Louis Proyect
2014-10-20 12:35:31 UTC
Who was Margherita Sarfatti? My Fault?s introduction provides a lucid
overview of her life. She was born in Venice in 1880, the fourth and
last child of Amedeo Grassini and Emma Levi. The Sarfattis were wealthy
(among other things, her father established the city?s water taxi system
of vaporetti to capitalize on the tourist trade), and his daughter grew
up in highly privileged circumstances.
Her parents were Orthodox Jews, but Sarfatti received an outstanding
secular education. Well read, fluent in several languages, including
English, she became active in Socialist and feminist causes while still
in her teens?hence her sobriquet in Venice as la vergine rossa, ?the red
virgin.? Around the turn of the past century, she married a much older
Socialist lawyer and moved to Milan to become the art critic for the
Socialist Party newspaper Avanti!. It was there she first met Benito
Mussolini, the paper?s new editor, in 1912.
Sarfatti and Mussolini were inseparable for the next two decades, both
in and out of the bedroom. Mussolini went so far as to refer to Sarfatti
as his mascotte. She paid for his clothes, his car, his apartment, and
much more. She joined with him as he broke with the Socialists over
Italy?s participation in the World War. When Mussolini founded his own
newspaper, Il Popolo d?Italia, to advocate intervention, she went with
him. When at the end of the war he organized his followers in the Piazza
San Sepolcro in Milan (where the first Fasci italiani di combatimento,
or combat bands, were formed), she was there, too.
full:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/10/11/mussolinis-jewess/
overview of her life. She was born in Venice in 1880, the fourth and
last child of Amedeo Grassini and Emma Levi. The Sarfattis were wealthy
(among other things, her father established the city?s water taxi system
of vaporetti to capitalize on the tourist trade), and his daughter grew
up in highly privileged circumstances.
Her parents were Orthodox Jews, but Sarfatti received an outstanding
secular education. Well read, fluent in several languages, including
English, she became active in Socialist and feminist causes while still
in her teens?hence her sobriquet in Venice as la vergine rossa, ?the red
virgin.? Around the turn of the past century, she married a much older
Socialist lawyer and moved to Milan to become the art critic for the
Socialist Party newspaper Avanti!. It was there she first met Benito
Mussolini, the paper?s new editor, in 1912.
Sarfatti and Mussolini were inseparable for the next two decades, both
in and out of the bedroom. Mussolini went so far as to refer to Sarfatti
as his mascotte. She paid for his clothes, his car, his apartment, and
much more. She joined with him as he broke with the Socialists over
Italy?s participation in the World War. When Mussolini founded his own
newspaper, Il Popolo d?Italia, to advocate intervention, she went with
him. When at the end of the war he organized his followers in the Piazza
San Sepolcro in Milan (where the first Fasci italiani di combatimento,
or combat bands, were formed), she was there, too.
full:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/10/11/mussolinis-jewess/