Bolshevism [Mussolini] knew, was not really a Jewish phenomenon and the manifestations of anti-Semitism in current-day Hungary could not be applauded… - R. J. B. Bosworth

Which European politician of the first half of the twentieth century could be relied on to read the philosophical and literary works of his co-nationals and send their authors notes of criticism and congratulations? Who, at the time of profound crisis and despite his evident ill health, kept on his desk a copy of the works of Socrates and Plato, annotated in his own hand? Who declared publicly that he loved trees and anxiously quizzed his bureaucracy about storm damage to the environment? Who, in his table talk while he was entrenched in power, was fascinated by the task of tracing his intellectual antecedents?... Who seemed almost always ready to grant an interview and, having done so, was especially pleased by the prospect of talking about contemporary political and philosophical ideas? Who left more than 44 volumes of his collected works? Who claimed with an element of truth that money never dirtied his hands? Who could conduct a conversation in three languages apart from his own?... The somewhat surprising answer to all these questions is Benito Mussolini, Duce of Italian Fascism and dictator of Italy from 1922 (or 1925) to 1945 (or 1943).

[Mussolini’s] most ambitious article for La Lima was a lengthy review of Marx on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death. Here Mussolini celebrated the father of socialism as an activist, as one who was simultaneously ‘scientific’ and realistic. Marx, he wrote with fervour, had demonstrated conclusively that ‘a class will never give up its privileges unless it is forced to do so.’ He had proven without a doubt that ‘the final struggle will be violence and “catastrophic’” because capitalists would certainly not surrender without a bitter fight.

Whereas Hitler believed fundamentally and literally in racist science, Mussolini might often sound hard-line, and certainly regularly spoke up for murder. Yet, equally, he remained capable of skepticism, cynicism, intellectual analysis, doubt, contradiction, confusion, sullen bafflement, all positions that the ‘science’ of ‘terrible simplifiers’ condemns and refutes. Whatever else he was, Mussolini was not an ‘other’, unrecognisably distinct from contemporary or even present-day politicians and executives.