Alessandra Mussolini in 2014. Image by Getty Images

By PJ Grisar April 2, 2019

Twitter is a commons of free thought that has no equivalent in our history. Every so often we’re granted reminders of how thoroughly connected the little blue bird has made our lives. Who could have foreseen, for instance, that we would one day have a medium wherein Jim Carrey and Benito Mussolini’s granddaughter could engage in a public fight over freedom of expression?

On the afternoon of March 30, Carrey, an actor best remembered for ‘90s comedies where he quite literally talked out of his rear end, tweeted his rendering of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, hanging dead from a gas station roof in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto. If the caption is any indication, Carrey meant the artwork, drawn from a photograph by Vincenzo Carrese taken after Il Duce’s execution in April 1945, to demonstrate how pursuing fascism can end badly for the despots in control.

In short order, Alessandra Mussolini, Benito’s granddaughter and a veteran politician who once left her country’s far-right party when they called fascism “evil,” voiced her displeasure at Carrey’s tweet.

Carrey let the picture be his last word on the matter, but Mussolini continued to barrage his handle with a parade of historical horrors attributable to Americans. Evidently, she thought the man who originated the role of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective had unfairly targeted her forebear and the movement that he was the scowling face of.

Mussolini wondered why Carrey didn’t instead draw an atomic mushroom cloud (an apparent nod to Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

She gave him further prompts in the form of Native American chiefs standing against a backdrop of Mount Rushmore and a black man tied to a whipping post.

Mussolini then quizzed Carrey on the history of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott.

Many on Twitter pointed out that Carrey was in fact, born in Canada, but Mussolini was unconvinced.

But let the record reflect Mussolini didn’t universally condemn Americans. While still railing against Fire Marshall Bill and his visual art hobby, Mussolini offered this succor to our American president who, like her grandfather, was depicted unflatteringly in the comedian’s oeuvre:

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at Grisar@Forward.com.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount