The fairly mainstream opinion is in vogue that there is no point in recalling Fascism in the current political contingencies in Italy, because that political movement was born and died with Benito Mussolini. Among the most diligent supporters of this thesis are, among others, eminent journalists such as Paolo Mieli and Marco Travaglio, who deny the existence of a fascist threat to Italian democracy. It is necessary to clarify some points and dispel more or less voluntary misunderstandings.
It is obvious that the oceanic rallies in black shirts, the littorial speeches from the balcony, the calls to arms that characterized the Twenty Years will not recur. In a century the world has been turned upside down by the portentous acceleration of scientific discoveries which have radically changed the common feelings and sensitivities of people.
Two world wars have irremediably marked the fate of the planet, today grappling with unknown emergencies – and unfortunately also with well-known historical dramas such as wars – at the time when Mussolini's fascism came to power.
No one in their right mind imagines seeing a second march on Rome in the streets or seeing Giorgia Meloni emerge in a black shirt and harangue the crowds from the balcony of Palazzo Chigi. The empty choreographies of historical fascism, functional to the message imposed by the Duce, are definitively consigned to History.
Unfortunately, neither is the complex of disvalues and anti-democratic practices, nor the ideological paraphernalia – nourished by rites and sermons, ceremonies and commemorations – on which Mussolini built consensus around the regime and within which generations of Italians had grown up.
Populism (Mussolini was its inventor and greatest interpreter), nationalism, sovereignism mixed with authoritarian and aggressive impulses and violence as a practice of government combined with the organized repression of dissent (with the corollary of thousands of purges, prison sentences and confinement inflicted on political opponents) characterized the regime. Of all this anti-democratic arsenal, what remains today in the Italy led by Giorgia Meloni?
The traces seem clear and evident to me. Even in the historical-political framework which does not resemble that which shattered the fragile liberal Italian democracy of the first post-war period, distinctive elements of what was fascism persist.
The very recent case of the censorship imposed on the writer Antoni Scurati, guilty in the eyes of the government majority of defending the values of anti-fascism and of having dared to nail Prime Minister Meloni to her consolidated refusal to proclaim herself anti-fascist, is the latest of many reactionary shocks that have characterized the Italian ultra-right government.
With his Bulgarian decree Berlusconi put Santoro, Luttazzi and Biagi out of RAI's door. The Melonian acolytes, tripping over a very sharp stone, canceled Scurati's speech on Rai3, forcing a furious Meloni at their gross gaffe to make a hasty and clumsy U-turn.
“But what kind of censorship – Giorgia dictated – we who have suffered censorship for decades do not censor anyone, not even our political opponents”.
Falsehoods aside – there was no dispute over Scurati's compensation, as claimed by the government; it was the company itself, in an internal document that should have remained confidential, that spoke of “editorial reasons” behind the torpedo to the Neapolitan writer – the effect obtained was exactly the opposite of that hoped for by the government.
Instead of silencing Scurati's intervention, the clear words of the author of “M. The man of the century” spread across RAI's rival television stations, filled the pages of newspapers and bounced beyond the country's borders, sparking heated controversy and provoking the intervention of Brussels. A political-media Caporetto which had, if nothing else, the merit of bringing the theme of fascism “which no longer exists” back to the center of attention.
In disguise, modestly cloaked in political correctness, fascism still exists, and how! The military occupation of Rai, i.e. of the public service, initiated by the Gasparri law, strengthened by the reform of the then secretary of the Democratic Party and prime minister Matteo Renzi, finds its highest and perfect point in the Meloni executive.
No more division between parties but direct submission to the executive, without even the mediation (imperfect but better than nothing) of Parliament. Not even Berlusconi, owner of three television networks and illegal occupier of the three Rai networks, had gotten this far.
The project is clear. Whoever controls the media controls the voters, already weakened by an electoral law which effectively deprives them of the real possibility of choosing their representatives. Not being able to imagine a coup, single thinking is essential for the preservation of power. Meloni took good note of this.
I repeat. Fascism was a mass of violence, physical and spiritual, which built itself on the denial of fundamental civil rights (freedom of speech, thought, expression, voting) and freedom of political association. It was nourished by a sovereignism pushed to excess, by institutionalized abuse to the detriment of anyone who opposed Mussolini's doctrine, by systematic repression of every voice hostile to the regime, by full-blown contempt for democracy, by ostracism towards those who are different, whether they were opponents politicians – branded as enemies of the State – and later of Jews and anti-fascists tout court.
Symptoms of a revived fascism have manifested themselves with ever greater clarity in the year and a half of Melonia's government. Misunderstood Italianness to be defended at all costs and on any front, sometimes running into ridiculous blunders: the cheese campaign inaugurated by that brilliant intellectual, the minister of agriculture, who has just gone so far as to denounce anti-fascism as a factory of death.
The truncheons used with the applause of the prime minister against defenseless young students from Pisa and the Roman Sapienza who had dared to take to the streets to protest as the Constitution allows: peacefully and without weapons. Systematic demolition of legal guarantees (an absolute novelty on the part of a party heir to the MSI which had its watchword in the slogan: law and order) entrusted to a former prosecutor in the role of Keeper of the Seals, concerned with removing as many instruments as possible possible investigative measures and to constrain the prosecutors' freedom of action.
Even more alarming, the bill on the premiership would empty the republican and anti-fascist Constitution of its contents and hand over to the government (in the hope of the promoters, to Giorgia Meloni) control over the emasculated Parliament and therefore over the country. Relegating the President of the Republic to the role of notary.
As the months pass, the potentially subversive project of the anti-democratic right becomes clearer. The runner winked at the far right movements, left free to demonstrate with their arms outstretched in the Roman salute, undisturbed by the police so diligent in beating students. Tolerance towards the proliferation of episodes of intolerance and gratuitous violence against homosexuals, the homeless, left-wing militants; gang rapes. These are signs of barbarism that require firm responses which, on the other hand, the government hesitates to give.
The government, on the other hand, places a time bomb under law 194 (authorizing pro-life associations to pry into a woman's free determination to terminate her pregnancy), demonstrating once again its contempt for the female gender.
Is this all that Meloni, a woman, can propose to encourage births?' Don't you smell fascism? Of fascism 2.0, however ideologically and romantically linked to the Mussolini regime: or at least of the unprecedented (for Italy) production of an authoritarian regime similar to Orban's Hungary.
Meloni's always reiterated loyalty to the US-led Atlanticist verb (see Ukraine) guarantees it from international trips but does not alter its authoritarian vocation in domestic affairs. And finally, if fascism really died with Mussolini, what's the point of invoking anti-fascism? Maybe that's exactly what Meloni wants. Empty the word anti-fascist of its truest and deepest meaning. So be careful when claiming that fascism is dead.
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