Poet-aviator d’Annunzio wasn’t just a proto-fascist. He was prototypical of all modern politics, particularly of politics as a spectacle—an event seen on the TV scene. He understood to turn and speak to the crowds and not dignitaries at public political events.
For the first time, it was the masses and not respectable bourgeois & aristocrats who were the focus of the speech. As a man who crafted his own life as art d’Annunzio resembled Trump who is a very crude artist of a sort who understands spectacle & mass appeal.