Il Duce Bags

ver heard of a place called Predappio? Wow, it’s weird. We came across it by accident when travelling through central Italy on holiday last month. It’s a small, backward, rural village that really isn’t that different from any other small, backward, rural village in central Italy apart from the fact that its economy is based on being a living, breathing tribute to the inventor of fascism; their most famous son, Benito Mussolini! That’s kind of like if the place where Hitler was born (Braunau, Austria) had a water slide park in the shape of a swastika, or if London had a statue of Bomber Harris, the guy who firebombed Dresden. Oh wait, it does.

The locals in Predappio are divided into two groups. There are those who do their best to ignore the blood-soaked history of the village they live in, and those who are very happy to milk the fascist cow for all its worth, selling cute little trinkets and souvenirs such as Nazi flags, white-power wine, Hitler snow globes, or Mussolini batons with which to hit people.

We ended up spending a couple of days there, and we even convinced the locals to give us a tour of Mussolini’s private residence. We had to promise not to take pictures and all that, but luckily for you guys we have no qualms about lying to people’s faces. Especially if they are crazy, fascist assholes!