The most disturbing lesson from Antonio Scurati's books on fascism is that it did not impose itself solely through force. Totalitarianisms are not the victory of fanatics over an innocent society corrupted by a leader's ambition. It was also a sum of fears, renunciations, opportunisms, and complicities. A tired democracy stopped defending itself; elites believed they could use Mussolini; a part of society accepted violence in exchange for order. It allowed itself to be seduced.

Since 2018, Antonio Scurati published in Italy the first volume on the rise and fall of Mussolini, The son of the century (Alfaguara, 2020), millions of readers in Europe and around the world have eagerly awaited the appearance of the next one. Not only to return to a crucial period in history, but also to understand the current political moment. Therefore, along with pure literary enjoyment, it's impossible not to read this great fresco of the first half of the 20th century with a knot in your stomach. Because you only have to read or listen to the news in any format to see a multitude of parallels and feel completely alarmed.

Violence and seduction. This was the double face of the man who founded fascism, the Sweet. This was a century ago. Mussolini had started out as a socialist militant (he directed the party newspaper, Avanti) and then had renounced and established himself as the leader of a new nationalist populism. We already know how history went: both socialism and fascism became bloodthirsty totalitarianisms.