If Mussolini Walked Into 2025…

How would Benito Mussolini perceive our modern world, one hundred years after he rose to power? Imagine the Duce walking into a world where neon signs, borderless capital, and interactive institutions are all present. As the head of state, he desired a nation that moved in unison and was a man of unity myths and marching rhythms. Modern life is noisy, hurried, and interconnected. He would be thrilled by some of it. He would be furious about most of it. The ultranationalist dictator Mussolini placed a premium on hierarchy, showmanship, and conflict.

Following this, I will answer the question you really wanted answered—how would he rate Donald Trump's recent tactics—by outlining what he would probably approve of and what would annoy him. Along these lines, I will explain why this discussion is important, not only in Rome but worldwide.

What Mussolini Would Applaud

1) High tech levers of control
He prized surveillance and coordination. He could never have imagined the level of accuracy made possible by today's algorithmic throttles, facial recognition, data exhaust, and phone tracking. A leader can control the content that millions see, the people that get flagged, and the trends with easy clicks. The dream of central dashboards that steer society, that is very close to his taste. My view.

2) Direct-to-consumer megaphones
Mussolini adored choreographed piazzas, newsreels, and radio because they brought the leader closer to the audience. With social media, it's the same thing, but done much more quickly. A leader can stream, provoke, recast the narrative, and drown editors. That theater would make him feel right at home.

3) Spectacle in concrete and steel
He branded power with avenues and forums. Modern megaprojects like high-speed rail, monumental stadiums, and glittering neighborhoods all use the same photo language to convey command, momentum, and destiny. The pictures used in the press practically serve as storyboards.

4) State-guided capitalism, light or heavy
Inside a pyramidal structure, his corporatism united workers, businesses, and the government. He would nod in agreement whenever governments directed subsidies, tariffs, or targeted credit toward important industries—even though modern industrial policy isn't that. The choreography appeals to his instincts.

5) Permanent emergency
Fast pivots and rule by decree were his preferences. This rhythm suits him well: emergency powers that become routine, faster border actions and policing, and publics that accept tradeoffs for security.

6) Demographic crusades
He ran a “battle for births.” Today’s hand-wringing over fertility, with incentives and political slogans about family size, would sound familiar. Any policy that makes reproduction a national priority would have his full support.

7) Nationality as a story, not a passport
Campaigns for cultural uniformity, sovereignty rhetoric, and rituals surrounding borders are all familiar territory for him. He told a story of one people moving as one body. When political movements reuse that metaphor, he would smile.

8) Military swagger at scale
Regardless of whether the battlefield is digital or alpine, he would be pleased with parades, uniforms, flyovers, drones, cyber units that pose for the press, and the performance of strength.

9) Myth-mining the past
By covering newly-built boulevards with repurposed statues, he brought together romanità and the modern state. Politburo members who envelop policies in a nostalgic sense of civilization or who stand next to ancient sites to capture their energy come across as familiar.

10) The Power of Outrage
A mob is more quickly bound by wrath than by agreement, and he knew this. Future media ecosystems that promote strong opinions and encourage conflict would appear to be a blessing.

What Would Make Him Bristle

1) Supranational chains on the fist
The European Union, human rights tribunals, and trade regimes supersede national laws, which act as brakes. He did not want any arbitrator to have more weight than the country had. The paperwork would infuriate him.

2) The end of empire
He portrayed himself as someone who could bring imperial dominance back to the Mediterranean and Africa. His work is undermined by a post-colonial standard that views conquest as a criminal act.

3) The liberal tripwire web
We have independent courts, a press that speaks out, watchdog agencies, and civil society groups that organize and litigate all to slow down one man. He worked to dissolve those checks. He would view them as sabotage.

4) Women’s autonomy
Issues such as women's economic independence, political leadership, access to abortion, and birth control went against his traditional family policy. He wanted mothers as soldiers of the cradle. Modern life tells a freer story.

5) The rights of LGBTQ people and open pluralism
Contrary to his enforced uniformity, there are laws that guarantee same-sex couples legal equality, anti-discrimination regulations, and shared public space for anyone.

6) Migrant cities
Urban life that is multiethnic and multilingual puts diversity front and center, not in a footnote. He wanted a single voice, not a chorus.

7) Consumer culture that leaps borders
The influence of multinational corporations, international investment, and transnational fashion cycles dilutes the authority of national narratives. Difficult to control, simple to reproduce.

8) Unions that are not on a leash
Free unions that strike or bargain without state permission oppose his corporatist chain of command.

9) Memory that condemns fascism
Museums of dictatorship, school curricula on the Resistance, bans on fascist symbols, these frame his project as a warning label. He wanted a family portrait, not a rap sheet.

10) Tech he cannot capture
Free-source communities, decentralized networks, and end-to-end encryption all reject the idea of a master key. He would demand back doors. Math would tell him no.

The Roman Angle

Mussolini treated Rome as a stage set. The Via dell’Impero sliced through neighborhoods to clear a sightline from Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum. He choreographed parades that threaded antiquity and modernity, a visual claim that the ancient empire had licensed the new regime. That move, turning heritage into a brand toolkit, keeps echoing. Any modern leader who repackages ruins as a political halo, not as shared inheritance, is playing a version of his game. Rome still teaches media literacy, if we care to look.

Would He Approve of Trump's Recent Strategies?

My initial reaction is "yes," but I will be critical of the outliers. I should probably preface this by saying that I will not be weighing in on the policy's merits.

What he would applaud

• Direct line to the crowd.
  Mussolini's preference for unfiltered leader-to-mass communication is mirrored in Trump's rally culture, snappy slogans, and continual use of personal channels to sidestep traditional media. The format rewards presence and repetition. It is built for dominance theater.

• Language as a sorting tool.
  Classic strongman signals include polarizing labels, degrading barbs, and "day one" promises. The public is polarized into supporters, detractors, and onlookers, and they dare institutions to put a stop to the spectacle. Mussolini liked language that made politics feel like a battlefield. The rhythm would be familiar to him.

• Personal control over the party machine.
  A leader cult develops when a political party begins to center its platform, finances, and personnel around a single individual. Mussolini used his party as a means to further his own interests. When a modern leader reshapes the party to fit his profile, that rings bells.

• Plans to purge and replace.
  Proposals that weaken civil service protections for policy roles and make it easier to fire and install loyalists align with his instinct. He remade the state to obey. Any blueprint that promises a similar pivot would catch his eye.

• Hard talk about borders and mass removals.
  Vows of large scale deportations, militarized frames, and images of order restored speak to his taste for visible force. He wanted to prove that the state could act decisively.

• Ideas incubated outside government.
  Parallel think-tank policy books and personnel rosters, ready to slot into office, mirror his habit of nurturing power centers that orbit the leader. It shortens the distance between campaign and control.

Where he would frown

• The brakes still bite.
  Courts intervene, journalists dig, federalism splits authority, elections flip the board. Mussolini wanted a one-party state that absorbed the press, subordinated the courts, and fused police with party aims. He would see a system that still says no, too often and too loudly.

• No formal corporatist pyramid.
  He did not stop at rhetoric, he outlawed strikes, folded unions into state structures, and codified a hierarchy where labor and business served national goals under party supervision. Populist nationalism is not the same thing. American institutions, markets, and culture remain stubbornly plural.

• No party militia with legal impunity.
  He leaned on the Blackshirts before the full legal takeover. Contemporary U.S. politics, for all its edge, keeps paramilitary power at a distance from formal party organs. He would see this as a constraint.

• Thin civil-religion scaffolding.
  Mussolini wrapped policies in a full myth, with ceremonies, architecture, and a canon of slogans that reached into every school and workplace. Trump trades in mythic gestures, but not in an all-encompassing state myth fused to urban redesign and a classicist cult.

My opinion on the bottom line: Mussolini would admire the show, the speed talk, and the personalization of power. He would dislike that the system still resists, that courts, media, states, and civil society can slow or block a leader’s will. He would want the levers without the guardrails.

Why This Thought Experiment Matters

Why bother hanging out with a ghost, you may wonder. Methods are eternal, unlike humans. The methods that drive mass politics, such as using scapegoating or procedural shortcuts, continue to be used, particularly during times of anxiety. The earlier you recognize the pattern, the better.

• Extravagance can overshadow substance.
  People pay attention to stadium rallies and videos that go viral. Focus turns into oxygen, and oxygen turns into power. The solution is not to avoid participation altogether, but rather to design forms that value transparency and responsibility above friction.

• Language shapes possibility.
  When leaders tag opponents as less than human or cast politics as a siege, the public grows numb to restraints. Answering that move requires disciplined speech, not scolding, that rehumanizes and reframes without ceding punch.

• Institutions do their job when they feel inconvenient.
  Courts that delay, journalists who pry, and local leaders who refuse face pressure to step aside for speed. That friction is not a bug. It is the price of living in a system where power circulates and no single person owns the machine.

• History is a mirror, not a script.
  Rome’s lessons are not only marble and myth. They are also the story of how showpieces were used to sanctify control, and how a later generation taught children to read those monuments with different eyes. The city holds both stagecraft and antidote.

How To Read Modern Politics With Roman Clarity

A practical lens, for citizens and leaders alike.

• Ask who benefits from the rush.
  If urgency is the reason to short-circuit debate, ask what cannot survive daylight. Sometimes speed is needed. Sometimes it is cover.

• Watch for the merger of party, state, and leader.
  When messages, money, and machinery fuse around one figure, internal critique grows risky. The health of a movement shows in how it treats dissent inside the tent.

• Follow the pipeline from rhetoric to rule.
  Proposals to purge, centralize, and rewrite hiring rules are not mere HR chatter. They are power maps. Read them closely.

• Track who gets named as a threat.
  Crises can be real. The move to cast whole groups as contagion is a tell. It flattens complexity and licenses excess.

• Protect spaces that resist capture.
  Independent unions, local press, civic groups, and open-source communities slow monopoly. They are political biodiversity.

A Roman Postscript

Walk the stretch from Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum and look with two sets of eyes. One pair sees the staging, the carved perspectives, the inscriptions that once tried to fix a single story of glory and order. The other sees a living city that escaped that script, a place of layered voices and stubborn improvisation. Both truths are present. The lesson is not to fear power, it is to insist that power be answerable, audible, and shared.

Closing Thought

Authoritarians love tools that compress complexity into command. Democrats in the small-d sense love habits that disperse power, protect difference, and make leaders explain themselves. Our world offers new tools to both sides. That is why this question, would Mussolini like what he sees, is not just about him. It is about us, how we build, speak, and disagree without breaking the frame.