"Fascism started [in Italy] as a decentralized militia movement... Mussolini united them and staged a march on Rome." - Ruth Ben-Ghiat

"Authoritarian leaders despise the people who follow them. The more those people put their trust in them, the more they see them as assets to exploit." - Ruth Ben-Ghiat

"[Mussolini] engineered and ordered the murder of the top socialist who was very beloved, Giacomo Matioti. [Mussolini] was implicated and was going to go down as people were pressing him to resign. So he took this leap and decided to declare dictatorship so he could fire the special prosecutors and then send everybody into exile or jail to save his skin." - Ruth Ben-Ghiat