Today, we are well immersed in the politics of shock, where unexpected events are carefully designed to jar the political system and civil society, causing a disorientation and disruption among the public and the political class that aids the leader in consolidating his power. This talks takes aim at the designed strategies of fascist politics, current and historical, as these unfold in the aesthetic realm. Drawing from research on the cultural practices that undergirded the regime of Benito Mussolini in the Italy of the 1930s, the talk will include reflections on how to deal with Fascist visual sources from the period, and what lingers of those sources and the Fascist aesthetic now.