Chapter Eight turns to what became a growing preoccupation for Rogers in the 1920s: politics. In his journalistic writing and live appearances, the humorist’s habitual survey of current events and public issues increasingly focused on the tendencies and foibles of American political life. He especially took aim at the pretension, dissembling, selfishness, and pomposity of both political parties and delighted in skewering Congress and various president’s for ineffective or foolish policies. He often described politics as "bunk." Rogers covered Republican and Democratic conventions, interviewed Presidents Harding and Coolidge, and spoke frequently with influential figures such as Bernard Baruch and Al Smith. Throughout, he stood squarely in the tradition of American populism, upholding the interests of average citizens and criticizing the privileges of social and economic elites. Rogers’ own political reputation peaked in 1928, when he was convinced to run a tongue-in-cheek campaign for the presidency.

The chapter focuses on a controversial element of Pirandello’s life and career, namely, his relationship to Italian Fascism and its head of government, Benito Mussolini. Taking Pirandello’s outspoken and loyal adhesion to the Fascist government as a matter of historical fact and arguing that true “faith” in its ethos and professional opportunism on Pirandello’s part were not mutually exclusive, the essay focuses on the personal, cultural, and professional reasons for Pirandello’s membership in the party and then moves on to discuss how contemporaries viewed the author’s work in relation to Fascism’s ideological precepts. Because he was so famous, regime intellectuals were keen to claim Pirandello as their own, but whether they read his work as compatible with their world view had much to do with its philosophical bent, as interpreted through the formulations of Adriano Tilgher. If they perceived Pirandello as nihilistic, they tended to doubt his Fascism, but if they read his work as celebrating the victory of life over form, they judged it as representative of the spirit of the so-called new era.

The chapter considers Pirandello’s unsuccessful attempts to establish a national theatre in Italy. Influenced by examples of national theatres in other countries such as the Comédie Française in France and disappointed with the lack of financial resources to sustain his own very successful Teatro d’Arte, Pirandello tried to use Mussolini’s influence and the rise of Fascism to create a national theatre run by himself with full state sponsorship. He developed elaborate plans for a national theatre that would operate in three major cities and house ensemble casts, some of whose members would travel between the cities to facilitate touring productions. The plans would have involved considerable expenditure, including the costs of establishing the technical infrastructure for the three theatres as well as of maintaining three ensembles of actors. Despite initial encouragement and support from Mussolini, Pirandello encountered competition from other entrepreneurs and artists and political opposition, and eventually failed to achieve his goal.

Chapter 6 traces Albania’s descent into authoritarianism under the regimes of Zogu. Albania is first transformed into a republic with Zogu as president wielding considerable executive power. Within four years he abandoned the republic and created a monarchy and ruled as King Zog with unfettered power. With politics removed as a obstacle to unity and stability, Zog proceeded to attempt to create a nation out of disparate religious and cultural communities. The results are mixed at best as desperate economic conditions drove the king into increasing dependence on Mussolini’s Italy. The funds obtained are poorly allocated and necessary reforms, like agrarian reform, are not implemented as the king relied too heavily on the support of major landowners. The Italians, in the meantime, insinuated themselves into most aspects of government and the administration to the extent that Albania became little more than an Italian colonial outpost. Not satisfied with anything less that complete control, Mussolini is finally convinced by German moves elsewhere in the Balkans, and by his foreign minister’s insistence that Albania contained vast riches in terms of natural resources, to invade and annex Albania, driving the king and his family into exile. The chapter concludes with an evaluation of the achievements and failures of the Zog era.

This chapter discusses extremist side-switchers to the extreme of the far-right ideological spectrum, including neo-Nazism, white supremacism, fascism, and more fluid online extreme-right milieus on platforms such as IronMarch or Discord. Case studies and personal transition narratives for Benito Mussolini, Horst Mahler, Iris Niemeyer, and Julian Fritsch (aka the neo-Nazi musician MakssDamage) form the core of the chapter. Furthermore, an in-depth exploration of extreme-right online milieus and virtual discussions among their members about integrating former left-wing extremists is used to complement the case studies and deliver insights into virtual traces of extremist side-switching. For most defectors in this category, anti-Semitism, nationalism, and far-right conspiracy theories are key features of their side-switching narratives from the far left to the far right. The extreme right appears to be surprisingly open to integrating defectors from the far left, as can be seen in the discussions in online milieus about this issue.

It is a curious accident of history that 1922 marks the annus mirabilis of both aesthetic modernism and Italian Fascism. Mussolini’s epoch-making March on Rome on 28 October came on the heels of Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, published by Hogarth Press just two days earlier. Other landmarks of modern art and literature to arrive on the scene that year include T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Jean Cocteau’s Antigone, Edith Sitwell’s Façade and Pablo Picasso’s Two Women Running on the Beach, to name but a few. None of these modernist mavericks supported Fascism, of course – quite the contrary. Radical politics was stirring nonetheless in the ashes of the First World War. The avant-garde would not remain on the sidelines for long. The Italian Futurists led the way on the right.