figurehead He would be trotted out in front of a population of people who hated his fucking guts to deliver the occasional speech To announce those who had turned against him namely the king who was now safely behind allied lines. One function that Mussolini's stupid little republic did have was amounted to a police force to try to stamp out the growing number of Italian partisans.

This is largely known as the National Liberation Committee or CLN, which is an umbrella group for many different rebel groups of many different political ideologies. This job fell to the special service of the Republican police, led by a guy named Tulio Tamburini, who despite his comical name, as he was a hardcore fascist loyalist, chosen for this role personally by Adolf Hitler. Tamburini put a man named Pietro Koch in place of what amounted to be a death squad. They stalked through the countryside hunting for partisans, but also, you know, doing Nazi shit like rounding up the Republic's Jewish population for deportation. Despite Koch and the others technically working for the Republic's government,

they actually took orders from the SS. Mussolini had no power over these police forces, but he did sign all of their paperwork. He was fully aware of what they were doing. It's not like he would have disagreed with their methods or anything. But what he did disagree with was it was making him look bad. They're spilling all this blood in the countryside because like this paramilitary force is insanely brutal. And it all went back to him, which again, he would have been fine with normally because it's not like there was an incredibly violent oppression when he was actually dictator of Italy instead of fake dictator of Italy. Uh, he's just mad that he's not approving of the optics. Good look guys. But, uh, cause I, I totally, I understand the,

the necessity for, uh, for optics, but you know, you should have thought about that before you were, you know, already brutally murdering all the Jews in your countryside. Like, I can't imagine, like, like Mussolini was like, no, no, we're cool. We're cool with the Jewish population here. Oh, now it's now it's a problem. No, he's he's he's he's stepping in his own shit at this moment, stepping on his own dick.

And really, it's his own fault. All of this, all of this kind of falls on Moosilini. And it's like easy messaging for Moosilini, right? To be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not telling them to do that, even though I would if I could. Like it's like dictator purgatory. Like there's violence and oppression happening outside, and I'm not even getting to lead it. Moosilini did eventually lead something

of a minor revolt against the SS and specifically these death squads. He took a few black shirts that were still loyal to him and arrested Coach, knowing that he would never be able to try him or execute him because of how powerful he was due to his SS ties. They dumped him across the border, across ally lines, where they knew that he would be handled

and he was immediately arrested and executed a short time later. So, Moose-Linny did kind of switch to the allies there for a second. So again though, like, I can't do this myself, but I know a guy who can. I can sign some paperwork to make sure that you get death squatted somewhere else.

And not to mention, this guy wasn't some kind of like, career SS functionary or something. He was a 26 year old career criminal, meaning that Mussolini had gone from unquestioned dictator of fascist Italy to being afraid of the political cloud of a 26 year old. Yeah, look, I've been on Twitter and been yelled at by a Marxist, I get it.

He had to use the Allies to do his dirty work so Hitler wouldn't get mad at him. Because again, it's not like if he had some of his blackshirts ventilate this dude's skull, Hitler would have fired him. But he just didn't want to make Hitler yell at him again. Yeah, you know, like I don't want to deal with the paperwork, I don't want to deal with the fallout from this. Why don't I just give you to the allies and let you get a 45 in your head instead of a 762?

That makes sense to me also a small side note here Tom Barini the the guy that's in charge of all of this Was so corrupt that even the SS fired him and then sent him to Dachau Yeah Get sent to your own fucking death camp. It actually happens a few times throughout the Nazi regime. There was a concentration camp guard. So it's often said that this guy was arrested for being too brutal, which is not the case. He's a concentration camp commandant, and he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp himself

because of embezzlement. So like this shit happens from time to time. Yeah. Ben Sending Al Capone to Doc Al for death. Ben Exactly. Like, what do you mean I'm being sent to a concentration camp for stealing? What do you think we're here for? Ben Don't fuck with the bag. You can fuck with this bag,

but you can't fuck with that bag. You fucked with the wrong bag. Ben All of that said, however, if we started sending white collar criminals to the Super Max facilities, I feel like we would, I don't know, probably, you know, SEC would finally have some teeth. Yeah. So sending white collar criminals to like, was it ADX Florence? Yeah, exactly. Welcome to the Super Max. You're so made of Zokar Tsarnaev enjoy bitch.

Look I've got I've got the perfect idea for Guantanamo we just turned it into a US Postal Service black site. You get rolled up by a mailman and bundled up to Cuba. You have those like sensory deprivation goggles and earmuffs on like what am I here for what's going on like you didn't put stamps on that fucking letter Jeff Supposed to be two stamps when it's over one pound Jeff It's like oh we saw you we saw you put that fucking package of the mailbox and it weighed 17 ounces not 16 you motherfucker

Mussolini unable to do much of anything else, spent the majority of his time walking his own home under SS guard, working on his memoirs. His only constant companion was his mistress, Clara Ptetse. I also love that all these guys are at the... Do you think that they were actually working their memoirs? Is there a... Oh yeah, they got published. Oh really?

Okay. Yeah. Okay. You guys want to take a wild guess of what the name of the publisher was that published Bruce ladies and force? The fascist daily publisher primavera de capo press And it was an American publishing company That they would eventually be bought by the hatch Group, the same publisher who would eventually put out convicted war criminal Clinton or Lawrence's memoirs. So there you go.

That's something you know now. So yeah, a place called the De Capo Press published Mussolini's memoirs and they made a lot of money off of it. I feel like, you know, like I would respect it more if he was just like, yeah, I don't know, I'm going to work on my memoirs. And he's just drinking copious amounts of red wine and just hanging out waiting for the end. Because it's almost... I'm working on my memoirs. All he's doing is mainlining red wine and turning his palazzo into a goon cave.

Right. I feel like that would almost be more respectable than actually... Your entire fascist regime is falling down around you. Every morning you wake up and sign a bunch of death warrants. And then you're like, ah, okay, I better go and sit for an hour in front of the 1945 version of a blinking cursor and just wait for inspiration to strike for me to talk about all the successes that I... To be writing a How to Succeed in Business book as Enron is crashing down around you or like, oh, how to win friends and influence people by the Lehman Brothers. This is not like a...

Come the fuck on, guys. My whole country's on fire, but you know, I would tend to this, but I really have to tighten up chapter two. Yeah, you know, it's like, I've just been, I've been using too many, too much passive language. I really need to fix that. My editor's really been on me this week.

Mussolini's editor really on his ass about due dates. Mussolini's editor's like, when am I getting book two though? You're like Benito, we like the idea, Thanks for watching!