On today’s date, April 28 1945, the leader of fascist Italy, Benito Mussolini, was executed by Italian partisans in a small town next to Lake Como. But it turned out death was only the beginning of the adventures of Mussolini’s corpse.
The next day, the corpse was taken to Milan. It was dropped off in a square recently renamed to honor 15 partisans killed by Mussolini’s forces.
There, on the ground, Mussolini’s corpse was kicked and spat upon by passersby.
The corpse was then hanged by its heels from an Esso gas station.
Hanging upside down, the corpse was stoned by an angry crowd. One woman fired five bullets into the corpse, one for each of her five sons who had been killed by Mussolini’s soldiers.
Mussolini’s body was eventually taken down, and buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery north of the city.
The end?
Oh no.
Next year, on Easter Sunday 1946, Mussolini rose from the grave, or rather, his corpse was dug up by three fascist sympathizers.
The decaying mass that was left of Mussolini was then kept in a trunk for over 10 months, and smuggled around from place to place.
Eventually, the Mussolini trunk made its way to a Franciscan monastery near the town of Pavia. There, the corpse was recaptured by Italian authorities.
The end?
You wish.
The new Italian government couldn’t decide what to do with Mussolini’s remains.
In fact, the government kept agonizing over this question for over ten (10) years.
I couldn’t find out exactly where Mussolini’s corpse was kept all this time. But the conclusion was that, after intense political deal-making, Mussolini was finally reburied, in 1957, in a crypt, with marble fasces on the side, in a cemetery in his home town.
The end, finally.
A gruesome story, right? And so… illogical.
I mean, the guy was dead. The war was over. Fascism had ended. Why all the fuss over what would happen to the rotting flesh of the man who had once ruled Italy and caused death and destruction?
Well, because that’s how our brains work. What I mean is…
It’s impossible for our brains to take in all of a complex historical process, even if it’s happening around us.
And while it’s not impossible, it’s certainly hard and unpleasant to keep an abstract concept like “fascism” in our minds for very long.
But a specific person… with a name… a title… and all the ready-made emotional reactions that we humans get in response to other people… well, that’s very easy and natural to keep in mind.
But forget all this stuff I just said. And just remember Benito Mussolini and his traveling corpse.
Because whether you want to promote an idea, or bury one, you will find it much easier to promote a person, or to execute one. Figuratively of course. And then to figuratively kick and spit on the corpse, and let it hang by its heels for all the world to curse.
By the way, do you hate Benito Mussolini? Or love Bill Burr?
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