Over the course of three years the fascist colonial authorities in the […] colony of Cyrenaica emptied an entire region of its people in an effort to quell an anti-colonial rebellion and prepare the colony for settlement and incorporation into Mussolini’s envisioned Fascist empire. In this short time span, fascist authorities forcibly deported the semi-nomadic peoples of Cyrenaica from their homeland in the Jebel region and interned them in concentration camps on the desert coast.

These policies resulted in the deaths of more than half of the semi-nomadic population of Cyrenaica, the decimation of their herds, and the near elimination of their way of life. [Fascist] Italy proudly broadcast this episode of colonial conquest to its fellow Western imperial powers who watched a genocide unfold with relative disinterest.

This international neglect provided Fascist Italy with the opportunity to pursue its genocidal policies with minimal consequences or scrutiny, strengthen its geopolitical position in colonial Africa, and elaborate an increasingly radical, violent, and self-assured ideology for […] Fascist colonialism.

[…]

Over a period of four short years the Fascist colonial government forcibly deported an estimated 100,000 “semi-nomadic” people from the colony’s interior and held them in a string of 16 concentration camps on the Mediterranean Coast.

From 1929 to 1934 Cyrenaica’s estimated population dropped from 225,000 to 142,000, indicating that 83,000 people disappeared from the colony in only five years. Of the 83,000 missing, about 60,000–70,000 are believed to have died as a result of the policies of deportation and internment.²

[…]

With the rebellion in Tripolitania crushed and the Benghazi parliament formally suppressed, the fascist regime was free to use whatever means necessary to “pacify” Cyrenaica. The “pacification” of Cyrenaica was by no means the first time that the Italian government employed novel weapons and tactics against its colonial subjects.

The initial invasion of Libya in 1911 saw the first use of aeronautical anti-civilian tactics. The [Regia Aeronautica] would swoop low over Libyan villages and hand-drop explosives on military targets in order to terrorize the civilian population.²³

The Fascists utilized airplanes in Libya again in 1926 when [Fascist] Italy became the first country to intentionally use poisonous gas against civilian populations by dropping canisters of phosgene gas on caravans in the Libyan interior.²⁴

By the end of the 1920s the military situation in Cyrenaica had become untenable for the [Fascists]. Omar al-Mukhtar’s highly mobile guerrilla bands known as duar were able to attack [Fascist] military positions and then quickly disappear back into civilian society making them nearly impossible for a formal army to suppress.

The Governor of Cyrenaica from 1926 to 1929, Attilio Terruzzi, bemoaned that even armies of 5,000 or 10,000 men were insufficient against even a few hundred guerilla fighters who, owing to their semi-nomadic lifestyle, weren’t tied to any specific location and seemed to be able to appear and disappear spontaneously across hundreds of kilometers.²⁵ Terruzzi’s strategy was to use brute force and technological superiority to combat an enemy with better knowledge of the terrain and integration into the local society.

Mattan here. I am the executive director of Refuser Solidarity Network and an Israeli refuser. Last week, for the first time in many years, a reserve soldier was jailed for refusing to serve in protest of the ongoing genocide. His name is Daniel Yahalom, and he is refusing over the barbaric genocide in Gaza and the ongoing settler-military takeover of the West Bank.

From the beginning, we've made it clear: the military cannot afford mass refusal. They're trying to project strength, but the longer this war drags on, the more the cracks begin to show. They hoped punishment would break our resolve, but they're only strengthening our movement. Let's show him that he is not alone! Write a support letter to Daniel and ask 3 friends to do the same.

Daniel had already served more than 200 days since the war began. But when he understood the destruction, he made a choice. In his words: "Since October 7, I have served over 235 days in the reserves with a heavy heart. I was haunted by a heavy feeling that the fate of the hostages was being forsaken and that the war, which is largely unbridled, is being paid for in Gazan blood... The situation in the West Bank also got worse and worse... Meanwhile, what about the hostages? Every day they were dragged to the margins of the exhausted Israeli consciousness."

Following Daniel's arrest, "Soldiers for the Hostages", a group of soldiers who refuse to take part in the war on Gaza, held an emergency protest outside the military prison where Daniel is being held. They showed up wearing shirts that read: "One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust wars." Our movement made itself heard, reminding Daniel he is not alone.

This isn't just about one soldier, it never was. His arrest is a test. The government is betting that fear will silence us, that one prison cell will be enough to keep the rest in line. But his arrest has had the opposite effect, and it has only given our movement momentum. As opposition to the government and calls for the end of the war grow, the arrest of refusers continues to bring our movement into the mainstream. Hundreds have signed our refusal letter, more are joining every day, and we're not going anywhere till the end of the genocide and the occupation.

This moment marks an escalation on the part of the government, but also an opening. The media is watching while the public asks questions. People who once believed refusal was unthinkable are beginning to reconsider. That's where we come in. We're opening another way forward, a way of hope and resistance.

We fight to end the genocide, and to the systems of occupation that make wars like this inevitable. Until then, we will support all those wrongfully jailed for refusing service and the current state of affairs. We will continue to show up. At jails. At protests. In the streets. In the press. Now is the time for civil resistance. For those supporting us from afar, let's show Daniel that he is not alone! Write him a support letter and ask 3 friends to do the same.

In solidarity,

Mattan Helman
Executive Director
Refuser Solidarity Network

(Taken from an email sent to me by the Refuser Solidarity Network. Emphasis original.)

Located around three miles away from Mauthausen concentration camp, the Gusen site had attracted the SS because of its proximity to the Gusen and Kastenhof stone quarries. SS authorities purchased land at the site on May 25, 1938. Managers of the SS-owned firm Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke (DESt-German Earth and Stone Works), which used concentration camp prisoner labor to extract and finish construction materials at Mauthausen, established next to the “Wiener Graben” stone quarry in 1938, deployed a forced labor detachment from Mauthausen on a daily basis to the Gusen quarries beginning in 1938.

Tiring of marching the prisoner detachment three miles to the Gusen quarries, SS authorities authorized the construction of concentration camp Gusen in late 1939. During the winter of 1939–1940, German, Austrian, and Polish concentration camp prisoners from Mauthausen constructed the camp and prisoner barracks.

Although the site counted as an external labor detachment of Mauthausen during its initial construction, the SS opened Gusen as a separate camp on May 25, 1940, identifying the surviving 212 prisoners from the construction detachment by separate Gusen incarceration numbers and removing their names from Mauthausen records. That same day, a transport of approximately 1,084 Polish prisoners arrived in Gusen.

Over the next several weeks, the SS transferred some 8,000 Polish prisoners to Gusen from other concentration camps, including Dachau and Sachsenhausen. Gusen retained its autonomous status until early 1944. It had its own numbering system, death registry, SS guard battalion, and postal administration.

During the period of its construction, SS Sergeant Anton Streitwieser commanded the Gusen external detachment site. On July 1, 1940, SS Captain Karl Chmielewski became the camp commandant. In late 1942, SS First Lieutenant Fritz Seidler replaced him. Seidler commanded the camp until liberation.

Prisoners

In addition to German, Austrian, and Polish prisoners, the SS incarcerated in Gusen approximately 4,000 Spanish Republicans (Spanish refugees, who had found refuge from the Franco regime in France in 1939 and whom Vichy French authorities turned over to the Germans in 1940) in 1940 and 4,400 Soviet prisoners of war in 1941. Nearly three-quarters of the Spanish Republicans died in the first year at Gusen. By the beginning of 1943, fewer than 500 Soviet prisoners of war were still alive in the camp.

During the later war years, the arrival of more than 3,000 Yugoslavs, more than 9,000 Soviet civilians and more than 2,400 Frenchmen further diversified Gusen's inmate population. Yet the high mortality rate, caused in particular by Commandant Chmielewski's brutal and sadistic management of the camp, kept the prisoner population to between 6,000 and 7,000 up until 1943. Better rations and less arbitrary mistreatment led to a decrease in the death rate from the summer of 1943 until the autumn of 1944, as the SS sought to maintain its labor force.

The need for labor to construct underground tunnels in 1944, induced the SS to increase the prisoner population to more than 24,000 by the end of 1944, including the arrival of 2,750 Hungarian Jews from Auschwitz in June 1944, thousands of Polish Jews from Plaszow, Auschwitz, and Flossenbürg in the late summer and autumn of 1944, 1,000 Polish civilians captured in October 1944 during the Warsaw Home Army uprising, and some 1,500 Italian civilians.

The following appeal was issued by a coalition of grassroots, anti-war organizations including the ANSWER Coalition involved in organizing the People's Assembly for Peace and Justice

[Tomorrow], politicians from NATO countries will gather in Dayton to plot their next wars. For over 75 years, NATO has been a dealer of destruction in place like Afghanistan and Libya and threatened the entire world with devastating global conflict.

On May 25, people from across the country will gather for a protest and counter-summit — the the People's Assembly for Peace and Justice. Bus tickets from cities across the Midwest are now available!

Register for the People's Assembly here

Pittsburgh, PA
Bus departs at 6:00 a.m.
East Liberty, exact location TBD
Buy your ticket here

Louisville, KY
Car caravan departs at 8:00 a.m.
Meeting point: 236 Woodbine St
Contact to reserve a seat: [email protected]

Columbus, OH
Car caravan departs at 9:30 a.m.
Location: Mayme Moore Park, 867 Mount Vernon Ave
Contact to reserve a seat: [email protected]

Chicago, IL
Bus departs at 5:30 a.m.
140 S. Columbus Dr. in downtown Chicago
Buy your ticket here

Cincinnati, OH
Car Caravan departs 9:30 a.m.
5033 Glencrossing Way
Contact to reserve a seat: [email protected]

Please make an urgently-needed contribution today to help cover the costs of this demonstration and conference. If you are not able to attend the protest, your generous donation can help cover the costs of other attendees' bus tickets.

(Taken from an email sent to me two weeks ago by the ANSWER Coalition. Emphasis original.)

To better understand how the Italian economic connections with [the British Empire] affected those with [the Third Reich] and vice versa, the period analysed in this section is reduced to the months of Italian non-belligerency, from 1 September 1939 to 10 June 1940.

The events of these 9 months in fact show with greater clarity — actually, in some cases, they bring to light — many of the dynamics that were previously hidden. The [A]llied maritime blockade was certainly the element, that added new important and delicate issues to the general relations and particularly to the economic talks that Italy had with Great Britain — that was, de facto, the only manager of the block.

A few days after the beginning of the [Wehrmacht’s] attack on Poland, in fact, the Italian Foreign Minister had urged his London embassy to ask the competent authorities to allow the Italian ships that were in German ports on 1 September to return home without undergoing the controls of British patrols at sea.

The answer was not only a positive one, but Italian ships were even offered to be escorted by the British fleet across the North Sea. The political meaning of such an offer was not underestimated by Rome, so that Ciano ordered that “the issues of an economic nature that up to now have been dealt directly with the technical departments from today must be exclusively forwarded and managed by this Ministry”.⁶⁹

In early October, then, the Italian competent authorities started to meet the naval attaché at the British embassy in Rome on a weekly base, in order to smooth possible frictions in the controls of the maritime blockade. These meetings turned out to be the starting point for the creation at the end of the month of a permanent Anglo-Italian joint standing committee.⁷⁰

The purpose of the latter would have been not only to deal with all the issues of the blockade, but also to draft a possible commercial agreement, that, given the circumstances, was perceived immediately by both parts as a possible strategical step in the relations between the two countries. Perhaps to give more importance to this — after all — unexpected event, London decided to issue an order according to which the British would have provided assurances to their companies for the payments of Italian buyers.

[Fascist] Italy, in fact, was not only lacking foreign currency reserves to liquidate purchases abroad but had also a significative passive disbalance in the clearing with the United Kingdom.⁷¹ Showing such a trustful position, London hoped to get the negotiations off to a good start.

[…]

Coming to the British, it should be said that the already mentioned division about the position that had to be taken with [Fascist] Italy, together with the eventual unwillingness of Mussolini to send war material to London were ultimately the elements that influenced the negotiations for the commercial agreement, bringing them to a failure.

A memorandum drafted in February 1940 by the Italian Economic War Office outlined the main stages of Anglo-Italian economic relations since the outbreak of the war, and let us know that a preliminary agreement for commercial exchange was signed in November 1939 and that specific negotiations also started for the supply by [Fascist] Italy to Great Britain of other goods for military use.⁸¹

In early January Sir Wilfrid Greene, Master of The Rolls and president of the British delegation in the Joint Standing Committee, was sent to Rome as the person in charge of the negotiations, carrying tangible proposals for a radical solution to the issue of control over smuggling.⁸² Before leaving London, Greene attended a meeting at the MEW “to discuss plans for the Italian negotiations”,⁸³ but when he arrived in [Fascist] Italy he immediately understood that the problem of economic agreement with the Italians was to be treated as a political problem.

In a letter to the Foreign Secretary, in fact, he wrote clearly that the consequences of the [A]llied blockade of German coal exports departing from neutral ports (Rotterdam in primis), had gone far beyond the purely economic and commercial domain.

With this measure, the British had effectively forced the Italians to buy a much higher share of coal in Great Britain and this, while Rome’s deficit in clearing continued, inevitably implied a reduction in the amount of other commodities that the fascist government could at that point buy, as well as the danger of German reprisals.

(Emphasis added.)

Mohsen Mahdawi is a legal permanent resident of the United States. In April Mahdawi went to his naturalization interview in Vermont, the final step on his path to obtaining U.S. citizenship. But instead of receiving his citizenship, Mahdawi was kidnapped by armed and masked DHS agents in plain clothes who prevented him from interacting with his lawyer. DHS had planned to fly him to Louisiana, but he missed the flight and was instead held in a prison in Vermont, which he credits with his speedy legal process compared to students who have been held in similar situations for months.

In this, his first interview since being freed from prison, Mahdawi goes into detail about his ordeal at the hands of ICE and his family and friends’ suffering in Palestine, and it is well worth watching the full interview to hear Mahdawi speak about his life in his own words.

His final message is: “The same message that the Gazan people have been sending to us, we’re gaining strength from them… No more universities for students to attend or to graduate from in Gaza, a painful reality. They are sending us a message that there is so much more to hope for than giving up on the idea of justice and surrendering to fear and to violence. So, I say, stay strong, and we will celebrate under the sun in a matter of a very short time.”

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

Momodou Taal, who left the U.S. in March rather than allow the current administration to deport him, speaks to In These Times about a wide range of topics, including his lawsuit against the current administration’s executive orders targeting international students.

Taal articulates one of the many connections between the targeting of immigrants and the administration’s attempts to silence the pro-Palestine/anti-genocide movement: “On the campaign trail, Trump said, if you were seen at these 'pro-Hamas’ protests, we will find you and we will deport you. So Trump is making good on his promise… what we’re essentially saying in this country now is we cannot critique another government anymore, let alone the American government.”

Taal sees the current repression, however, as a sign of weakness rather than strength: “the fact that we have the largest empire in history, the most militarized empire in history, fighting against students, repressing students and compelling and forcing universities to clamp down on students, for me, that’s not a sign of strength on their part. It’s a sign that they’re losing their ideological battle.”

There is far more in this interview than will ever fit into a short blurb—check out the rest at the link above.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

“The guards don’t just walk up to people and be abusive, but if you annoy a guard or something they’ll threaten to send you to Guantanamo or El Salvador.”

This is a quote from a Venezuelan man being held at the El Paso Service Processing Center, an ICE prison in El Paso that Amnesty International has been investigating. Along with local legal aid and service providers, whose funding has been cut in the past few months, Amnesty International has written a full report on EPSPC, and it’s a harrowing tale filled with abusive prison guards, rotten food and contaminated water, lack of legal services, and a myriad of other human rights abuses.

Amnesty investigators who visited the prison also heard stories of family separation and children being left alone without supervision or support. Prisoners have been denied legal representation and access to the law library inside the prison, as well as due process. Read more from Amnesty’s report at the link above.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

Since 2021, the state of Texas, under Republican Governor Abbot and a pliant legislature, has been running their own, state-level far-right anti-immigration machine. They call this expensive, dangerous boondoggle “Operation Lone Star.” You may recall the floating death buoys in the Rio Grande, the deployment of National Guard soldiers, the construction of a border wall, and other dangerous, expensive stunts that serve only to put lives at risk on both sides of the border.

Turns out, building a round the clock hate machine is expensive, and even though the state has taken in over $50 million in donations, the money collected from yearning fascist sympathizers has barely put a dent in the $11 billion these Texas xenophobes have spent since 2021.

The House of Representatives is now considering a bill that would reimburse Texas for this costly boondoggle. The House of Representatives is considering paying them back at a time, it should be noted, when Congress is considering deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. Priorities, priorities.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

In a two paragraph order lacking any justification, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of a district court order which sought to challenge DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s reckless cancellation of Temporary Protective Status for 350,000 Venezuelan refugees on the basis of racial bias. On Monday, the Supreme Court condoned this racist discrimination which Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) at UCLA called “the largest single action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in modern US history.” This will result in the nullification of work permits and the devastating threat of detention and deportation to a country from which these children and adults fled in fear of their lives.

Of course, this decision also co-signs immunity for the Trump administration’s racist and illegal actions and undermines the Court’s own authority and responsibility to keep in check the discretion of the executive branch. TPS grants humanitarian protection to individuals when it is unsafe for them to return to their countries of origin. In the 35-year-history of the statute, TPS status has never previously been revoked.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

I have occasionally said before that the reason that I study Fascism is to educate other socialists about the subject, but that is only partially true. The other reason is that antisocialists (and sometimes even novice socialists) dish out half‐baked Reich–Soviet analogies so repetitively and tiresomely that it is nearly enough to make me lose whatever sanity that I have left, so I have to read various books and scholarly articles on Fascism to explain why the constant analogies are bullshit. Nicolas Werth—in a rare example of anticommunist honesty—said it best: ‘The more you compare Communism and Nazism, the more the differences are obvious.’

Possibly nothing illustrates this better than the relations between German and Italian Fascism. I have discussed before that Benito Mussolini would be a far more logical analogue to Adolf Schicklgruber than either one of them would be to Joseph Stalin, but relations between Fascist Italy and the Third Reich are of very little interest to presumably “antifascist” anticommunists. Perhaps somebody is afraid that a careful examination of the matter would make the German–Soviet Pact of 1939 look incredibly shallow by comparison? Who knows.

Whatever the case, it would hardly be an exaggeration to describe Mussolini and Schicklgruber as friends. As a matter of fact, they met in person more than any of the Allied leaders did! While there were, of course, bouts of relationship drama, much like in many ordinary friendships, it only took a short while before crybaby time was over and those were all water under the bridge (also like in an ordinary friendship).

Benjamin G. Martin’s The Nazi–Fascist New Order for European Culture, only one of the many books on interfascist relations, sums up the Rome–Berlin Axis in particular nicely. Page 74:

On November 1, 1936, Mussolini announced the birth of the “Rome–Berlin Axis.” This announcement marked the culmination of a process of behind‐the‐scenes negotiations between representatives of Hitler and Mussolini that had begun in the summer of 1935. Both [anticommunists] sought an ally to help them escape their international isolation and to offer cover for their expansionist projects.

The turning point had come in December 1935, when [Rome’s] military campaign in Ethiopia ran into unexpected trouble and Mussolini, hoping to distract and divide the British and French, reached out to Hitler’s Germany in an effort to redraw the balance of forces in Europe. [Rome] abruptly called off [its] earlier diplomatic overtures to the French and the Soviets, and Mussolini let [Berlin] know that he would not object if a formally independent Austria were in reality to become a [Reich] satellite.

German–Italian rapprochement accelerated in the summer of 1936 with the outbreak of Spain’s civil war, as Italian and German intelligence officials coordinated their support for Francisco Franco’s nationalist rebellion against Spain’s democratic republic. For Hitler, peeling [Fascist] Italy away from her ties to France and Britain marked a victory in his effort to undermine unified European opposition to [the Fascist bourgeoisie’s] plans for war and conquest.¹

This arguably marks the point of no return for the two Fascist régimes, if not November 1936 then 22 May 1939, at which point the alliance became de jure. If we mark mid‐ or late 1936 as the start of a de facto alliance (a perfectly valid interpretation, given the Reich and Fascist Italian collaboration in the Spanish Civil War), then we can say that the Third Reich and the Italian Fascists were effectively allied for 8 years.

For how many years was the German–Soviet Pact effective? 1.8. 1.8 years. Yes, under certain criteria somebody can argue that the alliance between the Third Reich and Fascist Italy lasted for fewer than eight years, but even if you apply the most absurdly strict criteria it still outlasted the German–Soviet Pact. Yet which one do you find “antifascist” anticommunists discussing more? Which one do you think is more important to them?

The following are only a few examples of official Fascist propaganda and photographs demonstrating the close ties between German and Italian Fascism, close ties that horseshoe theorists almost always have to scribble themselves for their lazy comparisons. Since I cannot possibly provide every example without testing your patience, I’ll limit myself to twenty items:

Parade of Wehrmacht divisions under the Brandenburg Gate decorated with Fascist flags on the occasion of a speech by Schicklgruber and Mussolini at the Olympic Stadium. Dated 28th September 1937.

Italians showing their support for the Third Reich during Adolf Schicklgruber’s visit to Fascist Italy in 1938.

German press photograph of Benito Mussolini receiving a big send‐off in Berlin. Probably from the 1940s.

Members of a Fascist youth organization talking to members of the HJ on the ‘day of fascist youth’ in Padua, 1940.

Adolf Schicklgruber, Hermann Göring, Benito Mussolini, and Galeazzo Ciano.

Another combination of the fasces and the swastika, this time in the form of a solidarity pin. Probably from the mid‐1940s.

A medal that high‐ranking officials presented to Fascist cannon fodder for their action in North Africa.

Photograph of a mass meeting between the Western Axis powers.

Fascist standards at a maneuver, 1937.

Fascist flags fly side‐by‐side in Rome. Dated 1937

A German post stamp featuring Schicklgruber and Mussolini, between a fasces and a German eagle perched on a swastika. It is captioned, ‘Two peoples and one struggle.’

A Spanish postcard featuring Adolf Schicklgruber, Francisco Franco, and Benito Mussolini.

More fascist artwork featuring Schicklgruber, Franco, and Mussolini. It reads, ‘The three great defensive military leaders of peace and civilisation.’

The big three again. Dated 1938.

Neapolitan anticommunists welcoming Adolf Schicklgruber’s visit to Fascist Italy in May 1938.

French propaganda depicting fourteen European flags, among them Fascist Italy’s and the Third Reich’s, against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Operation Barbarossa inspired a great deal of Axis artwork such as this.

Croatian propaganda depicting seven European flags, among them Fascist Italy’s and the Third Reich’s, heading to Victory.

‘Cheerful comrades in arms outside Tobruk in May 1941. ‘German and Italian soldiers’, Leutnant Wilfried Armbruster penned in his diary, ‘just light up when Rommel comes.’ Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring wrote that the ‘comradeship existing between Italian and German troops can be classified as good, even though at times honest embitterment at the attitude of Italian command and troops clouded the existing friendship.’ According to Rainer Kriebel, ‘It must be stressed that during the fighting around Tobruk not only German, but Italian troops as well, fought with great courage and persistence.’’ (Source.)

Fascist cannon fodder in Athens. Dated 1941.

Another Fascist propaganda poster. It reads, ‘Two people, one war.’

And keep in mind, this brief selection is just photographs and artworks that I’ve found. Examples in audio include how the PNF’s anthem Giovinezza inspired the German song In dem Kampfe um die Heimat, and how the Third Reich’s anthem Horst Wessel Lied in turn inspired the Italian song È l’ora di marciar, but these are only the aesthetics. We must not overlook how the Italian Fascists tutored their German counterparts (in policing and elsewhat). Quoting from Patrick Bernhard’s Borrowing from Mussolini: Nazi Germany’s Colonial Aspirations in the Shadow of Italian Expansionism:

At an early stage, in fact, Hitler maintained that the Jews were a foreign, non‐European element not only in German but also in Italian society. The triumph of fascism in Italy had been a victory for the Italian Volk, Hitler repeatedly said.⁴⁴ It was in Italy that the struggle for racial ‘supremacy’ had been decided: the Jews had lost the battle ‘in Italy as well’. Not least for this reason, there was ‘not another state like Italy today’ so well‐suited to be Germany’s ally. Based on Hitler’s statements, it is clear that the fated fascist alliance also had a racist ideological foundation, and that it should not be understood — as earlier research has so often suggested — as a purely tactical alliance between two major powers that fundamentally mistrusted each other.⁴⁵

Christian Goeschel’s Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance, page 71:

[Fascist] Italy had become more and more economically dependent on [the Third Reich]. By 1936, 20 per cent of [Fascist] Italy’s exports went to [the Third Reich], a huge increase from the 11 per cent of 1932. German imports, especially coal and other raw materials, to [Fascist] Italy also rose dramatically, from 14 per cent in 1932 to 27 per cent in 1936–8, increasing to 40 per cent in 1940.³⁸ In the wake of the October 1936 announcement of the Four‐Year Plan, [Fascist] Italy began to deploy its workers to the Reich. After negotiations in 1937, more than 30,000 Italian agricultural labourers, most of them jobless at a time of high unemployment in Italy, were sent north.

From their humble beginnings in 1922, to the Four Powers Pact of 1934, the Anti‐Comintern Pact in 1936–7, the German–Italian Cultural Accord of 1938, the Pact of Steel of 1939, the Tripartite Pact in 1940, and their bitter ends in 1945, the German and Italian Fascists—not the Soviets—were useful allies to each other. In the words of Adolf Schicklgruber:

In enumerating these factors, Duce, I should like to begin with what for me, through her people, her system and especially her leader, has always been our foremost friend, and always will remain our foremost friend: Italy!

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

It is no wonder, then, that the German and Italian Fascists fought side‐by‐side in Spain, the Balkans, North Africa, and the Eastern Front!

Consider this my not nearly harsh enough revenge for dullards like Timothy Snyder, Anne Applebaum, Roger Moorhouse, and other antisocialist hacks inflating the hell out of the German–Soviet Pact’s importance while reducing the Rome–Berlin Axis to a footnote—if anything at all, that is. Thanks to them, the ‘European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism’ is a thing whereas nobody remembers names like Galeazzo Ciano, Rodolfo Graziani, Pietro Badoglio, or Mario Roatta, let alone their atrocities in Eurafrica.

Pictured: Joseph Stalin beating an Axis dictator.

I am new to Paganism, so maybe this a very common question with an incredibly simple answer, but from my brief research I found nothing.

The numerous branches of Paganism have different beings who serve identical or very similar functions. Take thunder, for example. Celtic Pagans say that thunder’s god is Taranis. Norse Pagans believe that it’s Thor. Greek Pagans have a hunch that it’s Zeus. Roman Pagans suspect that it’s Jupiter. Slavic Pagans suggest that it’s Perun. And so on.

I am presuming that the various alternatives are never sources for heated arguments (correct me if I am wrong). So my question is, how do you reconcile a multitude of beings who all share the same job?