A staged propaganda photo of Italy's facist leader, Benito Mussolini "harvesting" wheat, 1938

The obsession with right wing leaders to look masculine while having absolutely no clue on how to actually be a manly man is fascinating.
- That photo is the fourth gayest shit I'll see all week.
  
  Do you keep a running ranking?
  
  Same and I’ve jacked it to gay porn 8 times this week

I feel like part of the problem is that people don't expect fascism to be so goddamn pathetic. They see obvious morons like this or Trump, and they struggle to imagine how they could possibly be dangerous.
I guess the lesson from history here is that just because they're ridiculous it doesn't make them any less dangerous.
- Like the stupid titles and vocabulary of the Klan, or the infantile memes of frenworld.
  
  You weren't kidding! Here's an excerpt..
  Its chief officer was the Grand Cyclops, who appointed two Nighthawks, a Grand Turk, a Grand Sentinel, Grand Magi and a Grand Ensign in addition to his Grand Scribe. The Grand Cyclops, Grand Exchequer, Grand Magi (second officer) and Grand Monk (third officer) were elected by the body politic of the dens, identified as Ghouls.
  What the actual fuck?
- Fascism isn’t about how convincing the leader is, it’s about how discontent the followers are.
  
  There are plenty of discontent Americans who didn't fall into Trump's cult.
- Hitler's book was literally titled "my struggle." His whole shtick was "I'm just this poor downtrodden Everyman trying to help the country, but the bad people won't let me!"
- Angry mobs are dangerous. Any buffoon can rile one up.

Dude had some weird body proportions.
- He's the older idea of 'barrel chested'.
  Now slightly updated to Elon Musk's 'low poly truck chested'.
  
  the high waist pants doesn’t help.
  
  Barrel-faced, too
- Must be a fascist thing.
  
  *facist
- Don't be facist.
  Which, I assume, is a racist for faces.
- Some Alex Jones body vibes.
- No kidding! Just how big is that HEAD?
  
  It's not that big if you live in a swamp and your roommate is a donkey.
- All dudes had that barrel chest back then
  
  I think it's an illusion due to wearing their pants to their tits.

- Trump is so much fatter tho.
- Now do one where Trump's a centaur being ridden hard by Putin. Or the old two-person horse costume with Trump in the ass. No pun intended.
- Honestly thank god even Trump isn't narcissistic enough to think he looks good without a shirt.

Well we can all be thankful trump kept his shirt on
- him frying shirtless is a funny idea though

Can anyone explain WTF he was wearing motorcycle goggles in this photo? "Working" without a shirt, okay, sure, he wants a sunburn, that's his problem. But goggles? Is this some proto-cybergoth bullshit?
- Actually, that is probably exactly what he was going for. Mussolini was a huge proponent of the Italian Futurist movement, and he had a lot of weird ideas about what was futuristic. Stuff like, "In the future, people will make their clothes out of milk." Anyway, aviation and representing aviation was a huge part of that, and he frequently used it in his propaganda.
  
  FWIW, Caesin can be turned into a fiber (trade names include Aralac and Lanital when turned into fabric,) which could conceivably be used as clothing.
  It’s also one of the earliest plastics (used in buttons and jewelry,)
  
  That's interesting. I've long thought that self proclaimed Futurists are a clueless lot. It's technology advancement will always happen and is a good thing, full stop. No consideration for usefulness or how it helps people or even if it will work at all. Most of them lack a background in technology or science, or even just critical thinking skills to tell if they're being hoodwinked or not. The ones that do have a technical background, like Ray Kurzweil, are the real dangerous ones. They tend to dazzle with bullshit, some of which is correct, but it takes an expert to disentangle the correct parts.
  The other site's /r/TechNewsToday was the worst for this. Articles about startup companies making impossible claims were swallowed whole, and you'd be downvoted to oblivion for pushing against it. Technology always progresses forward at a breakneck pace, it's always good, and there's nothing you can do to convince them otherwise.
  Which is all to say that after a few moments thought, I'm not surprised that it was historically associated with fascism.
  
  Then a short time later he and the Italian Air force get taught a lesson in aviation by the RAF in Greece and North Africa lmao
  
  Futurism was a fascinating movement; many of the ideas of the Manifesto of Futurism by Marinetti have ended up being absorbed by culture. The change of popular music--particularly synthpop, industrial, and techno--really capture ideas of futurism, regarding changing aesthetic tastes away from the classic.
  
  Fascism and claiming to be mentally superior name a better combo
- Idk for sure, but wheat is harvested when it is very dry (lots of dust)... But then the cloth in front of his mouth is missing ...

They didn't have McDonalds' to stage a photo at back then.

Strong Elon Musk cosplaying as a Libertarian vampire vibes

Mussolini: "Do you want fries with that?"

I plucka da spaghetti right outta da grounda.
- Fun fact - Mussolini tried to get Italian society to abandon pasta.
  
  What, why?
- My next tattoo

I get this reference.
- ...serving in a McDonalds?

And I had an onion tied to my belt, as was the style at the time.

Meanwhile, even the staged Stalin portraits said, "just try it, motherfucker."
- Why does his hand become a part of his jacket? What secrets lie behind that mustache? Will anyone call for a doctor?
  
  He lost his hand during the war, so it was replaced with papier-mache. Very sad.

What a strange looking person. He's like mini-me for Andre The Giant.
- He looks even stranger as a corpse. Sic semper tyrannis.
- I think his dick might be erect

The goggles zey do nothing.
- I don't get how the goggles are facing upwards but the cap is facing downwards. You don't have to see everything that's in front of you I guess.

With his bare fucking hands, apparently.
EDIT: Not to be confused with his bear fucking hands.
- A scythe would be too communist and unmanly. /s

It's weird that they still did the photo op even after all those bees stung his face

I didn't recognize him, with out the piano wire.

Hmmmmm

Nothing has changed. Religion and politics to control the masses.

Was he 3' tall?
- 5'6" according to one dodgy looking source I found on the internet

Hey man I’m not here to kink shame but… wat.
- All the cool kids are "harvesting" wheat. You should give it a try some time. (wink, wink)

so this is where Putin draws his inspiration from

This was suppose to be at his advantage?

Bet you he didn't have a 16year old telling him how to winnow the wheat. And they probably didn't shut down the field for this photo op either.

What's with anti commies acting like commies
- Fascists are fascists no matter what ideology they espouse

When they carted his body away from the Milanese town square, they had to use a front end loader to carry his chin

What a massive dome

Staged? You mean that any other politician photo ever isn't staged?
- Words can have multiple meanings. Harris didn't go to McDonald's and work a shift as a politician to get the photo op. Her showing up for her "shift" at the White House isn't any more staged, imo. If you want to say that the entire White House is staged, shit like that, then by that metric everyone's job is staged. Which, hey, if you find value in "staging" your home or work area, that's great. I think we should differentiate how Trump & Mussolini here clearly made their decision to do these jobs for just long enough for cameras and potential voters, though. There's really no other substance to take away from the pictures.
  
  Jesus christ, can you people stop meatriding Harris for a millisecond? How do you make this about her?
  Do you understand the meaning of the word staged? I was talking about the fact that any appearance of any (important) politician ever is controlled by a team of people specialized in communication. They want to obviously portray the politician in the best light possible, every impression counts. It's not a fascism thing, every politician constructs and curates their image to accomplish their goals and pass the messages they want to the people. Unless you think that these two rich politicians and the billions they get as campaign funding from other rich people are spent on pizza parties and that the videos and pictures they take are authentic lmfao
- It's staged in that every element is fake.
  When they take photos of Obama playing basketball, Trump golfing, etc. the subjects are still actually doing those things and actually do them off-camera as pastimes. The comms people are taking real interests and skills of their clients and casting them in the best possible light. The circumstances are staged, but the pastimes are not.
  Mussolini never harvested any wheat and Trump never worked at McDonald's. The comms people are completely fabricating their client's interests and skills.
  It's not even Dirty Jobs levels of slumming it where they actually do the job but get paid thousands of times more and go to a fancy hotel at the end of the day. They're just models.
  
  Everything they say, everything they do, every interaction with another person, every camera shot taken, everything is staged and planned ahead by teams. Their character is staged, their expressions are staged, so what's different? The fact that they may do something like that, though differently, once in a while? The goal is still the same, to connect with voters and to create a more likeable and relatable image of them. Regardless if other candidates have not explicitly dressed up as workers of a field they've never worked for. They film themselves going to factories listening to people, talking to people in the streets and all of that is 100% controlled, so I don't see the difference. It's not like anyone claims Trump works in McDonald's for years, they don't fabricate anything more than any other campaigner does.
  The distinction you make doesn't have a tangible meaning to it, all of them are showing something staged based on data science, psychology and communication and nothing else.

that is some insane drip tbf