– Or Management and the Feeling of Omnipotence

his experiences during the Abyssinian war, Fascist Italy’s dress-rehearsal for the Second World War. Bruno Mussolini, the son of Benito, was a fighter pilot in the Italian air force: “Our task was to set the tree-clad slopes, the fields and the small villages on fire … It was all highly diverting … Our bombs had hardly touched the ground before they burst into white smoke and enormous flames to start the dry grass burning. I thought about the animals: God how they ran.. When our bomb-racks were empty I began to throw bombs out by hand … It was spiffing: a large zariba surrounded by tall trees made a difficult target. I had to aim carefully at the straw roof and only managed with my third shot. Then the poor people who were inside saw that their roof was on fire and ran away like madmen Surrounded by a ring of flames, about five thousand Abyssinians faced a slow death. It was like a veritable inferno. ” (Russell, 1938, p. 26-27) There he flies, Bruno, high above the landscape and below him savages are running round and round like confused ants. Like Thor, the god of thunder, he roars across the heavens. He ca