Putin - Beloved Tsar or cynical authoritarian despot?

I honestly don't think Chesterton made any misjudgements when it came to Mussolini. It's not that I think Chesterton was infallible-- I think his enthusiasm for the war effort in WWI was a big mistake-- but he had no liking for autocracy, as he made clear when Hitler came to power. Where specifically do you think Chesterton made a misjudgement about Mussolini? The Resurrection of Rome is one of the few Chesterton books that are not available for free online, otherwise I would link to the relevant chapter. And perhaps Chesterton has written other things about Mussoini that I'm not aware of. But I don't think he ever got carried away with Italian fascism.

Waugh I can't speak for-- I know so little about him.

I tried to read the book many years ago and forget it all unfortunately but what "was the resurrection of Rome"? I am sure it's probably a work he would rather not have written in hindsight. Authors don't have the charism of infallibility.

Waugh wrote some vile rot justifying the Italian invasion of Ethiopia as a civilising mission and downplayed the illegal use of poison gas on native villages. It's fairly accessible in print.

Yeats did dally with fascism, but thankfully he was quite decisive in his rejection of it (of course, he died on the eve of WWII). I've always loved his final verdict on fascism: "Only dead sticks can be tied into convenient bundles".

In my view, Ezra Pound was insane whether he was writing about poetry or politics-- even when he was writing poetry, for that matter.

D.H. Lawrence seemed to suggest that many human beings deserved nothing better than extermination, in one notorious quotation: "If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I’d go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, all the sick, the halt, and the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the band would softly bubble out the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’." (Admittedly, that in a private letter. Can you imagine if everything you said in a fit of pique was pored over by posterity?)

Philip Larkin wrote:

I want to see them starving
The so-called working class
Their wages weekly halving
Their women stewing grass.

When I walk out each morning
In one of my new suits
I want to see them fawning
To clean my car and boots.

Of course, this was caustic lettting-out-steam in a letter to a friend, too. Remember just how lefty the literati were back then, you can hardly blame Larkin's reaction.

I think there is hardly a writer in history with which I disagree more vehemently than Bernard Shaw. He was wrong about everything. Even when he was right, he was right for the wrong reasons.

Apologies for straying off the path. My point is that creative types, left and right, are notorious for wild statements and regrettable political allegiances. But I think Chesterton was relatively immune to this.