There’s newsreel footage of Benito Mussolini giving a speech on a balcony. When he finishes he crosses his arms, thrusts his chin out, and gets this comical ‘Yeah, I’m awesome’ expression on his face. Totally gangsta. ‘We bad! We bad! Uh huh! You better be yellin’ “Duce! Duce!” motherf*ckers!’
When and where was this speech? What is the text of it?
I can totally picture that speech in my mind. He looks like he’s doing a bad Marlon Brando “Godfather” impersonation. Other than that I got nothing.
I had the very same thought when seeing footage of him; “He’s a rapper!”
Why of course!
(NSFW audio) Benito rapping!
And I think I found the clip with the posturing we are looking for, now we just need someone that speaks Italian. (And dutch)
Yes, that’s the footage. I couldn’t find it earlier.
Ok, I could understand a little bit of Italian, he mentioned virgilio (Virgil) and it took me to the speech in Bari:
I think I noticed something interesting, the Italian clips cut to a scene with the crowd at the moment when he should be doing his buffoon gestures.
Even more interesting: When looking for the context Wiki reports that:
Unfortunately, as soon as Germany began to conquer all of Europe Mussolini then changed his tune and began to also prosecute Jews and other non white races in Italy.
However, it was surprising to find that his moment of “yeah, I’m bad!” was actually for a good cause!
The posturing is a mocking pantomime is it not?
Well, he was a bit of a theater hound. He was the center of attention all the time. It’s jsut the way he was. Granted, he was not always that outlandish, but ti was a time of outlandishness anyway. He was hardly the only speaker who used exaggerated guestures to woo large crowds - many of whom could only see him from far away.
Perfect for parody indeed:
Benito as a pompous duck in the 1942 WWII cartoon from Warner Brothers “The Ductators” Not shown nowadays because of the racist cartooning of the Japanese.
I would think so, judging by the guy behind him laughing the whole time.
Are you sure? I’ve read many commentators and historians comparing the anti-Jewish policies of Mussolini’s Italy and Vichy France, and concluding that Italy was rather lax on Jews, no big round-ups and all the things Vichy did. I really dont know that much about antisemitism in fascist Italy, but I had always thought the Italian fascists focused way more on the social aspects of fascism than on its racial aspects (in fact I always thought that was the big diff between Italian Fascism and German Nazism. I always tended to attribute it to the race obsession of German and self styled “Nordic Races” countries as opposed to Latin countries who have always reckoned their mongrel origins more easily ).
In a recent Biography documentary I saw it was reported that indeed no round ups of Jews took place in Italy… early on.
Besides trains running on time 
History might had been kind with Mussolini regarding the Jews, but unfortunately the official lax position in Italy began to be dropped the longer the war did go on, as Hitler saved the ass of Mussolini in the war theaters, Hitler demanded or Mussolini offered more reprisals against the Jews in Italy, first with restrictions on employment and not allowing the children to go to school, the same insidious process that took place in Germany but an slower pace.
After the Allies landed in Italy Mussolini lost more power and Hitler controlled more of the solution to the “Jewish problem” in Italy and then the roundup of Jews began in earnest. Although some facts are changed, this is the background of the Oscar winning movie “Life is Beautiful” (1997) Many thought that it was unrealistic on how it seemed that early the Jews were not as mistreated as they were in Germany, but just like in the movie, it was during the last Months of the war that Jews in Italy began to be sent to harsher and deadly concentration camps.
Mussolini was really an intelligent man…but by allying himself with Germany, he really screwed up. He realized that Italy had no capability to fight a modern war-the Spanish Civil War should have taught him that.
Plus, what good were conquests like Ethiopia, Libya? Pretty worthless colonies.
Italy went to war with a military equipped with 1920’s-vintage weaponry-and Mussolini knew it.
Well, the objective was to surround Egypt and the Suez Canal.
And here one has to add that it is true that Mussolini was not as racist as Hitler, but the use of poison gas and other deeds like massacres that the Italian army committed in Ethiopia deserved a war crimes trial at the end of the war. Unfortunately, AFAIK this never took place.
It has remained a gross miscarriage of justice.
Curly parodied this pose in one of the Stooges’ shorts.
The location in that clip is the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, which is where Mussolini had his office and from which he regularly made public speeches.