Italians salute Mussolini on the iPhone

An iPhone app which allows nostalgic Italians to enjoy speeches by Benito Mussolini has proved a big hit, having attracted over 6,000 downloads since it launched on 21 January. Creator Luigi Marino claims the one hundred speeches and 20 audiovisual files available via the €0.79 application are of "documentary interest", and …

[sandman]

It's History

Now, I really (with added emphasis) don't like Fascism, but Mussolini's speeches are of genuine historical interest. The guy can't simply be airbrushed out of history (he was machine-gunned out and hung upside down in a garage, along with his mistress Clara Petacci). Sure, some fascists will play his speeches on their phones and get a warm, fuzzy glow, but historical documents can be used or abused for all sorts of purposes. (Anyone interested in a slightly dodgy dossier?)

[Tony Green]

A control freak determined to allow as little freedom as possible

And Il Duce was quite nasty too.

[Spiracle]

Given that the iPhone is orientation aware...

... I presume that if you invert it you see him hanging from a lampost.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonderful

So how long before some fuckwit decides to launch an iHitler app with speeches and AV files?

[Graham Marsden]

Is this the...

.... iLDuce?

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

What a world!

You can download this cack, alright historic documentation, about a bald-headed looney-toon who looked like Alexi Sayle, yet some bloke couldn't flog his Dad's Army board-game on everyone's favourite tat-market, 'cos it had a swastika on the front!

The app-store let this through? Yet they routinely stop a little bit of page-three nudity, I think I find a fascist nutter inciting people to bump off anyone he doesn't agree with, far worse than a pair of soaped-up jubblies!

What a world, what a world!

[Anonymous Coward]

The historical angle

Ahh.. so this will be the same Daily Mail that thought fascism was a jolly good idea in the 1930.

[sandman]

psst...

I think they would rather you forgot that "unfortunate" lapse in taste. Mind you, looking at the Mail it seems their ideas haven't changed that much since the 1930s.

[ian 22]

What next?

1. Write an app featuring George W Bush's wit and wisdom

2. Wealth!

Mine's the one with the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign button.

[Jonathan Richards 1]

A tool of history ...

... my thoughts exactly. And good riddance to him.