There could be no better case study to test this contention than self-proclaimed totalitarian Fascist Italy with its cult of the Duce. Instead, people focus all of their adoration and affection on the tyrant, and are incapable feeling for one another. Political philosophers from Plato to Arendt have argued that totalitarian tyranny stifles the human capacity to love. The uncomfortable marriage of totalitarian politics and moral sentiments is the center of de Grazia’s narrative. Echoing the announcement in the New York Times, de Grazia calls it the first “Fascist Wedding.” It was perfectly planned and choreographed to illustrate how the regime’s rising “New Men” accommodated themselves with the traditional Italian elite, formed heteronormative bourgeoisie families in accordance with the rites of the ancient Catholic Church and the Fascist State’s new civil code, and married their politics and moral sentiments (1-2, 7-8, 133-138). The witnesses to their 1926 wedding included none other than Benito Mussolini, the American Ambassador in Rome, General Vaccari, and Tullio Serafin, the director of La Scala in Milan and, later, a major conductor at the New York Metropolitan Opera (2). Victoria de Grazia’s The Perfect Fascist opens with the improbable marriage between the Fascist gerarca Attilio Teruzzi and the Jewish-American diva Lilliana Weinman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2020. The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy.
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