Latest / The Nation Podcasts / Dems Who Didn’t Vote In 2024—Plus, Mussolini and Trump | Start Making Sense

Transcript

Dems Who Didn’t Vote In 2024—Plus, Mussolini and Trump | Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

0:08
[SPEAKER_02]: From the nation magazine, this is Start Making Sense.
0:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm John Weiner.
0:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Later in the show, a suggestion for Summer Reading.
0:16
[SPEAKER_02]: The book, Emma, Son of the Century is a seven hundred fifty-page historical novel about the rise of Mussolini by Antonio Scoratti.
0:26
[SPEAKER_02]: John Powers, a critic at large of in Pierce for a share, says the book suggests some parallels between nineteen twenty's Italy and Trump's America.
0:36
[SPEAKER_02]: The book is out now in paperback.
0:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But first, six million Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in twenty twenty did not vote in twenty twenty four.
0:46
[SPEAKER_02]: What's wrong with them?
0:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Polster and strategists salind the lake has some answers in a minute.
0:55
[SPEAKER_02]: millions of Democrats who voted against Trump in twenty twenty did not vote in twenty twenty four.
1:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Who are they?
1:03
[SPEAKER_02]: What were they thinking?
1:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And most important, how can we get them back to voting in the midterms next year?
1:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Salinda Lake set out to find some answers.
1:14
[SPEAKER_02]: She's a legendary Democratic polster and strategist.
1:17
[SPEAKER_02]: She was one of two lead polsters for the victorious Biden campaign in twenty twenty.
1:23
[SPEAKER_02]: She's done polling for unions for planned parenthood for narrow the abortion rights group for feminists and gay groups.
1:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Her interviews and statistics have been quoted in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times.
1:36
[SPEAKER_02]: She's appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR.
1:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So Linda Lake, welcome to the program.
1:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you so much and it's great to be on and I love the nation.
1:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the twenty-twenty-four election numbers are still horrifying.
1:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the twenty-twenty-four election numbers are still horrifying.
1:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty
2:15
[SPEAKER_02]: That was not your approach.
2:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Your approach was to identify a scientific sample of those non-voters and ask them some questions.
2:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So this study, which is one of a kind, was paid for and intellectually formulated by a group called Way to Win, which has been out there emphasizing contact, emphasizing developing grassroots, emphasizing developing
2:39
[SPEAKER_01]: messages that really appealed to voters.
2:41
[SPEAKER_01]: This was a tough study to do.
2:43
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to find these voters and I really want to commend them.
2:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And they also turn these findings into action.
2:50
[SPEAKER_01]: They support ads.
2:51
[SPEAKER_01]: They support grassroots organizing.
2:53
[SPEAKER_01]: They support social media to reach these voters.
2:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was a real privilege to get to work with way to win.
2:59
[SPEAKER_02]: First of all, we need to know who are the people who voted for Biden in twenty twenty and then didn't vote at all in twenty twenty four.
3:08
[SPEAKER_01]: On the answer is, they were a little bit younger.
3:11
[SPEAKER_01]: They were very democratic actually.
3:14
[SPEAKER_01]: They did not want to vote for the lesser of two evils.
3:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are three kinds of conventional wisdoms that are completely wrong.
3:21
[SPEAKER_01]: One conventional wisdom was that they were toying with Trump.
3:25
[SPEAKER_01]: They hate Trump.
3:26
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not the reason that they stood out.
3:30
[SPEAKER_01]: The second was that they weren't paying attention.
3:33
[SPEAKER_01]: They actually are very knowledgeable.
3:36
[SPEAKER_01]: But their knowledge led them to be quite discouraged about whether the Democrats were ever going to offer a real economic message, a real economic alternative to the Trump economy.
3:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And the third stereotype was that these voters are impossible to get.
3:53
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to be moderate, not liberal, and a whole bunch of other things, again, couldn't be more wrong.
3:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's seventy two percent of these voters felt that the problems in our country come from having an economic system where the richest one percent have taken fifty trillion in wealth from the ninety percent of Americans who work for a living.
4:13
[SPEAKER_01]: That was way more powerful than the statements about immigration, wellness, and spending.
4:20
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of our friends say Harris's lack of support among some people was based on her lack of support for Gaza and Palestinian rights.
4:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I know you asked about that.
4:31
[SPEAKER_02]: What did you find on that score?
4:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Well one thing I want to say is first of all in this interview is yes there are things of course that the Harris campaign could have done better.
4:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you've got a hundred and seven days and you're starting from scratch, I think they did a, I think she did a remarkable job.
4:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think the lessons are for the future.
4:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Guys, it was important particularly to a group of young and Palestine, to a group of younger, but Democrats and younger dropoff voters.
5:00
[SPEAKER_01]: But the economy was even more important.
5:04
[SPEAKER_01]: They also were very, very concerned about the affordable agenda.
5:08
[SPEAKER_01]: They were very, very angry at how the wealthy were getting ahead at the expense of ordinary people.
5:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And they saw very clearly a role for government.
5:19
[SPEAKER_01]: They wanted to have government take action on behalf of people.
5:23
[SPEAKER_01]: They did not support the dojo approach or the Trump approach.
5:28
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, one of the most important things you did was you showed there are some differences among the people who didn't vote in twenty four.
5:38
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not quite true that if they had voted, all of them would have voted for Biden.
5:44
[SPEAKER_02]: There were some interesting differences in the demographics that you found.
5:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of them would have voted for Trump.
5:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Few of them would have voted for third party candidates.
5:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So you asked an early question that I think is very important.
5:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Who are these people?
6:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And first of all, fifty-seven percent of them were women.
6:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're not all men.
6:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Secondly, fifty-two percent are white, but twenty-three percent were African-American.
6:10
[SPEAKER_01]: They were more heavily African-American.
6:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Seven percent Latino and another ten percent other groups of color.
6:17
[SPEAKER_01]: They were younger, a huge number of them, two-thirds were under fifty.
6:22
[SPEAKER_01]: They were a mix of college and blue college.
6:25
[SPEAKER_01]: People think of them.
6:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people have this theory.
6:27
[SPEAKER_01]: They were all college students.
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people have this theory that they were all blue college.
6:30
[SPEAKER_01]: They were a mix.
6:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Sixty two percent of them were Democrats.
6:35
[SPEAKER_01]: But twenty three percent of them were Republicans.
6:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Fifty seven percent of them were liberal.
6:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Thirty two moderate.
6:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Only eight percent conservative.
6:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So one of the things I love about polling is that you get the real answers.
6:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And that conventional wisdom is wrong about ninety five percent of the time was or minus five percent.
6:57
[SPEAKER_01]: There were some differences in the vote and we saw particularly the younger.
7:03
[SPEAKER_01]: the female, the African-American, more likely to vote for Biden some defection among the Latino men, although again, some of these groups are now moving in our directions.
7:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think what's really important about these Biden's skippers is now is our moment to really speak to these voters.
7:26
[SPEAKER_01]: They are extremely unhappy with what they are seeing coming out of the Trump administration.
7:32
[SPEAKER_01]: They're very anti-Trump, but they don't think we're offering any alternative.
7:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And they particularly want an alternative around the economy.
7:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And they want an alternative, the alternative around healthcare.
7:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They're very healthcare oriented, very oriented toward Medicaid, veterans, benefits, and research in cancer and Alzheimer's, very oriented toward all kinds of healthcare.
7:54
[SPEAKER_01]: children's nutrition and children's health care.
7:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is a high opportunity to push our advantage, but we have to offer an alternative.
8:03
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to take some action.
8:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's really important that these are not kind of passive ignorant, unmotivated couch potato type people.
8:17
[SPEAKER_02]: These are people who, as you have said, pay attention, know what they think and didn't find it in the Harris campaign.
8:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Another very important area that you study is
8:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Where do they get their information about politics?
8:32
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm an old man.
8:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I watch TV.
8:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I read the newspaper.
8:37
[SPEAKER_02]: It turns out most people don't read the newspaper anymore.
8:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Most people don't watch TV news.
8:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's one of the things that you studied in this about the people who voted for Biden in twenty twenty and then did not vote for Harris in twenty twenty four.
8:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Where do they get their information about politics?
8:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, this group of voter is solidly online and solidly reliant on social media.
9:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And they are very, very, very active consumers of social media.
9:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have seen a surge in their dependence on YouTube.
9:13
[SPEAKER_01]: YouTube has really grown to be their top news source.
9:16
[SPEAKER_01]: There's still also watching cable news.
9:19
[SPEAKER_01]: They are very active on Facebook.
9:22
[SPEAKER_01]: They take their news even if it's coming from a newspaper like New York Times or something.
9:27
[SPEAKER_01]: They're getting it.
9:29
[SPEAKER_01]: on the website or the app or the online source.
9:31
[SPEAKER_01]: They are not getting it directly.
9:33
[SPEAKER_01]: They're tick-tock oriented.
9:35
[SPEAKER_01]: They're x-oriented as well, particularly the conservative end and they're very heavy into streaming content.
9:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So they are online in every medium and multiple mediums.
9:46
[SPEAKER_01]: They are looking for content from authentic voices.
9:50
[SPEAKER_01]: They are looking for direct content from the candidates.
9:53
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't want it mediated.
9:55
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't want it to sound like a convincing battery out of a bowl.
9:59
[SPEAKER_01]: There are some variations, men are more likely to be relying on sports channels in YouTube and younger voters very heavy on TikTok.
10:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Black voters very heavy on cable news.
10:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So there is some variation, but they are really solving online from multiple sources.
10:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you also looked at what kinds of messages are most effective in appealing to them.
10:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And you found out that there's a lot of enthusiasm for candidates who promise to fight.
10:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
10:32
[SPEAKER_01]: They really want a fighter.
10:34
[SPEAKER_01]: They really want candidates to offer specific alternatives.
10:37
[SPEAKER_01]: They want candidates to stand up.
10:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And they think that Democratic candidates are not doing that.
10:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Seventy-eight percent of these voters are favorable to Bernie Sanders.
10:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Sixty-four percent are favorable to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
10:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Sixty-seven to Democrats in Congress.
10:57
[SPEAKER_01]: They want to give Democrats in Congress a chance, but they want to see them stand up.
11:02
[SPEAKER_01]: They like governors, Democratic governors, because they think they have to produce.
11:06
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to stand up.
11:07
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to offer an alternative.
11:09
[SPEAKER_01]: They despise mega Republicans and despise Donald Trump and despise Elon Musk and those.
11:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But they want to hear from our side.
11:18
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I have a question about this strategy of promising to fight.
11:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I've seen some research recently that recommends a strategy, I'm sure you know about this called depolarization, the opposite message, which is
11:34
[SPEAKER_02]: It goes like this.
11:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you sick and tired of all the fighting in Washington?
11:39
[SPEAKER_02]: The name calling that doesn't do anything to help with our real problems?
11:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll work with anyone who wants to make the cost of living more affordable, who wants to make medical care and child care affordable.
11:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Our politicians may not admit it, but we have more in common with most people share a lot of the same goals
11:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's work together on the basis of our shared values to find real solutions that make life better for all of us.
12:08
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a depolarizing message that emphasizes common ground.
12:14
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you think about that?
12:16
[SPEAKER_02]: You're a key strategist on this.
12:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think the two can be merged.
12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, real people.
12:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And the buying skippers.
12:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you not want to fight each other?
12:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And they think, honestly, like the women, for example, think any three of women in America can agree on more than Congress stuff.
12:31
[SPEAKER_01]: What they want to fight are the lobbyists, the big donors, the wealthy corporations, the mega Republicans.
12:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So yes, they want to unite and work together.
12:41
[SPEAKER_01]: They want to come together to make change because they think that individuals cannot make change.
12:46
[SPEAKER_01]: They were very worried that their vote would make no difference and thought that they were very negative about whether Harris had already lost before the election.
12:56
[SPEAKER_01]: They think other people share their goals of trying to get help care affordable for everyone, for example, get prescription drug prices down, get surprised billing ended.
13:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But they want to fight the lobbyists, the corporate power, the political donors.
13:12
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think what's being misunderstood here is, yes, they want to unite with other people.
13:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And they think they have shared goals.
13:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But they think if you're going to get this accomplished, you're going to have to take on some people.
13:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to have to stand up.
13:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to have to fight corporate green corporate profiteering.
13:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Looking forward to the midterms next year, you were very interested in the question of what will it take to get the people who sat out, twenty twenty four, back involved in voting in the midterms.
13:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And you also studied if congressional elections were held right now, which of those non-voters would vote democratic in which would vote for somebody else.
13:54
[SPEAKER_02]: What did you find on that score?
13:56
[SPEAKER_01]: They vote overwhelmingly democratic, but the things that need to happen are one.
14:01
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to be contacted and they can't be contacted two days before the election.
14:06
[SPEAKER_01]: They can't be treated like they have no choice.
14:08
[SPEAKER_01]: They've already proved to us.
14:09
[SPEAKER_01]: They have a choice.
14:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Thirty-five percent of them said they were not contacted by any campaign in this last election.
14:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Only thirty-nine percent of them said they were contacted by the Harris campaign.
14:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Half of them, half of the young people, half of the independence, a large number of the women, so they weren't contacted by anybody.
14:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have to be out there.
14:29
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to contact them.
14:30
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to get engaged with them.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And these are people that showed up at the no kings rally, but still haven't resolved whether they're going to vote on the election day.
14:38
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to offer them real choices.
14:40
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to run.
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: a new generation of candidates who stand for something.
14:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we have to lay out in a agenda.
14:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to pick some fights.
14:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to say if you elect me, I will do X, Y, and Z, and I will fight to get that done.
14:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And I will unite all of us together in that goal.
14:58
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, one of the things we did with this group in another study was look at the government agencies that they like.
15:05
[SPEAKER_01]: They love, for example, EPA.
15:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And when we said, isn't EPA controversial, blah, blah, this one person in the focus group and this other study said, who wants to drink poison water?
15:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, people are even hiding together.
15:19
[SPEAKER_01]: What they don't see is the politician taking on the toxic numbers.
15:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, one of the things I like best about your conclusions here is that you strongly recommend that the Democratic candidates go beyond advocating for single issues.
15:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You talked about something you called overall world view framing.
15:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
15:41
[SPEAKER_02]: People who didn't vote really respond to what is overall world view framing and what is the one that we need to promote in our candidates.
15:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So let me read you our top testing message just to give you an idea.
15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: The American people need a democratic party that stands strong and pushes back against the Trump administration.
16:03
[SPEAKER_01]: The president and his rich friends care more about tax breaks for the wealthy than making the cost of the things we buy go down or helping American workers.
16:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Democrats need to be the ones to unite the American people regardless of race, plus or zip code against this government take over and demand representation for all of us
16:23
[SPEAKER_01]: not just the top one percent.
16:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It does have that unity message, but it's not milk toast.
16:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It's unifying people behind shared values and a shared goal to make things happen and to bring about change.
16:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So Linda Lake, legendary pollster and Democratic strategist, you can read about her new study of Democratic voters who skipped the twenty twenty four election in Rolling Stone.
16:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So Linda, thanks for all your work and thanks for talking with us today.
16:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for having me and I want to also give another shout out to Way to Win.
16:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you and thank Nation for getting voice to these findings.
17:03
[UNKNOWN]: It's summer and that means it's time for summer beach reading.
17:17
[SPEAKER_02]: with longer days and warmer weather, we wanted to find a book that is long and captivating.
17:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So we asked John Powers, of course he's critic at large on NPR's fresh air with Terry Gross, where he is millions of listeners, John, welcome back.
17:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm glad to be here, John.
17:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what has been your beach reading so far this summer?
17:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, actually, the big exciting book that I read and it is a beach classic is called M son of the century by Antonio Scurati and it is the first volume of a massive series of novels about the career of Benito Mussolini.
17:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I looked this up.
17:57
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, I read it myself after you recommended it.
18:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a best seller and award winner in Italy.
18:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been translated into forty languages.
18:07
[SPEAKER_02]: The English translation by Anne Milano Apel is terrifically vivid and compelling.
18:14
[SPEAKER_02]: But what struck me was that the rise of Mussolini is so different from the rise of Trump.
18:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Mussolini started out as the leader of a
18:24
[SPEAKER_02]: small group of bitter war veterans in the wake of World War I. When half a million Italians had been killed and hundreds of thousands of returning soldiers were facing unemployment and a lack of food.
18:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That was nothing like America in twenty fifteen where
18:42
[SPEAKER_02]: You will recall the Obama years were coming to a conclusion and Trump first appeared in the Republican primary and then Mussolini's own background is the opposite of Trump's.
18:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Mussolini started out an unknown and impoverished journalist and socialist Trump.
18:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't need to tell you was a billionaire real estate developer and popular TV personality.
19:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So different.
19:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they are very different.
19:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be impossible not to conceive that point and to add that it's always dangerous to find historical analogs.
19:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet what was peculiar was as I was reading the Scurati novel, I kept being struck by how things resonated with the present moment.
19:24
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, in the discussion of Mussolini, who's background is in it all white trumps.
19:29
[SPEAKER_00]: What is common to trumps is there's a kind of anti-establishment fervor in both of them that plays into the sense that the elites are running things and not in the way that ordinary people like.
19:41
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time of Mussolini, they're, you know, they're both the socialist who are exceedingly popular at the time and a small group of fascists.
19:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Mussolini, who certainly as a socialist, had moved to the fascists.
19:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, he caught some things that I think that Trump caught.
19:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the key moments at the beginning is when one of his people is trying to explain what the ideology of fascism should be.
20:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And Mussolini's thought is, we don't really need an official ideology.
20:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to have the sense of excitement that we're moving forward, that we're for Italy, that it's kind of a show.
20:15
[SPEAKER_00]: that we want people caught up in the emotion of the event rather than a series of policies which are after all dreary.
20:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you mentioned the disaffected soldiers, they were called, you know, they were a group of, they called the Arditi, who were like the great warrior, kind of navy seal types of world war, one for the Italians.
20:35
[SPEAKER_00]: They came back, they didn't have jobs, they're disaffected.
20:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But they liked doing lots of the violent stuff that soldiers like that do.
20:42
[SPEAKER_02]: What struck me the hardest in Scarotti's book was the violence and not just the rhetoric, not just the aura of Mussolini, but the way his followers actually terrorized and killed socialist leaders and activists in horrifying ways, killing a socialist peasant organizer in front of his family and children.
21:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Mussolini's method as karate describes it was to stir up violence in this order to show that only he could remedy it.
21:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Unleash the squad Dresty with one hand and reign them in with the other.
21:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and you can actually see that that is part of what's going on.
21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So the Trump argument that we are in a chaotic situation.
21:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So much of the violence in chaos is produced by his people.
21:31
[SPEAKER_00]: On election day, I think there is almost no risk.
21:34
[SPEAKER_00]: that a polling place would be taken over by crazed leftists.
21:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can easily imagine, as in the succession scenario, that you could imagine in Wisconsin, a group of Trump followers would take over a polling place, or what votes are being counted and burn it to the ground if necessary, if they thought he was going to lose.
21:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Mussolini does see violence as a tool.
21:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a tool both for cowing the left, which then gets cowed.
22:03
[SPEAKER_00]: But also, it's useful to the people who are in power.
22:06
[SPEAKER_00]: The classic mistake, I think, that business people and, you know, conserve their government people make, because they always think, oh, we're going to be able to control the fascist impulse in people.
22:17
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was also during Germany, of course, is you think, oh, this guy isn't that great.
22:22
[SPEAKER_00]: He will do what we need to get done.
22:24
[SPEAKER_00]: He will stop the socialist, then we will control him and take him over.
22:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Not realizing, of course, that's not going to work.
22:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And Scurati in his novel about the rise of Mussolini, also paints a vivid really unforgettable picture of who the fascist followers were.
22:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Could you read to us from the first meeting of what Mussolini called the Grand Council of Fascism in nineteen twenty three when the party leaders posed for a photograph and Scurati tells us about it?
22:59
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all fascists.
23:01
[SPEAKER_00]: A toxic cloud of disappointed ambitions, revolutionary frustrations, confirmed biases, offended measema of familiar rivalries, local constituencies, tribal vendedors, village squabbles, a suffocating spray of factions, dissidents, as extremisms.
23:16
[SPEAKER_00]: For the most part, they are mediocre, greedy, petty men, raised to their rank by the updrafts stirred up in Italy's sky by the Mussolini Cyclone and appointed directly by him.
23:28
[SPEAKER_00]: The supreme leader, yet, instead of gratitude, the beveled glass mirrors of the grand hotel reflect devious, scowling gloomy looks of discontent.
23:39
[SPEAKER_00]: What I like about this is that one of the great things is that just as let's say centrist politicians in Italy who think they're using Mussolini, Mussolini has his own collection of mediocrities and thugs and timers who work for him.
23:54
[SPEAKER_00]: that he's struggling to control, and one of the great themes of like the last third of this first part of the book, which ends with him becoming the dictator of Italy, is him trying to control the thugs, whose threat he is used to take power.
24:08
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is evil after he takes power.
24:11
[SPEAKER_00]: They still want to go around killing leftists, burning buildings down, and doing all this stuff he doesn't want, because his whole point was that he could control him.
24:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, he can't control them.
24:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So he actually hates, and in a way that I suspect that Trump hates a lot of his followers.
24:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You're using them, but in fact, you don't connect to them.
24:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I think they're stupid people.
24:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Another key theme of Scorotty's novel, Em, that we shouldn't forget about, is that
24:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Mussolini's party won elections.
24:42
[SPEAKER_02]: The nineteen nineteen elections in Italy were the first elections there in which all adult males had the right to vote and at first the fascist got no representatives in the parliament but then he formed an alliance with the liberal parties and eventually was named prime minister and it was only then that he ended what democracy their had been
25:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, but I think the sadder part of that story, John, is that in these elections, the winners, hugely in the north, especially were socialists.
25:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes they were getting eighty percent of the vote.
25:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you read, you see how partly because they're eager to govern, partly because they're not drawn to violence in the same way as the fascists, that people who have eighty percent of the vote find their province being taken over
25:33
[SPEAKER_00]: by someone who might have gotten five percent of the vote because that five percent was prepared to go into the countryside as you mentioned earlier and kill people in front of their families to burn down working men's associations to get in the way of the legal swearing in of the people and that it's a sad thing to say but it's I think it's been true a lot of the times is that the left isn't as strong when it comes to fighting
25:56
[SPEAKER_00]: as the right has been.
25:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting that Mussolini at one point in this book is expressing his admiration for Lenin, because Lenin did what you have to do.
26:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And Mussolini is contemptuous of like the, like the eloquence socialist like Turati, or even the hero of Jacobo Matiati, who was the great socialist hero of that era, because he was constantly talking up against Mussolini.
26:21
[SPEAKER_00]: But what they aren't prepared to do is do the ruthless stuff.
26:25
[SPEAKER_00]: In Belonia and in nineteen twenty they'd want eighty percent of the vote they're going to swear in the x-ray railroad man is the mayor of the city a group of fascists come create a riot and what happens is there's enough violence in death that it discredits the socialist because it proves they can't keep order
26:43
[SPEAKER_00]: and that in fact they never get to take power in the city they want eighty percent the vote of.
26:47
[SPEAKER_00]: As we people who think of ourselves as being on the left think this is something that you have to remember.
26:53
[SPEAKER_00]: We look at various revolutions we've had you think you know when you hear discussions should I end I have purged more people you know along the way and you think history in the case probably you should have we don't like to do it we like to think we're rational sensible people.
27:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, in the point about fascism, it was about tearing down something.
27:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing about socialism was about building something up.
27:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's easy when you're building something up to not to want to get involved in all the violence, because it is destructive.
27:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You're trying not to destroy.
27:23
[SPEAKER_00]: You're trying to build.
27:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But people who want to destroy have the edge, because they don't care whether they destroy.
27:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas if you're trying to build, you do.
27:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So as you say, in Scaratti's account of the rise of Mussolini, the socialist leader, Jacomo Matayati is the kind of the hero of the book.
27:42
[SPEAKER_02]: the single voice of determined resistance in a kind of a spinalist parliament in his assassination creates a crisis for Italy.
27:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Really the most upsetting thing in the book is karate's evidence that Mussolini probably could have been stopped at that point after the assassination of Matioti.
28:04
[SPEAKER_02]: He says the majority of Italians horrified by the crime.
28:08
[SPEAKER_02]: wanted to see the fall of fascism and that Mussolini himself sank into an apathetic inertia and wasn't sure what to do.
28:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And then what happened?
28:21
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens is that the people who could stop him including the socialists
28:26
[SPEAKER_00]: don't propose the things that you could do.
28:28
[SPEAKER_00]: They fritter away, I think, a lot of the outrage in eloquent speeches in newspaper columns, they don't actually push the votes in the parliament that would have gotten him out.
28:40
[SPEAKER_00]: The strength of fascism was always that he was going to, loosely he was going to send his black shirts to take over Rome.
28:46
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the reasons he got appointed, Prime Minister was because he could stop the black shirts from coming and descending on Rome and trashing it.
28:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And even in that this is the first case where it happens, when Mussolini knows that if the army had tried to stop the men, the black shirts would have run off in fear, because whenever the army faced the black shirts, the army would win.
29:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But they wouldn't do that.
29:08
[SPEAKER_00]: In this particular case, once again, Mussolini keeps waiting in these final pages for them to do the thing that would just throw him out.
29:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And no one ever rises to the occasion because the people in the center think, oh, we can we can work our way around him and we hate the socialists.
29:24
[SPEAKER_00]: The people on the left weren't great at fighting and truth.
29:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And they didn't want the conflict.
29:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they thought reason would prevail.
29:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And the strongest of them, Matiati has been murdered.
29:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Even in the way he's murdered, which is interesting, as it's presented by Scurati, and I'm not sure it's true, but because nobody could actually know the truth, because it was all private stuff.
29:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Mussolini's arranged for Matiati's death, maybe in the way that the gangland boss arranges for it.
29:53
[SPEAKER_00]: He makes it clear to be great if Matiati was dead.
29:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the book, he's genuinely shocked and horrified when they actually murdered him.
30:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Because he didn't order it, because he knows that if the murder is bad, it could cost him everything.
30:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But he has these over enthusiastic violence loving people who are more than happy to kill the socialist leader.
30:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And the problem is Matiati was the brave and heroic one.
30:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was a kind of cowardice that when they if they would kill him, then maybe they would kill you.
30:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Since we're extrapolating to the modern world.
30:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
30:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I always wonder why is it that say Mitch McConnell, who'd gotten what he wanted, wouldn't have pursued just finishing Trump off.
30:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I think with some of these people, there is a genuine fear of unleashing violence from the hardcore Trump people.
30:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's actually physical fear that a lot of these people have.
30:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be a scary thing.
30:48
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are identified as the person who got you Trump, the hero, impeached we can never run again.
30:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Hang a mic, pants.
30:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Hang a mic, pants.
30:58
[SPEAKER_00]: No, there is that side of it.
31:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing is, you think some of them, some of his followers wouldn't do it.
31:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So pulling the lens back here for a minute, the book has dozens of characters and luckily for us readers, it has a cast of characters at the end.
31:14
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about five pages long.
31:16
[SPEAKER_02]: The most fascinating to me was Mussolini's lover and mentor Margarita Sarfati, an art critic from an elite Jewish family in Venice.
31:27
[SPEAKER_02]: What the heck was she doing with Mussolini?
31:30
[SPEAKER_00]: What, you know, she was drawn as many intellectuals are to power.
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: She was drawn to, he obviously had a charisma.
31:39
[SPEAKER_00]: and a sexual charisma, and I think she too felt she could control him.
31:45
[SPEAKER_00]: He will go to art galleries and she's connected him up with artists, because the thing about Mussolini, as it distinct from some of the other thug dictators we've seen, is that he was actually a smart and more intellectual person than most of the rest of the society.
32:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of my favorite moments in this thing, and this is how Scarfati enters,
32:06
[SPEAKER_00]: is that Mussolini is going to address a group of his thugs.
32:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And at one point he says something like, if I can ship to quotation from Gertre, and then does it, and he thought it would be quoting Gertre to his black shirts, says something.
32:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, what was interesting when I was reading around this, you know, I was reading Luigi Barzini's book on the Italians, which has a great chapter in Mussolini.
32:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that he says is that Mussolini was a brilliant journalist.
32:37
[SPEAKER_00]: When he ran Levanti, the socialist paper, he was worshiped as the great writer for that paper and was a great journalist.
32:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he started a popular Italian, which is the right wing paper.
32:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was a great writer.
32:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are examples of his writing in this book.
32:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And you think he's a good, vivid writer.
32:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Scarfati is
32:57
[SPEAKER_00]: with this charismatic kind of animalistic guy who wants power, you think you can control him, but you're surrounded by what is obviously energy.
33:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, he is charismatic.
33:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I think when you look at him now, it's kind of comically charismatic.
33:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, but he must have had something because he was plowing through women in those years, like nobody's business.
33:17
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, one of the recurring themes is like, you know, like every forty pages, there's some new young woman that that he's drawn to his wife and scarf out of the two continuing ones, at least in this first part of the book.
33:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And even by the end, she has the problem that she's now under her forties.
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's pretty much all over her son.
33:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Why does Antonio Scurati call this a novel?
33:40
[SPEAKER_02]: The history, as far as I know, is completely accurate.
33:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm told the book was vetted by real historians to make sure the places and the dates and the quotes were all correct.
33:49
[SPEAKER_02]: All the events really happened.
33:51
[SPEAKER_02]: All the characters were real people.
33:53
[SPEAKER_02]: He has real documentary sources at the end of every chapter.
33:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Why is this a novel?
33:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's a novel because he actually is telling you what Mussolini's thinking.
34:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the thing you can't know.
34:05
[SPEAKER_00]: You can infer what Mussolese thinking.
34:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, and your dramatizing scenes you didn't actually see.
34:11
[SPEAKER_00]: These days, I mean, you know, like if you think of like a Norman Mailer reported thing, what I think of, for example, of like full novelistic version might be the autumn of the Patriarch, my Garcia Marquez, or El Senior Presidenti, like those are the ones where you're making up a dictator.
34:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there would be like things like soldier needs in doing Stalin, where you're kind of doing it satirically.
34:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas what's interesting about this is I think he's trying in so far as he can't give him that he doesn't like Mussolini.
34:43
[SPEAKER_00]: To more or less give Mussolini his do.
34:46
[SPEAKER_00]: in terms of how he thinks about things.
34:48
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not a completely unsympathetic character in this book because he actually has normal thoughts along the way.
34:58
[SPEAKER_00]: His politics are monstrous, but he comes off as a human being, even in the places where he's constantly being weak.
35:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Which I think is one of the other interesting things, because his whole point is to rise to the top.
35:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's constantly caught in the way that I think sometimes that all politicians are, but even Trump, like Trump, he wants to seem tough all the time, but even as if I seem tough here, that's going to hurt me.
35:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to be loved also.
35:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I want the country to think I should be in charge of everything.
35:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can't do it.
35:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they kind of get caught up in this bind.
35:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and Muslims have that happens to him all the time.
35:36
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, end your stuck with the fact that you have thugs you don't like.
35:41
[SPEAKER_00]: who are your base?
35:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and what do you do with it?
35:44
[SPEAKER_00]: That can be paralyzing, too.
35:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And then once again, the other Trump analogy is that in the end, he made it because rich and powerful people supported him.
35:56
[SPEAKER_00]: They could have stopped him and they didn't, and you think of like the rich and powerful people that you keep reading about who are for Trump, even though they should probably think, he's gonna mess up the economy with those tariffs.
36:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless, they don't think that.
36:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So this book, Em, a son of the century, was published in Italy in twenty eighteen.
36:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was followed in twenty twenty two by the next book in the series titled Em The Man of Providence.
36:26
[SPEAKER_02]: That was published coincide with the hundredth anniversary of Mussolini's march on Roman was a very big deal in Italy.
36:33
[SPEAKER_02]: The third book in the series has also been published in the Talian.
36:37
[SPEAKER_02]: The last days of Europe, which focuses on Mussolini from nineteen thirty eight to nineteen forty, that was published last year in Italy.
36:45
[SPEAKER_02]: All three were hugely successful best sellers.
36:48
[SPEAKER_02]: The fourth and final volume is in the works.
36:52
[SPEAKER_02]: We have heard that Harper the publisher here is considering publishing an abridged translation of the next two.
37:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you ready to go to work on that one?
37:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I think maybe I could live with the abridgment.
37:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure how much of my life I want to give to Mussolini.
37:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think maybe these are the most interesting years.
37:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I think one of the interesting things that he merges from the book that probably people kind of knew but maybe didn't know is that he's not anti-Semitic.
37:23
[SPEAKER_00]: that not only does he have the Jewish lover who he really likes, he was hiring Jewish architects, he liked Jewish writer.
37:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only because basically to play Kate Hitler that he turns anti-Semitic, but it's not a gut feeling for him.
37:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a driving principle.
37:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't mind reading about that period.
37:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Part I want to get to is where his hanging from his heels in nineteen forty five.
37:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, that's a bit, that's a bit, I was recently in Milan and unfortunately the gas station where they did that is no longer there.
37:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's either next door to or has been replaced by a McDonald's, which I think is so, some sort of wonderful historical thing.
38:01
[SPEAKER_02]: The book is Antonio Scarotti's mammoth novel about the rise of Mussolini in some of the century, seven hundred seventy-three pages translated by Anne Milano Apel.
38:13
[SPEAKER_02]: It's scarier than Stephen King.
38:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Is scarier and even though you quite rightly began this by saying that there are so many ways that our America is not like nineteen nineteen Italy.
38:25
[SPEAKER_00]: As you read it, like every few pages, you'll get something that will give you a shiver of recognition.
38:30
[SPEAKER_00]: of realizing how these things play out a hundred years later.
38:34
[SPEAKER_02]: A shiver of recognition, John Powers, thanks for our summer reading, Beach Pick.
38:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It is always my pleasure, John.
38:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Antonio Scoratti's novel about the rise of Mussolini, M son of the century, is out now in paperback, it's eight hundred pages long.
38:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been translated into forty languages and made into a TV series, which is showing now in English on Ruby.
39:00
[SPEAKER_02]: The next four volumes of the biography as a novel have been published in Italian, making it total of five volumes in Italian, but the last four are not available in English.
39:15
[SPEAKER_02]: We spoke with John Powers about Scorhati's volume one in August, twenty twenty four.
39:35
[SPEAKER_02]: You've been listening to start making sense, a podcast from the nation magazine, recorded in Los Angeles at our Blight Avenue Studios.
39:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Renee Reynolds is our associate producer, Alan Minski is our producer,
39:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Ludwig Hurtado is executive producer.
39:51
[SPEAKER_02]: D.D.
39:51
[SPEAKER_02]: gutton plan is editor of the nation, Boskarshan Kara is president of the nation, and Ketrina Vandenhuvul is publisher and editorial director of the nation.
40:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Our theme music is from Barcelona, Afrobeat, licensed by Creative Commons.
40:06
[SPEAKER_02]: You can find out more about start making sense at TheNation.com.
40:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can subscribe to start making sense on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
40:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm John Weener.
40:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for listening.