Quoting Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America, page 23:

Mussolini’s reply obviously begged the question, and when Ludwig left the Palazzo that evening the riddle remained as puzzling as ever. But the German writer was not the only one troubled by the phenomenon. In the opening page of The Public Mind (1927) Sir Norman Angell had noted that Americans favored the “popular” Mussolini rather than “his democratic opposition.” Another British writer, Harold J. Laski, put the problem in broader perspective. “The historian of the next generation,” Laski told Americans in 1923, “cannot fail to be impressed by the different reception accorded to the changes of which Lenin and Mussolini have been the chief authors. Where Lenin’s system has won for itself international ostracism and armed intervention, that of Mussolini has been the subject of widespread enthusiasm.” To understand the extent this enthusiasm had reached in America we need only to consult that barometer of public curiosity—the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature. For the period from 1925 to 1928 the Reader’s Guide showed over one hundred articles on Mussolini compared to fifteen on Stalin. In the period from 1929 to 1932, when American interest in the Soviet Five Year Plans was at its keenest, Stalin fared better with thirty-five articles, but Mussolini still overshadowed him with forty-six.