'Fascists Didn't Die in 1945' - Italy on Verge of Electing 1st Far - Right Leader Since WW2, Meloni
The Guardian, Why Italy is on verge of electing its first far-right leader since second world war. Sept. 15, 2022. -- Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy draw on a vein of fascism in a country that – unlike Germany – has never had to confront its past. -
A hundred years after the rise of Italian fascism was heralded by Mussolini’s 1922 march on Rome, the country is on the verge of electing a party with its roots in neo-fascism.
With just over a week to go until polling day, the smiling face of Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, is emblazoned on thousands of posters from the heel in the south to the Alps in the north. When polls close on the evening of 25 September, Meloni is expected to emerge triumphant, making her Italy’s first far-right leader since the second world war.
Meloni has always distanced herself from fascism and recently declared that the Italian right had “handed fascism over to history”. Her current political success owes much to her decision, unlike that of Matteo Salvini and his Northern League, to keep her party out of the outgoing prime minister, Mario Draghi’s, cross-party government. The move cemented her as an opposition voice and has given her the leading position in a rightwing electoral coalition, that includes the League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, now polling in excess of 45%.
But she has been reluctant in campaigning to shed the political slogan Dio, Patria, Famiglia (God, Homeland, Family), widely used in the fascist era, and her party retains apparent fascist visual references. It shares its party logo, an Italian tricolour in the form of a flame, with the now defunct Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist party formed in 1946 by supporters of Mussolini’s regime and former high-ranking members of his fascist party. Some supporters of her party have performed the fascist salute during public commemorations...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/15/georgia-meloni-italy-on-verge-of-electing-first-far-right-leader-since-second-world-war
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