They helped shape the world as we know it using their power for evil. Eliminating any one who got in their way every Tuesday, move into the minds of some of the world's most feared leaders in the new park. Ass series: dictators: their hosts, Kate and Richard to tell you more. Thank you every whose day in our new show Dictators Richard and I examined the reign of a real life tyrant, explore the unique conditions that allow them to seize control, hear more about the men who claim to lead their country, but we're intricate. Responsible for killing millions of their own people in this special clip from our first episode about Benito Mussolini transformation from Italian, Superman to despise despot

if you want to listen to the full episode, followed dictators free on Spotify or wherever you get your pipe guests when the great war ended in nineteen eighteen, it ushered in a glow, bull depression, both economic Lee and socially the soul Yours who survived came home to countries they didn't recognize country with new names and new borders, racked by new fears, even for the victors, return to stability seemed impossible. There was a sense that everything was broken. Democracy had failed capitalism had found, so Elysium was failing to nihilism was the only philosophy that still made sense in Europe

Young people who came of age during this time were called the generation of nineteen fourteen France called and the generosity on defer. The gun our generation in, in Amerika. They were known as the lost generation in that kind of mass desperation. Certain things can slip through the cracks, the people, let their leaders consolidate power, let them blame foreigners, but do away with a civil liberty or two may trusted in despatch, because they're really wasn't a better alternative until before they realized it. The apocalypse they were trying to avoid was right there on their door. Those are the circumstances that led to the rise of totalitarianism after World WAR, one to the rise of dick,

taters welcome to dictators a new power cast original, I'm and I'm Kate. With this series, we want to go deep into the minds of some of histories. Most hated despot we all know about the atrocities committed by the likes of Hitler and Stalin in the United States were familiar. With long time american adversaries, such as Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Moon on dictators wheel trace the psychological, cultural and spiritual influences that transformed these individuals, either they were born psychopathic or they were hardened by circumstance, without fail. Each went from wanting to save their country. To this,

drawing it. You can find all episodes of dictators and all other park originals for free on Spotify or work, for you, listen to pod casts to stream dictator for free on Spotify, just open the app and type dictators in the search bar at Parkhurst. We are grateful for you are listening You allow us to do what we love. Let us know how we're doing reach out on Facebook and Instagram at park asked and twitter, at network, and, if you enjoy today's episode, the best way to help us is to leave a five star review wherever you're listening it right he does help for our first six episodes we're starting with a bag. As we explore the lives of world war, two's. Three: worse dictators: Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, today will see how Mussolini harness disparate social elements such

socialism, nationalism and future ism forge a new belief system, fascism, this hateful. Ideology would be his chief tool in portraying himself as the ideal italian man and would go on to inspire an even greater evil. Next week, we'll see how, in alliance with that greater evil, Nazi Germany led to Mussolini's downfall. Miscellaneous, often thought of as Hitler's incompetent lackey his fellow fascist who lost the war in ITALY and I D day earlier on April, twenty eight nineteen, forty five, his body, hung in a square and spit upon but that is the modern perception in his time. Mussolini was considered? A swash buckling, heartthrob a mess You're politician, he wrote

to power in ITALY years before Hitler became the face of totalitarianism. Despite destroying civil liberties in his country, in exile, in thousands of italian Jews to concentration camps, Mussolini's people loved him and some still do. But how could the p of any time view a monster in such a romantic light and how has his global reputation fallen from that of the ultimate leader to the altar stooge. In order to answer these questions, we must he's Mussolini's time as a socialist agitator in Switzerland to his years as a newspaper man to his craft Do rise to Prime Minister must chinese entire life was a self defeating journey to fulfil a masculine ideal, is born on July, twenty ninth eighteen, eighty three, his father.

Sandro Mussolini was his first role model according to Spartacus Edgy occasional Mussolini once told a reporter. I come of peasant stock. My father was a blacksmith. He gave me string. A young Mussolini would work the forge with his father. Sweat dripping sparks singing his skin researcher. Andrea Sancho Vonny describes the traditional image of italian steel work as a completely masculine world where the natural characteristics of man, strength, courage, leadership, honour aggression. Our praise to excess Mussolini picked up on this learning, to be strong to a fault to express only the most dominant part of himself, he was taught that a man worked hard that he and his

father were the laboring peasantry and across the country in Rome there was a king and a church that reaped the benefits of their labour and didn't work at all. Even worse, there were austrian kings to the north. Who rule over land and people that were rightfully italian, young, Mussolini. Imagine these rulers like fantasy despot, almost inhuman every day at the forge his father filled his mind with ideas about a revolution of workers, just like them. Men, like them strong workers who made up the real ITALY who would one day inherit the Mussolini loved, his father. Anyone nothing more than to live up to these ideals. This belief, system socialism, with a little bit of nationalism, would entrance and big I'll him throughout the rest of his life, but as much

she admired his father. He was also confused by him. He talked about strengthened honor, but Mussolini, gradually became aware that Alice, Andrew didn't exactly personify those things. His Others main focus in life was not on his work or his family, but his mistress but we often spent money on while Mussolini, his two siblings and his mother lived in us all home, eating very basic meals. This engendered a toxic dichotomy within the young boy. He had father telling him how to act like a man but had strong male role model to actually show him what that look like, and so he spend his life trying to decide for himself how a man should act while nursing a selfish streak that would topple a republic, because

If his own father wasn't going to look out for the young Mussolini, then who would His mother noticed a growing anger in sight of him in eighteen. Ninety two: when Mussolini was nine, she sent him to Catholic Boarding School in the hopes that the priests would be able to combine. The opposite is true. The Catholics were largely antis. She they took out their political beliefs and Mussolini the sun. Never socialist, this included holding food from him and forcing him to sleep in the dog kennel. His selfish streak deepened, as he felt, truly the whole world was out to get him. At the same time, some of the masculine ideals he had picked up from his father were being reinforced Catholic Doctrine, emphasised the differences between men and women, How men were meant to be masculine leaders and women

feminine mothers. This idea was driven home by the simple fact that it was an all boys school with me Only teachers was is growing toxic masculinity, famously boy over one day in the schoolyard when Mussolini stabbed a classmate in my hand, and so his picture of the ideal man continued to fill out the ideal man was a strong hard worker, like his dad had taught him but ass. He had picked up from Catholics school aggression was vital piece to the puzzle. He would never forget how the anti socialists priests treated him. There heading this? Their need to exert control over a child was anything but masculine. He figured that is vital. Disdain for the church in Rome was well placed that the Catholic church leadership was just as weak as the priests that is school, and so he does

I did that whatever the ideal man was, he wasn't catholic, misleading managed to survive school. In fact he excelled at it. He could now express his burgeoning ideals through scathing treatises. Impassioned speeches in nineteen hundred at the age of seventeen he was about to school when he and the rest of ITALY learned of the assassination of their king, whom bear tell the first, the king, was killed by an anarchist socialist member of the working class This would have inspired the young Mussolini. His father's worldview was being validated the real men the working men were rising up against Parasite upper class. King Umberto was only the second monarch to rule over a United ITALY. He was hated by work class Italians for his support of violent workers. Suppression

had also embroiled the country in wars of conquest in Somalia and Ethiopia, the latter of which ended in failure. On top of that, many Italians hated Umberto for his support of the trip. Alliance, which was a military alliance with Austria, the countries former enemy, the failure and ultimate murder of this monarch confirmed for Mussolini that socialism was the rightful Sophie, but just because they were right, didn't mean they had power a new monarch, was crowned Mussolini worried that the third Be son, Selina, worried that he would be drafted into the army and forced to fight in some war, driven by this new king, he would not die. For someone he didn't even considered to be a real man and so in nineteen o two. After about a year working as an elementary school teacher,

nineteen year old Miscellany fled to Switzerland, hoping to find other socialists. Other real man this separation from his country. I run equally allowed him time to consider what exactly is meant to be italian instead, Ireland, he saw many of the same problems as at home. That country was already the location of many of the large banks its famous for today, and there was a large lower class that saw none of that money. Switzerland was thus a hotbed for so listen Mussolini met with socialist leaders, wrote for socialist newspapers and clash with the police. Playground gave him enough distance from italian politics to think about them. Objectively, the cunt he had been united in eighteen, sixty one under a new monarchy and with a prime minister and parliament, it was supposed

be a new dawn for ITALY, even a return to the days of the glorious roman Empire fifteen hundred years before, but this unification had meant nothing for the average Italian. They still have to toil some in factories. Others fields and mines and in nineteen o to a majority, Battalions still weren't even allowed to vote. Clearly you a vacation just meant that the top one percent? Now, centrally controlled the labour and product of the working class in Switzerland, Mr learned from leaders of Socialists thought men, like let a mere linen and Leon Trotzky to founders of the russian Revolution and devout Marxists. They helped him home. The idea of what italian socialism should look

the rewards of italian labour in the hands of italian workers and no one else, not the king, not parliament, not the Austrians. But while men like Karl Marx, were calling for self rule, Mussolini never seem to settle on an exact prescription for what a modern government should look like belief system was heavy with contradiction. He wrote that social, listen means the elevation and purification of the individual conscience and its achievement will be the result. A long series of efforts they seem to suggest that he believed in the combined efforts of society as a whole, rather than the triumphs The individual, but here so admired. The idea of the best and brightest pushing to the top Mussolini

me read Darwin and absorbed his message of struggling against tradition authority dogma loose was survival of the fittest philosophy. The idea that people in power are in power because of certain traits that make them better suited, for it must Selina couldn't believe in both the collective achievements of society and the survival of the fittest. History would tell which side he leaned toward his racial politics, were similarly convoluted, Selina hated the nationalist racist philosophies arising in Germany, but at this in time he spoke of italian soul and was dismissive of their slavic neighbours to the northeast. So he didn't like an emphasis on national identity unless it was italian, national identity and he didn't like racism, but he had certain racial prejudices.

It was almost as if the masculine ideals instilled by his father and sharpened in catholic school would never release their hold because as much as he admired the worker focused ideals of socialism. He also said Define socialism somewhat feminine. Many socialists preached the idea of a global society free of borders where everyone was equal. This sounded like fanciful nonsense to him. ITALY needed to become a world power. That was the only a way for him to show the world that the hard labor ideals of his youth or superior. The only way to show the world that Italians were true men that he was a true man. His image of the ideal man was now the image of the idea you italian man, strong aggressive, not catholic, Socialist

but only in so far as you maintain a sense of masculinity and national identity in mind. No for a twenty one year, old Mussolini was expelled from Switzerland and forced to it turned to ITALY. After inspiring multiple riots against police and falsifying documents they returned to his home country with a new vision, He would inspire the rural working class that he had been a part of. He would do this. By playing on the masculine ideals of hard work and painting the ruling class as a feat out of touch parasites. He went paint the catholic church with this. Brush and his fellow socialists. Well, hopefully, They would go along with his emphasis on an italian identity, a towel. In product in italian hands, not apart some larger european collective that exploded their labour, just as the king was currently doing

his goal was to inspire socialist Revolution in ITALY, but by the time he was done, there would hardly be, and ITALY left at all to find out what happens. Next. Listen to dictators free on Spotify or wherever you get. Your pod casts