[mobglob-discuss] Il Duce revival: Mussolini becomes "cool".

[Macdonald Stainsby]

Il Duce revival:
Thursday 25 July 2002
on BBC Radio 4 at 11:00 BST
repeated on Monday 29 July 2002
at 20.30 BST.

By Kate Goldberg in Italy

A movement to rehabilitate the legacy of Benito Mussolini as an Italian hero
is gathering momentum, breaking a 50-year taboo surrounding Italy's fascist
leader.

The birthplace and final resting place of Benito Mussolini is becoming a
Mecca for fascists from all over Europe.

Thousands of black-shirted visitors descend on the small town of Predappio
each year on the anniversaries of Il Duce's birth, death and rise to power.

Nationally, Mussolini's residences are being restored and opened to the
public, exhibitions of military memorabilia and fascist art are being held,
and recently in Rome, Italy's soldiers who fought against the British at
El-Alamein were honoured with a military parade around the Colosseum.

Mussolini memorabilia

On Predappio's main street, a souvenir shop is enjoying a burgeoning trade
in Mussolini paraphernalia, despite a law banning the public glorification
of fascism.

"There's no longer a taboo about selling this kind of thing in Italy. I'm a
fascist and proud of it," says the shop owner, Pierluigi Pompignioli.

The shop is crammed with black shirts, black sweat-shirts, black base-ball
caps, and black t-shirts, all bearing fascist slogans. It sells Mussolini
flags, badges, posters and calendars, CDs of fascist-era songs, and Nazi
literature.

"I also have an internet site and ship my goods all over the world," added
Mr Pompignioli.

A group of young men, all dressed in black, enter the shop, looking pale and
intense. One of them fingers a copy of Mein Kampf. He has travelled five
hours from Florence to Predappio to pay homage to Mussolini.

Predappio was once a small farming village, but in 1925 Mussolini ordered it
to be rebuilt as a modern fascist town.

On the main square are the five pillars of fascism: the hospital, the town
hall, the military police, the party headquarters and the church - where you
can clearly see above the door a stone relief of the bundle of rods - the
fasci - adopted by Mussolini as the fascist party symbol.

Guard of Honour

Last year, a group of skinheads began a posthumous guard of honour for Il
Duce, taking turns to stand vigil by his family tomb in Predappio.

In the darkness of the crypt, you can just make out the outline of a man
with a shaved head, dressed completely in black, not moving at all.

The guards of honour say they prevent damage to Mussolini's tomb

There are now about 400 guards, volunteers who come from all over Italy.
They rarely talk, but one agreed to be interviewed, providing we did not use
his name.

He stands guard for up to six hours a day, during which time he experiences
"a great sense of pride and awe".

"It's an immense privilege. We're trying to recreate a sense of identity
which is lacking among young people in Italy nowadays," he says.

"Debate was greatly suppressed after the war. Now there's more tolerance and
people are beginning to study the many positive things this man did for the
Italian peninsula."

However, the left-wing mayor of Predappio is furious.

"I'm very hostile towards the guard of honour and find it humiliating.
Exalting a historic figure such as Mussolini - who created wars and was
responsible for oppression - is intolerable," says Ivo Marcelli.

They mayor is trying to encourage an objective study of Predappio

He agrees that honest debate about Italy's fascist legacy has been
suppressed - but he argues that it is precisely because of this that the
former dictator is now viewed with nostalgia.

"My administration has now opened the house where Mussolini was born to
tourists to try to explain what Italy's fascist years mean from a historic
point of view, not just a nostalgic point of view.

"It is a centre where people can debate what 20 years of fascist rule meant.
There are currently no places where people can debate and confront each
other on that," he says.

Confronting the past

The emergence of the guard has provoked a controversy about how Italians
should view their fascist period.

Unlike Germany, Italy has never faced up to its role in World War II,
preferring to see itself in the role of victim, argues Filippo Focardi, a
historian from Florence University.

Italy's failure to prosecute its worst war criminals led to what Professor
Focardi calls a "myth of resistance".

"The national narrative omits the first part of the war, in which Italians
fought alongside the Germans, and committed crimes in Ethiopia, Greece and
Yugoslavia," he says.

Today, a resurgent nationalism has continued to gloss over the more shameful
parts of Italian history, while at the same time allowing fascist apologists
to exalt Italy's most notorious 20th leader.

And with a coalition government that includes the anti-immigration Northern
League and the reformed heir to the Fascist Party, the National Alliance,
some argue that a more forgiving climate towards the extreme right has
emerged.

"The right government has removed the taboo [about fascism]. Now you can see
TV advertisements for videos of the speeches of Mussolini, for example, and
this has never happened before," says Professor Focardi.

Mussolini - key dates
1883, 29 July
Birth of Mussolini
1922, 28 Oct
Fascists march on Rome. Mussolini heads new government.
1938, 17 Nov
Racial laws decreed against Jews
1940, 10 June
Italy enters WWII as German ally
1943, 10 July
Allies land in Sicily
1945, 27 April
Mussolini executed

Il Duce revival:
Thursday 25 July 2002
on BBC Radio 4 at 11:00 BST
repeated on Monday 29 July 2002
at 20.30 BST.

-------------------------------------------
Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
--
In the contradiction lies the hope.
                                     --Bertholt Brecht