Here’s a compelling look at the politics of any dining table. Fascists engineer non-dependence for themselves, and dependence for others. The first enables their aggression and the second finances and shields it. Pasta was the propaganda surface of Mussolini’s war economy.

Marinetti published the Manifesto of Futurist Cooking in the Gazzetta del Popolo on 28 December 1930, calling pasta an “absurd Italian gastronomic religion” that induced sloth, pessimism, and unfitness for war.

Mussolini gave it a sympathetic hearing for autarkic reasons rather than culinary ones: Italy imported wheat, the 1925 Battle for Grain was faltering, and rice from the Po Valley was domestic.

The regime promoted rice through the Ente Nazionale Risi, but pasta was never banned, and the press caught Marinetti himself eating spaghetti at Biffi in Milan. Then the army was caught too.

The Regio Esercito ration kept pasta, and in North Africa 1940 to 1943 the water required to boil it became a genuine logistical liability, noted in British intelligence assessments comparing Italian and German water consumption in the desert.

The fascist avant-garde declared war on spaghetti, and spaghetti won, as evidenced by the inept North Africa campaign logistics and failed supply columns.