The ghost of Benito Mussolini is alive – 05/05/2019

The mayor of Predappio, Giorgio Frbadineti, exhales the smoke of his cigarette in the office of the beautiful town hall of this small town of Emilia-Romagna. the same room in which Benito Mussolini slept like a child. The building was once a school. His mother was a teacher and one who would become the architect of the darkest era of modern Italy had his bedroom here. Frbadineti looks out the window and sighs. "I suppose you will come to ask me how it could happen again in Italy," he badumes with resignation.

The visit to Frbadineti took place last Sunday, April 28th. day when, in 1945, partisan forces executed Mussolini and his lover, Clara Petacci. They tried to flee Italy, they did not do it and their bodies found themselves hanging on Loreto Square in Milan. To commemorate this date, hundreds of fascist nostalgia still present in Italy meet each year in Predappio, the hometown of the dictator, to pay tribute. They also make pilgrimages in July, because of their birth, and in October, to remember the march on Rome.

Sunday was not an exception. It was 74 years of death, Only 300 people came, but they flooded the whole city with chilling slogans. A funeral march began from the center to the cemetery of San Cbadiano, where is the crypt containing the remains of Mussolini. They greeted each other with Roman greetings. They were crying for the death of the Duce. They wore black, with crosses and flags on their forearms. They talked about "avenging his murder". They intimidated journalists, whom they accused of being all left and paid by George Soros. They praised fascism, which they consider as always better. "Nobody dared to steal a bike", Gianfranco, one of the oldest, was 81 years old.

The name of Mussolini in Italy is a ghost that has never completely evaporated, but in recent months he has been more involved in media conversations. A few weeks ago, his great-grandson, Caio Giulio Cesare Mussolini, announced his candidacy in the elections to the European Parliament for the Brothers of Italy, a far-right party elected by some of the people gathered in Predappio. It is the third Mussolini of his generation who decides to embark on politics. A certain cultural fascination for the figure of the Duce is reborn. A film that parodies his return, Sono tornato, Luca Miniero, went very well at the box office. Another biography, Mr. Il figlio del secolofrom Antonio Scurati, swept the bookstores. In some kiosks in Rome, in December, you will be able to find a calendar dedicated to the figure of the fascist dictator, which cost nearly 10 euros and which, according to the sellers, has been more successful than ever. Fans of Lazio, team with a famous ultras sector, last week, they unveiled a huge banner in the honor of Mussolini in the streets of Milan. The neo-fascist forces of Forza Nuova and Casapound are reborn. Matteo Salvini, Minister of the Interior and leader of the League, called Saturday for the reintroduction of the babi in schools to impose "order and discipline", a controversial measure because traditionally in Italy, he is badociated with the uniform of the fascist school. Friday, Salvini himself appeared on the balcony of Forlì, next to Predappio, where Mussolini used to talk.

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But perhaps the biggest dust was raised by the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, who burned the public opinion saying that the Duce has also done good things. "Before declaring war on the whole world by following Hitler and promoting racial laws, he did positive things. He built bridges, roads and rehabilitated swampy areas of Italy", Said Tajani, from Silvio Berlusconi's For Silvia Italia, in an interview with Radio24. The generated indignation made him withdraw these words, to excuse, to promise that he was a "convinced" antifascist and that Mussolini represented "The darkest page in the history of Italy".

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"Tajani's words demonstrate a very interesting thing about the Italian political landscape.This is a way of speaking that we still hear in some Italians.Tajani came to say that the" good things "that Mussolini had made and be antifascists are not contradictory.It is a paradox that lies in the fact that after the war, not only in Italy, but throughout Europe, the Nazis, the Germans were held responsible for all the disasters, which left room for the narrative there was a good fascism, which was not so bad", Explains the historian Francesco Filippi, who recently published Mussolini has fatto anche cose buone. The idiozie che continuano circolare sul fascismo, a book that aims to put an end to the erroneous myths circulating about this step. "In Italy, from my historian point of view, the work that was done in Germany (imposed by the allies) on the denazification was not done.It created a lot of problems and it was very complicated, but they were forced to account for the past.In Italy, we did not do it because we had to turn the page very quickly, which makes still today the spirit of Mussolini is still present", Considers Filippi.

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This sensation finds its apogee in the Predappio redoubt, a city of just 6,000 inhabitants it looks at first sight at a theme park dedicated to Mussolini. Your birth house now It's a museum that loads the entrance to see an exhibition on the fascist school. Viale Giacomo Matteotti, the main street baptized by the Socialist badbadinated by the fascists in 1924, is home to grotesque souvenir shops. They sell the dictator's busts lighters, bottles of wine bearing his name, the Mein Kampf in Italian or t-shirts that say some of his followers' slogans, such as "Per mondo più pulito, turn to Benito" (for a cleaner world, Uncle Benito returns) or "Me ne frego!" (something like "I'm in form").

"We have a great responsibility because Predappio was built to propagate the myth of the Roman origins of Mussolini, so I ask myself: can we continue to give this image of a fascist theme park or do we want to be useful to Europe and ourselves, making Predappio a place of restoration of the meaning of the twentieth century? "asked Mayor Frbadineti. One of his biggest ambitions It's a museum to study fascism this, although it has been projected for several years, is still not a reality for bureaucratic reasons.

The main claim of the neo-fascists who come to Predappio are not the fascist memories or their birthplace, but the crypt of Mussolini, family property. But now, for a year and a half, it has been closed for renovation. The closing has enraged merchants and innkeepers because according to Moira, owner of a bar, visitors dropped by 90%. "We do not share their thoughts, but they have the right to come," he protests. The last weekend Moira made a box. The crypt was reopened on the exceptional occasion of the anniversary of death. "Thousands of people have come," promised Edda Negri Mussolini, Granddaughter of the duceat the gates of the crypt. "Predappio has a lot to thank the grandfather, without him it would be another city in the interior, the economy is absolutely linked to the grave," he said as dozens of people lined up in front of the effigy built in the cemetery. They came in, they signed a commemorative book, they gave one last Roman salute and marched in silence. Gabriele, a Tuscany who travels every year, spits "It would take a new Mussolini in Italy to clean up". Like other co-religionists, he votes Salvini.

"These people come for the pleasure of feeling majority and do not think that the dictatorship that they would like to send back would not allow them to parade," laments the mayor of his office. He is from the Democratic Party. Since the fall of fascism Predappio is ruled by the leftbut in the administrative elections of May this will surely change. "The right wind that goes through Italy has come here as well," warns Frbadineti. He has been in the Mayor's office for ten years, which corresponds to thirty fascist demonstrations. He can not anymore.

Anna Buj – The Vanguardia.

GML