I read Ledeen’s D’Annunzio book as an undergraduate along with many other books on Italian facsism. I recall being quite confused by his writing and sensed that he couldn’t decide which side he was on. A couple of years later I lived in Rome for a semester and it became clear to me he was on the side of fascism. Few Americans know anything about D’Annunzio (I was lucky to have had a philosophy professor who taught in Rome and told me about him). Trump resembles D’Annunzio the clever grifter/thief rather than the “poet warrior”, and learned his methods as Mussolini did. Fox News is their fever dream come horribly true.
I wasn't aware of this before typing this comment, but right at the end, Du Toit gestures at Donald Trump as a virile Real Man like Rumsfeld and Bush. Synchronicity?
I’ve never heard of Du Toit, but that’s a mondo-ly funny 2008 barstool rant from a human bog pail of insecurities that I’m sure had absolutely nothing to do with Obama becoming president that year. Laissez les bon temps rouler, in joualspeak. Thanks for posting the thing.
I can't claim too much credit, I was too young and Canadian in 2008. Chapo talked about it a few years back, there's a great pair of episodes talking about post-9/11 culture
Great summary of Ledeen’s bizarre career. The uproar that his 1975 interviews with De Felice caused in the Italian anti-fascist historiographical world can’t be overstated. Most reviewers shared Nicolo Tranfaglia’s opinion that De Felice’s history represented a “complete rehabilitation of fascism.” One guy described it as “qualunquismo storiografico” - ‘historiographic populism’ - implicitly tying it to the short-lived post-WWII anti-communist/monarchist “Everyman” party (L’uomo qualunque) that eschewed party politics entirely in favour of a purely administrative state.
Although Ledeen was certainly more flat-out fascist than De Felice - or even than D’Annunzio, for that matter, at least in terms of state policy - it made sense that he would have been enticed by De Felice; not so much for the substance of his analysis but because of De Felice’s radical departure from the post-war historiographic consensus. Ledeen in 1975 would have seen communism in Italy as “the establishment”, at least in terms of prevailing interpretations of fascism, and De Felice’s revisionism would have been catnip for Ledeen’s contrarian bellicosity as much as his Cold War ideological leanings. In the decades after the war, where you stood on historical fascism in Italy was a defining signpost on where you stood on…everything, especially and obviously communism of course, and I guess it’s kind of an early indication of how Ledeen would proceed to stake out ground on a whole range of issues for himself in the coming years.
An interesting aside on D’Annunzio: In 1921 (a few months after Rapallo granted Fiume the status of “open city” and D’Annunzio’s plans for annexation to Italy were scuttled until fascist takeover in 1924) Gramsci sought a meeting with D’Annunzio to propose an alliance with his “legionnaires” in Fiume, who Gramsci saw as “people who have felt the crunch of the economic crisis” whereas he dismissed fascists as “bourgeois youth, slacker students, professionals, military officers on the rebound, etc.” Presumably, Gramsci knew something about D’Annunzio’s reign in Fiume, which was that characteristically early-fascist dog’s breakfast of executive untouchability, violence against dissenters, and syndicalist revolutionary constitutionalism (habeas corpus, workers’s rights, veterans pensions, universal suffrage, freedom of expression and religion, decriminalization of homosexuality, “nudism” and narcotics).
D’Annunzio never showed up for the meeting. I doubt Ledeen would have either, although he probably would have liked to *think* he would have.
This is superb. I immediately lifted a couple of snippets for my large private file "Bons Mots", in which I've been collecting the best things in years of readings on the Internet and elsewhere. (Not to worry: I save attributions for everything (where possible) that I preserve.) But then we learn of De Felice and his work! Bravissimo!
I read Ledeen’s D’Annunzio book as an undergraduate along with many other books on Italian facsism. I recall being quite confused by his writing and sensed that he couldn’t decide which side he was on. A couple of years later I lived in Rome for a semester and it became clear to me he was on the side of fascism. Few Americans know anything about D’Annunzio (I was lucky to have had a philosophy professor who taught in Rome and told me about him). Trump resembles D’Annunzio the clever grifter/thief rather than the “poet warrior”, and learned his methods as Mussolini did. Fox News is their fever dream come horribly true.
Ledeen's emphasis on American vitalism and the spiritual benefits of violence leaked into/echoed post-9/11 culture as well. Once the stated war aims turned out to be lies, this is what the lowest-common-denominator fell back on (see e.g., "the Pussification of the Western Male": https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/ubb/printthread/Board/21/main/187381/type/thread)
I wasn't aware of this before typing this comment, but right at the end, Du Toit gestures at Donald Trump as a virile Real Man like Rumsfeld and Bush. Synchronicity?
I’ve never heard of Du Toit, but that’s a mondo-ly funny 2008 barstool rant from a human bog pail of insecurities that I’m sure had absolutely nothing to do with Obama becoming president that year. Laissez les bon temps rouler, in joualspeak. Thanks for posting the thing.
I can't claim too much credit, I was too young and Canadian in 2008. Chapo talked about it a few years back, there's a great pair of episodes talking about post-9/11 culture
Hey, we too-old, too-Québécois anglo shilly-shallyers will take our cultural perfidy references anywhere we can get ’em. Onward!
Great summary of Ledeen’s bizarre career. The uproar that his 1975 interviews with De Felice caused in the Italian anti-fascist historiographical world can’t be overstated. Most reviewers shared Nicolo Tranfaglia’s opinion that De Felice’s history represented a “complete rehabilitation of fascism.” One guy described it as “qualunquismo storiografico” - ‘historiographic populism’ - implicitly tying it to the short-lived post-WWII anti-communist/monarchist “Everyman” party (L’uomo qualunque) that eschewed party politics entirely in favour of a purely administrative state.
Although Ledeen was certainly more flat-out fascist than De Felice - or even than D’Annunzio, for that matter, at least in terms of state policy - it made sense that he would have been enticed by De Felice; not so much for the substance of his analysis but because of De Felice’s radical departure from the post-war historiographic consensus. Ledeen in 1975 would have seen communism in Italy as “the establishment”, at least in terms of prevailing interpretations of fascism, and De Felice’s revisionism would have been catnip for Ledeen’s contrarian bellicosity as much as his Cold War ideological leanings. In the decades after the war, where you stood on historical fascism in Italy was a defining signpost on where you stood on…everything, especially and obviously communism of course, and I guess it’s kind of an early indication of how Ledeen would proceed to stake out ground on a whole range of issues for himself in the coming years.
An interesting aside on D’Annunzio: In 1921 (a few months after Rapallo granted Fiume the status of “open city” and D’Annunzio’s plans for annexation to Italy were scuttled until fascist takeover in 1924) Gramsci sought a meeting with D’Annunzio to propose an alliance with his “legionnaires” in Fiume, who Gramsci saw as “people who have felt the crunch of the economic crisis” whereas he dismissed fascists as “bourgeois youth, slacker students, professionals, military officers on the rebound, etc.” Presumably, Gramsci knew something about D’Annunzio’s reign in Fiume, which was that characteristically early-fascist dog’s breakfast of executive untouchability, violence against dissenters, and syndicalist revolutionary constitutionalism (habeas corpus, workers’s rights, veterans pensions, universal suffrage, freedom of expression and religion, decriminalization of homosexuality, “nudism” and narcotics).
D’Annunzio never showed up for the meeting. I doubt Ledeen would have either, although he probably would have liked to *think* he would have.
Excellent summation of a truly eccentric and vile (and fascinating) American weirdo
This is superb. I immediately lifted a couple of snippets for my large private file "Bons Mots", in which I've been collecting the best things in years of readings on the Internet and elsewhere. (Not to worry: I save attributions for everything (where possible) that I preserve.) But then we learn of De Felice and his work! Bravissimo!