We can thank MI5 for Benito Mussolini

2 posts / 0 new

Tue, 2009-10-13 20:07

Doug

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/13/benito-mussolini-recruited-mi5-italy

History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce's CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.

Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.

It's reminiscent of the big American "oops" of funding Islamic fundamentalists.

Tue, 2009-10-13 20:19

Fidel

Quote:
Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: "Britain's least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning - equivalent to about £6,000 a week today."
Hoare, later to become Lord Templewood, mentioned the recruitment in memoirs in 1954, but Martland stumbled on details of the payments for the first time while scouring Hoare's papers.
As well as keeping the presses rolling at Il Popolo d'Italia, the newspaper he edited, Mussolini also told Hoare he would send Italian army veterans to beat up peace protesters in Milan, a dry run for his fascist blackshirt units.

Fascinating. Democracy is the right's most hated institution and always will be.