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https://www.damemagazine.com/2025/10/30/can-italys-history-offer-lessons-for-surviving-our-current-moment/>
"Before visiting the school in Amandola, a small town in Italy, my husband Pat
and I meet English teacher Daniela for coffee on Piazza Risorgimento. We’re
there to talk to Daniela’s 12- and 13-year-old students about writing and my
mother’s escape from Nazi-occupied Austria. Our connection came through Carol,
a mutual friend, who told me about eight Jewish immigrants Amandola hid during
WWII — a story echoing my mother’s experience and compelling me to accept
Daniela’s invitation to speak in person rather than over Zoom. Given the
troubling political climate in the U.S., with its own slide toward
authoritarianism, it felt like a meaningful time to step away, hoping Italy’s
history might offer lessons for surviving this current moment.
The piazza is alive: men playing chess, families savoring gelato. It’s easy to
imagine black shirts and Nazis marching these cobblestone streets — perhaps
because, back home, ICE and the National Guard now sweep through American
towns, raiding businesses, detaining immigrants. “Populations are bleeding,”
Daniela observes, noting the exodus of people from small towns for work
elsewhere. “There are no jobs, and people are moving to bigger towns in
Germany, France, Scandinavia, Estonia, and Finland.” When I ask about America,
she shakes her head: “We knew a different America.”
Laundry lines still connect neighbors. Festival posters for truffles,
chestnuts, and fava beans decorate shop windows. Some places, like Amandola,
seem to possess an indefinable spirit — shaped by history, landscape, and the
old buildings nestled among the Sibillini mountains, where resistance fighters
once hid. This town rebuilt itself after the devastating 2016 earthquake, as
chronicled in Christine Toomey’s
When the Mountains Dance. Living on the
Mississippi Gulf Coast, which was hit by Hurricane Katrina, Pat and I know
something about natural disasters, poor government response, and slow
recoveries.
A block from the café, Saint Augustine church is fortified with iron bars
against future quakes, inside its ceiling netted to catch falling fresco. The
“incorrupt” skeleton of Anthony of Amandola, who died in 1450, rests under
glass — a grisly sight, but familiar, as are the ever-present images of
Mussolini. Unlike Germany, where de-Nazification took root, Italy never fully
purged its fascist past. Mussolini’s ghost remains everywhere. At the
Piazza
dei Capitani Popolo in
Ascoli Piceno, photographs of Mussolini sell
alongside Pinocchio dolls with noses of varying lengths, depending on his lies.
Traveling through Italy, the parallels between Mussolini and Trump become hard
to ignore. Mussolini: aggressive, proud, grumpy; expelled for stabbing a
classmate; a violent temper; a master of propaganda and lies; promised national
renewal; used violence and intimidation; loved crowds and photo ops, often
shirtless to appear virile; survived assassination attempts; fixed elections;
cultivated a cult of personality; criminalized anti-fascism; shifted political
allegiances. Trump mirrors these: aggressive, proud, grumpy; a violent temper;
spreads conspiracy theories; promises to “make America great”; incites
violence; thrives on rallies and manipulated images; survived an assassination
attempt; undermines elections; leads a personality cult; criminalizes
anti-fascism; shifted parties.
While Hitler remains the embodiment of evil, Mussolini is remembered as the
evil buffoon."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
