I’d like to remind Charlie and all my fellow Bulwarkians that in fascist Italy the trains did NOT run on time. They were notoriously inconsistent, often late and frequently broken.
Why then does this myth about fascist efficiency exist? Because propaganda. Mussolini was a former politico and he had a flair for this. They made a few touris…
I’d like to remind Charlie and all my fellow Bulwarkians that in fascist Italy the trains did NOT run on time. They were notoriously inconsistent, often late and frequently broken.
Why then does this myth about fascist efficiency exist? Because propaganda. Mussolini was a former politico and he had a flair for this. They made a few tourist carrying lines run hyper efficiently. However the rest of the rails, some 80%+ was horribly mismanaged to the point of absurdity. This Potemkin train lines thing was just done to bolster the image of Il Duce.
The sweet irony is because the fascist Italy railways were bad and the image was pure propaganda, by the time they were in a proper war, they couldn’t access the Mediterranean for fuel. It had to be brought across the Alps. The trains were not up to it. Only 2 of 9 rails through the Alps had double tracks and could move less than 25% of Italy’s peacetime requirements.
It’s all a mirage people. Repeat it loud and clear. Anyone saying the “trains ran on time” is either naive, a bad faith actor, or a rabid authoritarian. Don’t let them get away with spouting nonsense that was disproved a few months into WWII…
Anyone citing "the trains run on time" as an *upside* of authoritarianism. Although the phrase came from Fascist propaganda, it's had a longer life in political science as a metaphor for tradeoffs between efficiency/security and freedom. Very few of the references I've seen over the years were actually talking about Mussolini's Italy, rather than this derived concept.
Indeed, many phrases are usually borrowed or molded into a different scenario as time goes on.
Still think it’s very important we flag the root of it, as without the historical context we lose some of the nuance.
This particular one: trading one’s freedoms for “efficiency”, or the perception of it in this case, and security, is a core tenet of authoritarianism and something that deeply worries me. By making it “just a saying/reference” we devalue the awful stuff that was associated with it.
I’d like to remind Charlie and all my fellow Bulwarkians that in fascist Italy the trains did NOT run on time. They were notoriously inconsistent, often late and frequently broken.
Why then does this myth about fascist efficiency exist? Because propaganda. Mussolini was a former politico and he had a flair for this. They made a few tourist carrying lines run hyper efficiently. However the rest of the rails, some 80%+ was horribly mismanaged to the point of absurdity. This Potemkin train lines thing was just done to bolster the image of Il Duce.
The sweet irony is because the fascist Italy railways were bad and the image was pure propaganda, by the time they were in a proper war, they couldn’t access the Mediterranean for fuel. It had to be brought across the Alps. The trains were not up to it. Only 2 of 9 rails through the Alps had double tracks and could move less than 25% of Italy’s peacetime requirements.
It’s all a mirage people. Repeat it loud and clear. Anyone saying the “trains ran on time” is either naive, a bad faith actor, or a rabid authoritarian. Don’t let them get away with spouting nonsense that was disproved a few months into WWII…
Anyone citing "the trains run on time" as an *upside* of authoritarianism. Although the phrase came from Fascist propaganda, it's had a longer life in political science as a metaphor for tradeoffs between efficiency/security and freedom. Very few of the references I've seen over the years were actually talking about Mussolini's Italy, rather than this derived concept.
Indeed, many phrases are usually borrowed or molded into a different scenario as time goes on.
Still think it’s very important we flag the root of it, as without the historical context we lose some of the nuance.
This particular one: trading one’s freedoms for “efficiency”, or the perception of it in this case, and security, is a core tenet of authoritarianism and something that deeply worries me. By making it “just a saying/reference” we devalue the awful stuff that was associated with it.