| November 3 |  |
Editor says, what if Mussolini had emigrated to New York City? muses Ed. & Tony Rocca. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the November 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1902, on this day the steamship carrying nineteen year old Benito Mussolini docked at Ellis Island in Upper New York Bay.
Rise of Il DuceBorn in Dovia di Predappio, a small town in the province of Forli in Emilia-Romagna, he had emigrated from his native Italy in order to seek work and also to avoid military service. However he was unable to find a permanent job in New York and drifted into the criminal underclass of Little Italy.
Over many years he established a reputation for a unique boldness that eventually brought him to the attention of organized crime bosses. And by the 1930s, he had become the minor figure known as "Il Duce" - his rise restricted only by his non-Sicilian roots.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: Benito Mussolini, Italy, Italian, New York, Il Duce. Editor says, in reality he emigrated to Switzerland and once in power he actually tried to destroy the Mafia. Please also note that in preparing this post we have re-purposed content from Wikipedia.
~ More likely he becomes a radical journalist and one of the founders of the US Communist Party with Jack Reed et al. Mafia as we now know it was a southern Italian thing. They did not take in folks from north of Napoli.
~ They didn't take in anyone not Sicilian. Capone's parents were from Napoli and while he was tolerated by the Mafia, he was never a member.
~ I was using Mafia in the colloquial as opposed to exact. You are however correct that Organized Crime is not exactly Mafia/La Causa Nostre.
~ If he had stood around thrusting out his jaw that way, I believe the other mobsters would have laughed at him.
~ I'd say he was ruthless enough to make it in organized crime, but was he competent enough?
~ Hitler said that Musolini had influenced him, so who knows what would have happened if Il Duce had not been around.
~ @Eric - the young Benito was a political radical which by itself was a bar to joining OC.
@Jackie - all that happens is that Hitler uses other models - right populist national bolshevism was happening more places than just Italy.
~ "National bolshevism"?
As it happens, Nazi ideology borrowed heavily from English and French racist sources, notably Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Charles de Gobineaau, neither of whom could credibly be called a leftist.
~ Yes Hitler took from many places. However the part from Benny the Moose is essentially national Bolshevism.
~ He definitely could've made it with the Italian Anti-Defamation League, founded fifty years earlier.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
