On October 28, 1922, the seizure of power in Italy by fascism began, an ideology that the new prime minister emphatically rejects, although it is at the root of her party
«I have never felt sympathy or affiliation with anti-democratic regimes; against any regime, including fascism, just as I have always regarded the racial laws of 1938 as the lowest point in Italian history, a disgrace that will mark our people forever. Giorgia Meloni came as no surprise when she spoke these words in her speech to the Chamber of Deputies last Tuesday before introducing the new government to the necessary inauguration motion, which she surpassed by 235 votes in favour, 154 against and 5 abstentions. It was not surprising, as it was not the first time he had expressed himself in those terms publicly, although given the solemnity of the moment and the place, it was appreciated that he made his rejection of fascism clear. It was not a trivial matter, as his party, Fratelli d’Italia (FdI, Brothers of Italy), has its embryo in the movement founded after World War II by those nostalgic for Benito Mussolini.
Meloni was especially concerned that there would be no doubt on this point due to a curious coincidence: the birth of the new FdI-led government falls on the same week as the centenary of the March on Rome, the coup d’état with the one who killed fascism. took power. With that historic event that began on October 28, 1922, began the two decades of Mussolini’s dictatorship, which propelled Italy into World War II, propitiating a catastrophe of dimensions hitherto unknown in the country and in the world.
“It’s pure coincidence, but I don’t think FdI would like it very much because, whether Meloni likes it or not, it evokes a very dramatic moment in Italian history, when the liberal state fell and a dictatorship began” , he said. explains Simona Colarizi, professor emeritus of contemporary history at La Sapienza University in Rome and one of the country’s foremost experts on the fascist period. “At that point, a constitutional wound is concluded that is irreparable. It was a rise in the semi-legal power of fascism, exemplifying what Hitler later did in Germany. King Victor Emmanuel III, then head of state, appointed the head of the armed subversion, Mussolini, as prime minister, and the state thus lost all its legitimacy by relinquishing the monopoly on the use of force.
With the March on Rome, thousands of fascists from all over the country arrived in the Italian capital and shouted ‘Rome or death!’, achieving that three days later Mussolini took over the government and began the gradual dismantling of the democratic system. Victor Emmanuel III could have prevented the uprising, but he handed over the reins of power to the ‘Duce’ in the hopes of solving the political and social crisis in which Italy found itself at the time. Colarizi finds no parallels between the current situation and that period, beyond the “global crisis of democracies”, and also believes that fascism is an outdated phenomenon for Meloni.
“In reality, she has nothing to do with this trip, but many of its leaders have a lot to do with neo-fascism,” he says, recalling the pasts of some key FdI figures such as Ignazio La Russa, backed by the coalition conservative for the presidency of the Senate, the most important institutional position in Italy after that of the President of the Republic, held by Sergio Mattarella. It was striking to see how La Russa, who has several statuettes of the ‘Duce’ in his house, gives a bouquet of flowers to Liliana Segre, senator for life and survivor of the Auschwitz camp in 1944, at the opening of the legislature. , who chaired the session because he was the oldest parliamentarian among the vice presidents of the previous legislature.
Segre, 92, admitted he felt “dizziness” at the “symbolism” of finding himself “in the most prestigious office in the Senate” as they were about to celebrate a hundred years of the March on Rome, recalling also remembered how he had to leave school in 1938 because of the racial laws promoted by Mussolini. Another highly respected figure in Italy, such as author Alberto Moravia, who died in 1990, recalled his experience of the March to Rome in a 1970s documentary by Rai, the Italian public broadcaster. «I was 15 years old and went to Piazza del Popolo. I sat on a fountain and saw the entrance of the fascists. I remember very well what they were like. I had the impression that it was a parade of provincial fighters. They were country folk with shotguns, some with black shirts and others without. They had no military appearance at all. The parade went on for a long time, to the point that I couldn’t get across the street and I couldn’t get into my school.
Source: La Verdad
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