Those who forget the lessons of psychohistory
by Tom Sullivan
Smirking Chimp's Jeff Tiedrich links to a Guardian account of how the press mis-covered rising political stars in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.
The press largely dismissed them as curiosities, John Broich writes, with most coverage of Benito Mussolini, for example, "neutral, bemused or positive in tone." For the exception, Broich links to this stinging account by Ernest Hemingway of Mussolini at a conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. "The biggest bluff in Europe," Hemingway wrote of the Italian leader:"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."— (((Jeff Tiedrich))) (@jefftiedrich) December 13, 2016
-- George Santayana, The Life of Reasonhttps://t.co/yPttmXsM1C pic.twitter.com/uCLNcmLCF2
The Fascist dictator had announced he would receive the press. Everybody came. We all crowded into the room. Mussolini sat at his desk reading a book. His face was contorted into the famous frown. He was registering Dictator. Being an ex-newspaper man himself he knew how many readers would be reached by the accounts the men in the room would write of the interview he was about to give. And he remained absorbed in his book. Mentally he was already reading the lines of the two thousand papers served by the two hundred correspondents. “As we entered the room the Black Shirt Dictator did not look up from the book he was reading, so intense was his concentration, etc.”But what damage even a big bluff can do. Too late the world discovered its miscalculation. As Tiedrich alludes, we may be about to repeat that mistake of history.
I tip-toed over behind him to see what the book was he was reading with such avid interest. It was a French-English dictionary – held upside down.