Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Lecture at the conference "Other People's Fascism", October 9, 2025
This conjugal metaphor has been used for Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, but it was originally introduced into the political jargon by Hitler, who repeatedly proclaimed: ‘Meine Braut ist Deutschland’ (My bride is Germany). Actually, it was Queen Elizabeth I who had stated that she was ‘married to England’, in the mid-XVI century. My paper will take Salazar’s propaganda figure as a starting point for a research on the use of female figures in the construction of the image of the dictator in the period 1930s-1970s. The propaganda machines around Salazar, Mussolini and Hitler employed images of women, both real and symbolic, to project images of these leaders that appealed to the respective populations and represented imaginary “mirrors” for a desired country. I will focus on a comparison between the public figures of Mussolini and Salazar, with the intent of shedding light on the apparent tolerance of other people’s fascisms. This comparison between Salazar and Mussolini should illuminate the willingness of proto/neo-fascist groups and governments to collaborate internationally; the reciprocal admiration between such right-wing coalitions across continents; the affinities that transcend their apparent narrowness. My position in this paper is dictated by the need for understanding the fascination between fascisms as embodied in their leadership figures.
Lecture at the conference "Other People's Fascism", October 9, 2025
This conjugal metaphor has been used for Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, but it was originally introduced into the political jargon by Hitler, who repeatedly proclaimed: ‘Meine Braut ist Deutschland’ (My bride is Germany). Actually, it was Queen Elizabeth I who had stated that she was ‘married to England’, in the mid-XVI century. My paper will take Salazar’s propaganda figure as a starting point for a research on the use of female figures in the construction of the image of the dictator in the period 1930s-1970s. The propaganda machines around Salazar, Mussolini and Hitler employed images of women, both real and symbolic, to project images of these leaders that appealed to the respective populations and represented imaginary “mirrors” for a desired country. I will focus on a comparison between the public figures of Mussolini and Salazar, with the intent of shedding light on the apparent tolerance of other people’s fascisms. This comparison between Salazar and Mussolini should illuminate the willingness of proto/neo-fascist groups and governments to collaborate internationally; the reciprocal admiration between such right-wing coalitions across continents; the affinities that transcend their apparent narrowness. My position in this paper is dictated by the need for understanding the fascination between fascisms as embodied in their leadership figures.
