On the periphery of Rome, not far from the Vatican, stands a towering obelisk named for Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator and ally of Adolf Hitler. On a recent visit to the city, my taxi driver knew exactly where it was and found nothing remarkable about a request to go there.
The Mussolini Obelisk, standing watch over the Foro Italico sports complex, served as the starting point for my atypical tour of the Eternal City’s “fascist architecture.” At the very outset, our tour group asked our guide: Why has the Mussolini Obelisk not been removed from what appears to be a place of honor?
For an American visitor, it was the obvious question. We have become accustomed to the removal of the likenesses of Confederate generals and even Christopher Columbus from public places. But it was not a difficult question for our guide to answer: “In Italy, we view it as history.” Efforts to remove it had fizzled.
The loss that comes from laundering the past was made clear to us in the historical lesson our tour group received that day—a lesson that would have been impossible if cancel culture, American-style, had prevailed. Over more than four hours, the reminders—and remainders—of “Il Duce” served as a point of entry to a history that underscored why we view Mussolini as an historic villain. At the same time, they provided a series of clues to help answer the question that prompted me to book the tour in the first place: How was it that the country of the Renaissance, of great art and great literature, had veered so far off course as to help enable the Holocaust?
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