[AnalogReigns]

Popularity of fascism in the USA before Hitler....Fasces symbol even incorporated into Lincoln's "throne" in the Lincoln Memorial, built in the 1920s.

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Hardly. Mussolini took over in 1922 and the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in the same year.

Daniel Chester French finished the statue two years before, in 1920. So unless he was super-attuned to Italian politics it doesn't have anything to do with Mussolini and fascism.

The faces was a symbol of the Roman Republic and it appears several times in the US capitol. Nothing to do with Mussolini.