It comes out on November 16th for Bompiani, Fascism and populism – Mussolini todaynew book by Antonio Scurati, university professor, columnist and winner of the 2019 Strega Prize with the historical novel M. The son of the centurythe first act of a saga dedicated to fascism and Benito Mussolini. M. The son of the centurycurrently being translated into forty countries, will soon become a TV series.
In Fascism and populism, the author continues the study on the figure of the Duce and compares it with today’s sovereignisms and populisms: «While the declared nostalgics of Nazi-fascism are nothing but a niche phenomenon, the European and American populists descend, consciously or unconsciously, not by Mussolini, founder of the Fascist Party, but by Mussolini who was the first to understand the mechanisms of political seduction in mass society”, we read in the book’s presentation note. The volume addresses the theme of politics that speaks to people’s guts: «There is only one political passion stronger than hope, and that is fear. But afraid of what? Fear of other people’s hopes. Yesterday fear of the triumph of the socialist revolution, today fear of the triumph of the hopes for a better life of peoples forced to migrate en masse towards Europe”, writes Scurati. «I believe that Mussolini’s relevance derives from some of his intuitions about what politics would become in the era of the masses, which was then opening up and which today reaches its mature phase», concludes the author.