ITALY: Right Fist Falls

Before the War, one Roberto Farinacci labored as an ill-paid mechanic upon Italian railways. Indeed, in that remote period, one Benito Mussolini toiled under a hodful of bricks.

Fascismo made of the hodcarrier a god. Not quite. Gods have no need of earthly champions, whereas, when Fascismo was rocked by the Matteotti scandal (TIME, June 23, 1924 et seq.), the hodcarrier was perhaps only conserved in his godhood by the railway mechanic.

Roberto Farinacci, whose speech still smacks of the taproom...