Dear Uwe, you are not seriously suggesting Italy made a good decision with Mussolini are you? I honestly can never tell sarcasm in text unless it’s very blatantly obvious. If you are being sarcastic here, please let me know, I cannot tell!
I have no objections to what you wrote otherwise, but I want to make sure I’m understanding your first sentence correctly - if I were to take you literally, I think my eyes would pop off and fall out of my head!
I think everybody is entitled to change his or her opinion, Flavio, Italy did so in 1943 with Mussolini, Popoff with SPLAT!, I think both were good decisions in hindsight.
I understood this sentence to mean that “Italy” had the right to change their mind about Mussolini in 1943, and good on them that they changed it.
I for one am also cringing at the (to add insult to injury, most often painfully obviously AI written) glowing praises for Ritchie’s performance. Just because an LLM can make it sound like the second coming, it still wasn’t.
That makes a lot more sense - my interpretation is based on ignorance - I did not realize Italy rejected Mussolini in '43 - now Uwe’s comment is far less alarming to me! Forgive me, Herr Uwe! Seems I need a history lesson!
I was about to say, you darn Canuck! 
What do I need to do to convince you of my lefty credentials, mention that the first vote I ever cast was for the Deutsche Kommunistische Partei (DKP) in 1979? (I was one of five people doing so in my home town of 12.000 inhabitants, the other four comrades probably wondered where the new convert came from! 
) I despise Fascism (an ideology for idiots) and ultra-right regimes.
Mussolini came to power in 1922, in 1943 as the fortunes of war had turned (and Italy was in any case only halfhearted in its participation in WW II) and the US had successfully landed in Sicily, it was the Great Fascist Council - his party member friends - which decided that Benito’s rule was dragging Italy to destruction and that he had to go. Italy switched sides mid-war, wisely so. I wish the NSDAP in Germany would have done the same thing with that Austrian we had, but no such luck. To this day I admire Italy for what it did back then. My admiration is only greater for the Italian Occupation Forces in Greece which wrote to German extermination authorities a legendary curt telegram in reply for military assistance rounding up the Jewish population in Greece, arguing that your request is incompatible with the honor of the Italian Army. No such official telegram was ever sent by the German Wehrmacht, it was always happy to get its hands dirty when asked.
Pretty much the only good thing you can say about Benito is that he wasn’t quite as evil as his Austrian buddy, but then no one ever was. Italian Fascism was a tragic aberration, but not the destruction of all Western civil values like the Nazi reign in Germany. And not as mass-lethal either.
I won’t be satisfied until you lead a revolution in Deutschland, dissolve the State, and create a fully unionized, luxury worker’s paradise, including Berlin as an anarcho-communist enclave that is utterly free of money.
Until then, my Canuck Comrades and I will be watching your every move with the utmost suspicion…
In all seriousness Uwe, I remembered you are a bloody hearted lefty - it’s why I checked in with you and asked, “You’re not saying x right?” instead of going with the worst possible interpretation - and I thought it was because you were being sarcastic, initially. I didn’t know when the Italians got rid of Mussolini, just that they did, so with my ignorance in mind, my brain went “Is he actually saying this? Nah, I’d better check with him just to be sure I’m misreading” - for someone who doesn’t know when Mussolini was deposed, your statement could have easily been misread by historically ignorant folks such as myself.
All we ever got taught about the war in high school in Canuck land was that fucker Adolf went bye bye in '45 and the German goose steppers were defeated then - Italy got mentioned in passing, but fuck if I remember when the Italian gooses got kicked out.
At any rate, sorry for the misunderstanding, and I’ll do my best to remember that you are Le Communiste Par Excellence going forward!
yes, when the cracks in Mussolini’s plan became apparent, a plot to remove him by his own council was launched, and King Emmanuel III had him arrested.
His body was later hung in Loreto Square in Milan, as a sign of partisan liberation and a warning to the fucking fascists, but Italians are a people who forget their troubled history towards the republic…
OMG, the mentioning of a change of fickle Italian sentiment re the man who brought free schooling to and conquered malaria in Italy (I haven’t checked whether he built the Autostrade singlehandedly too) was tongue in cheek! Do we now create a thread for every whimsical nonsense I come up with? 
Apparently so - and at the rate I go off on tangents, soon we’ll have a competition going ala Legolas vs Gimli between the two of us to see who gets the most sub threads created for them by the admins
(cautiously)
Can I send you a couple of history books first, Mike?
I think something went terribly wrong for both Benito and Adolf early on, it seems getting rejected from art school can turn you into a complete psychopath!
I’m not engaging with nasty past history and the current world ATM for the sake of my mental health. I’m more focused on my own healing and well being while the world falls apart. One day, when I’m in the right headspace, I’d love to learn more, and today is not that day.
