When it comes to dazzling political spectacle, no regime in history can touch the Fascist powers. Inducing mass rapture by convincing one’s countrymen to abandon themselves to the leader’s will — goose-stepping legs and saluting arms by the tens of thousands jerking upward like those of marionettes — is an art that Hitler and Mussolini commanded. “One must always know how to strike the imagination of the public: That is the real secret of how to govern,” Mussolini declared, authoritatively.
That the public should have a single imagination — that everyone learn to think the same thought, feel the same feeling — was required for the sort of governance Mussolini had in mind. Il Duce on his balcony would shout out a question, and the assembled multitude below would respond in ecstatic unison. There was no room for improvisation, by Mussolini or the crowd. The only questions he could ask were those he knew the crowd would answer as expected. He called the balcony his stage, and like any other actor he had to charm his audience. Although he was given to claiming that he would reshape the Italian character in his own heroic image, he proved in the end far more image than hero.
