Success of far-right Brothers of Italy raises
fears of fascist revival
Political party has overtaken Matteo Salvini’s
far-right League as Italy’s biggest party in opinion polls
Angela Giuffrida
in Ascoli Piceno
Tue 3 Aug 2021
05.00 BST
Spartaco
Perini spoke overwhelmingly about his time as a second world war resistance
fighter in the days before he died. The founder of one of Italy’s first antifascism
groups in Colle San Marco, a hamlet of Ascoli Piceno in the central Marche
region, he was lauded by the Allied forces for his role as a fearless
informant, work that helped to liberate Europe from the Nazis and end Benito
Mussolini’s dictatorship. But he had one regret.
“In his
last few days, he spoke a lot about the great things the partisans did to
restore freedom and bring about democracy,” said Pietro Perini, the partisan’s
son and president of the Ascoli Piceno unit of Anpi, an anti-fascism organisation.
“But he also felt they made one error – and that was not to have eradicated it
[fascism] completely.”
Spartaco
Perini died in 2001, aged 82. Two decades later, Brothers of Italy, the
descendant of a party formed in 1946 by the lingering supporters of Mussolini,
is running Marche after winning regional elections last September, ending 25
years of leftwing rule. It was a significant victory for the party, which in
recent years has steadily moved from the political fringes to being neck-and-neck
with Matteo Salvini’s far-right League as Italy’s biggest parties in the latest
opinion polls.
Its leader,
Giorgia Meloni, who started out in the youth wing of the Italian Social
Movement (MSI), its postwar predecessor, is now readying to succeed Mario
Draghi as prime minister in the 2023 general elections, having kept her party
out of his very broad coalition.
A savvy
politician, Meloni has endeavoured to remould her party, pitching it as a
conservative champion of patriotism. In her autobiography, I Am Giorgia, she
wrote that she “does not belong to the cult of fascism”.
But there
are signs in Marche that the party – which maintain’s MSI’s tricolored flame as
its logo – has not fully severed links with its past.
In April,
the Brothers of Italy mayor of Ascoli Piceno donated fascist comics to schools.
A few days later, the national holiday to mark Italy’s liberation from fascism,
the president of Marche’s education department sent a letter to students
equating fascists with partisans like Spartaco Perini. “We should remember the
war dead without distinction of which side they were on,” he wrote.
“We’ve
always had fascism apologists, but now some are in positions of power,” said
Perini’s son.
One of the
first policy moves from Marche’s new administration was to close reception and
support facilities for immigrants. Similar to Umbria, a former leftwing
stronghold that fell to the League in 2019, it also wants to ban health clinics
from providing the abortion pill. A Brothers of Italy politician recently
suggested that women should stay at home to look after the children while men
lay down the rules. Party leaders are seeking to adopt a measure that would
restrict social housing to Italians.
“In this
region there has been a cultural, social and political change, some of which is
being translated into measures,” said Antonio Mastrovincenzo, a former Marche
councillor with the centre-left Democratic party, who accepts the weaknesses of
the left lay the groundwork for the region’s pivot to the right. “We made
mistakes and people never forgave us,” he added.
The first
push towards change came in August 2016, when central Italy, including parts of
the Marche region, was struck by an earthquake that killed almost 300 people.
At the time, Matteo Renzi, the former prime minister and ex-leader of the
Democratic party, promised to immediately rebuild the shattered towns. But many
of the affected places still lie abandoned.
The League
and Brothers of Italy also played on immigration, especially when 18-year-old
Pamela Mastropietro was allegedly murdered by an illegal immigrant in the city
of Macerata in early 2018. Days later, and just weeks away from national
elections, Luca Traini, a far-right extremist, wounded six African migrants in
a shooting rampage that he claimed was revenge for the murder.
“Traini
became the battle horse for rightwing forces to affirm that it was the politics
of the left that brought about this situation,” said Lina Caraceni, a former
Macerata councillor for integration and representative of the local unit of the
privately-owned association, Refugees Welcome Italia.
“They threw
out all the projects that the previous administration did – Macerata was one of
the first places in Italy that adopted Sprar [a system to house migrants], and
now that’s gone. There has also been more racism – nobody wants to rent homes
to foreigners.”
For Paolo
Berizzi, a journalist with La Repubblica who has written extensively about the
extreme right in Italy, the strongest sign of change in Marche came on 27
October 2019, when a commemorative dinner was held to mark the anniversary of
Mussolini’s “march on Rome”. The dinner was attended by Francesco Acquaroli,
now the president of Marche, along with a host of other Brothers of Italy
mayors.
“This gives
you an idea of how Brothers of Italy deals with the nostalgic right – not only
do they not distance themselves from it, but they celebrate it,” said Berizzi,
adding that Marche had become “a kind of laboratory for the right which founded
its roots in the fascist tradition”.
Brothers of
Italy usually competes in local, regional and general elections in coalition
with the League, led by Matteo Salvini, and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.
The alliance runs 15 out of 20 Italian regions. Meloni, having eclipsed Salvini
in popularity, is now very much in charge, meaning that if they compete
together in 2023 and win, she has a good chance of becoming prime minister.
“The left
has been weak at intercepting the rightwing rise across Italy,” said Berizzi.
“And herein lies the danger. The country that produced, but also defeated,
fascism could end up being led by a party with links to that history.”
Brothers of
Italy’s arrival in Marche has also helped embolden extreme right groups such as
CasaPound and Forza Nuova, said Perini. “Whenever we do a demonstration, we
find swastikas on the walls the next day, and fans of the Ascoli Piceno
football team celebrate each goal with the fascist salute. The extremists know
they can do this now without fear of punishment,” he added.
Perini
worries about the outcome of the next national elections. “I have no faith that
things can change. The worst thing is, it seems the efforts of the partisans were
all for nothing.”
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