Is he only seen as a bad guy because he allied with Hitler?

Is he only seen as a bad guy because he allied with Hitler?

Is his reputation really warranted?

He's actions in Ethiopia and reputation surrounding his ideology would still doom him

>Is his reputation really warranted?
Yes he was a retarded incompetent regardless of the Pact with Hitler

t. Italian

He's pretty much the father of modern fascism. Not only that, but Hitler and the Nazis took influence from him and what he did in Italy when they took hold of Germany.

Hell, you can argue that if there was no Mussolini, there would be no Hitler (or at least an extremely different Hitler). You'd probably be wrong, but you can still argue it.

This

Mussolini's mindset was severely outdated for the 1930's, he should have built an ideological empire of alliances and partners instead of the meme "Hurrr we wuz Roman" colonial meme he tried to pull off.

He genocided like 1/4th of Libya.

He was highly popular among Italians until the war started and he started fucking everything up IIRC.
All the countries were colonising by this point, he was just dealing with unfinished business.

He fucked up when he invaded Greece.

I'm more talking about the usage of gas in Ethiopia rather then annexing it

What does that eagle medal of his mean?

is this bait? roman empire

I thought rome was about a wolf

AAAAH
The founders of rome were raised by wolves.
The sigil of rome was still the eagle.

the eagle was their symbol, its hard to put a wolf with romulus and remus on a signifer pole

this fuck force fed people castor oil that were found publicly intoxicated

Saudi Arabia much?

Things might have worked out pretty well for him if he stayed out of the war and provided Germany material support.

If he didn't ally with Hitler he would have "just" been seen as another Franco.

The relationship between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini started out complicated and even adversarial (When Hitler first tried to take Austria in 1934 only Mussolini sent tanks to the border threatening war with Germany forcing Hitler to back down. However, just four years later Mussolini was totally in Hitler's side and approved Anschluss the union of Germany and Austria. Hitler was so grateful that he swore to never betray him), got better in the later 1930s as a result of various international events (especially when Hitler even sent a special forces unit to rescue Mussolini from a resort high in the Apennine mountains when he was deposed and held prisioner there). Still had its ups and downs though, but the two men (almost) always respected each other after after this point. I my opinion Hitler was an anoying fanboy of Mussolini, whereas Mussolini was often much more willing to express his frustrations with Hitler's autistic ideas. In the end this close relationship between germany and italy lead them to share their same sad destiny.

If you are a liberal or lefty, then nothing will make you respect mussolini.

You know the whole Italianization thing was not nice

>it's 1923
>An Italian General gets murdered near the Greek border
>Even though no one knows who the assailants are Italy demands huge sums of money from Greece and demands they lick their boots.
> Greece offers to boot lick and pay out a smaller indemnity.
>Italy attacks and occupies Corfu
> Italy then whines about how the international community is being mean. Threatens to pull out of the league if Greece doesn't fork over money
>Gets away with this.
>Thirteen years later
>Invade Ethiopia
>Bomb a Red Cross Hospital and use poison gas.
>whine about how the international community is being mean by applying sanctions.
Mussolini was the whiny bitch of Europe.

Yes he was an authoritarian dictator who seized power using violent means and waged imperialist wars in Africa. He deserved everything he got.

>t. cosmopolitan liberator of social justice

Mussolini:
>Uniting Italy and Vatican (by minimal compromise of allowing religious studies in primary schools) - something considered impossible by the liberal governments preceeding March on Rome and the unity broken by the 'Christian'/Socialist coalition governments following him
>Ending class hatred and forming (almost) Corporative state; not going full retard with five- or four-year-plan with the aim of heavy armament (but thus in 1938 no longer could stop the Anschluss like in 1934 - when four Italian divisions alone stopped it and when Anglos and France did nothing)
>Being the good guy loved by every conservative Anglo-Saxon before being forced to form the Italian Empire and finally being forced to the Germans, because of the complete indifference to the European peace by Brittons and French
>Not being blindly Nationalist (knowing full well that Italians are nothing but Mediterraean bastards of many nations) like the ('He's mad, he's mad!') Austrian steeling the opportunistic parts of his political system
>Loved by the Italian Popolo, who always flogged the streets before Palazo Venezia, cheering 'Duce' so enthustiacally that he coudn't deliver a speech; the same Popolo playing innocent 'Anti-Fascists' and joining the 'resistance' en masse after the Communist partisans had summary executed him and his lover Petacci and after the Allies had liberated Italy from German occupation
>The Fascist Italians, who didn't release a single Jew to the Germans before the formation RSI (which obviously was a German puppet state, in which Duce had no power at all) and formed refuges for the Jews in areas occupied by them in France and the East.

Mussolini seems like a downright liberal wimp compared to what the Anglos and the Americans were doing (colonization, sterilization of undesirables, eugenics, racial segregation concentration camps, massacres left and right, imperialism). It's also highly ironic that Hitler is seen as the "bad guy" for doing pretty much the same shit Anglos were doing for the last 300 years.

I was unaware that America ever committed genocides of any kind.

>inb4 Native Americans

Dying due to diseases is not genocide.

You could argue that their genocide was entirely on purpose but there were things like the trail of tears and just general mass acts of violence, wounded knee for example. Sure we didn't kill as many as disease did, but we genocided the fuck out of the in'juns

>lol guys we dindun nuffin

not really constering what everyone else was doing around that time. No one starved in peace time which was progress things were built that are still used today.

>Where did you learn to fly

He neutered the Italian military at a basic operational level by creating the Binary Division so he could look bigger on paper. Retard.

I don't see him as a bad guy, he's just too comical for that.

Italian fascism originally supported Mediterraneanism which would have been a decent ideological alternative to the Nordicism and antisemitism of the nazis.

ASS

>lul manifest destiny was nothing