The images are chilling. This Monday, 1,500 neofascists marched during a torch march in Milan, without the authorities intervening during the demonstration. If events with fascist connotations are not new in Italy, this gathering raises questions as Giorgia Meloni, of the far-right Fratelli d’Italia party, has been at the head of a coalition government since the fall of 2022.
Alberto Toscano, Italian journalist and writer, who publishes this Thursday the book Comrade Balabanoff, life and struggles of the grandmother of socialism (ed. Armand Colin, 2024), and Marc Lazar, university professor of history and political sociology, co-director of the multidisciplinary research group on contemporary Italy (GREPIC) at Sciences po, enlighten us on the socio-political situation in Italy.
What happened in Milan?
To commemorate the death of Sergio Ramelli, a figure of the Italian social movement (MSI), created after the death of Mussolini, neofascist demonstrators marched this Monday in Milan and performed fascist salutes or Roman salutes. According to the Italian news agency ANSI, the Milan prosecutor opened an investigation for advocating fascism after this rally. “It’s very impressive and very shocking because it’s the whole fascist liturgy, with the Roman salute and the torches that is expressed,” comments Marc Lazar, “but these are ultra-minority groups, activists, who have always existed in Italy “.
In recent years, even under left-wing governments, fascist commemoration events have been regularly organized in Italy. “There was a certain tolerance for events like funerals of neofascist activists. They remained contained and the police turned a blind eye, reports Alberto Toscano. However, it is indecent that this demonstration was allowed to take place.”
Why was such a demonstration able to take place?
“The neofascist groups feel authorized to do this because Giorgia Meloni, when we question her on these subjects, she replies that it is not her party which called for the demonstration, while never explicitly condemning”, analyzes Marc Lazar. The Prime Minister willingly cultivates this ambiguity: she spares the tiny part of her base which shares these neofascist ideas, while suggesting that she is on a path of “moderation”, compatible with the responsibility of governing.
Beyond the very few neofascist activists, a sympathy for the Mussolini years shines through within Fratelli d’Italia. “There is a minority in his party and at the highest level who have a certain empathy, not to say nostalgia, with this type of demonstration and what it evokes is indisputable,” judge Marc Lazar. But at the same time, she is criticized by these same movements, who find her too timid, not tough enough on immigration, on national pre-eminence and too complacent with Europe. »
The same people who find her too “soft”, want to “put her in difficulty to prevent her from completing her political evolution towards a more normalized European democratic right”, estimates the Italian journalist, who assures that the leader is well aware of these internal dissensions.
“At the moment, there is a certain atmosphere which favors the expression of fascist nostalgia, because of this government,” assures Marc Lazar, who lives half the year in Italy. Thus, the President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russane, does not hide that his greatest pleasure in life is collecting busts of Mussolini…”
What does this say about Italian society?
If, in recent opinion surveys, Italians condemn fascism, debates, which may tend to water down the Mussolini years, continue in Italian society. “Some say he brought good things to agriculture or the economy,” points out, for example, Alberto Toscano. Marc Lazar confirms that a speech is circulating according to which good people were forced to join Mussolini’s party, without really believing in it. “They water down the totalitarian reality of fascism, suggesting that it was not that serious,” points out the historian. Every year, commemorations take place in Predappio, Mussolini’s native village, and attract tens of thousands of visitors who buy over-the-counter goodies bearing the image of the duce.
While sporting a “more accommodating face,” in the words of Marc Lazar, Giorgia Meloni is at war against what she calls “left-wing cultural hegemony,” and she recently censored a journalist on Italian public television , who wanted to denounce his reluctance to repudiate the fascist roots of his far-right party.
“Many observers in Italy say that she will have to clarify her position at some point,” said Marc Lazar.