Italy far right – BBC News

For decades, neo-fascist politicians were largely sidelined. But the decision by then-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to bring them into his coalition in 1994 marked the start of their growing legitimisation in public opinion.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose political life began in the MSI youth wing and was the national leader of its successor movement, once praised Mussolini as “a good politician”, adding that “everything he did, he did for Italy”. In 2008, Mr Berlusconi appointed her a government minister.

Ms Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party bears the same three-coloured flame logo adopted by neo-fascist groupings after the war, but she has progressively shifted her movement away from the far right.

Her previous rhetoric against “ethnic substitution” of Italians by migrants, and a supposed “LGBT lobby”, has softened since her election as Prime Minister in 2022. She now uses language more aligned with the mainstream European right, such as talk of protecting borders and boosting Italy’s birth rate.

She has dropped her criticism of the Eurozone, has formed close relationships with leaders from Washington to Brussels, and has been forthright in her support for Ukraine after its invasion by Russia. But her critics say she still winks to her political roots.

And that, some believe, makes her even less likely to support a crackdown on extremist groups. Many feel the Scelba law should have been applied in 2021, after the headquarters of Italy’s main trade union, CGIL, was violently attacked during a protest against Covid restrictions by a crowd that included members of Forza Nuova, a fringe far-right party. Demonstrators smashed windows and tried to force themselves into the building in a move reminiscent of Mussolini’s era, when the unions were attacked by his blackshirt mobs.

Forza Nuova, which has been around for more than a quarter of a century, is much further to the right than Ms Meloni’s party, advocating a total halt to immigration, and leaving NATO and the EU. Its members speak warmly of Vladimir Putin.

The party has never attracted enough votes to have MPs elected to parliament but its visibility in protests and the actions of its members, including violence against immigrants, make it and other extremist groups a thorn in the side of Italian politics. At a recent funeral, a member’s coffin was draped in a swastika flag. The birthday of another official was celebrated with a cake decorated by a swastika and the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil”.

Forza Nuova’s founder, Roberto Fiore, tells me the party attacked CGIL because the union had backed mandatory Covid vaccination certificates for all workers. “Everyone thought of us as real freedom fighters, not fascists attacking a trade union,” he claims.

I challenge him directly: Is he a fascist? “If you asked me like that, I probably would say yes,” he replies, “but I have to complete the term and say I’m a revolutionary. Italy hasn’t got the intelligence and the courage to say, well OK, fascism was good on this and that and maybe not good in other things… I accept, I don’t refuse the term of fascism.”

Over the course of our interview, I push Mr Fiore on the criminal nature of Mussolini’s regime. He denies it was violent, and claims that fascist internment camps were “things that happen with war”. He goes on to say that Ukraine should be part of Russia. When I put it to him that his party would be banned in countries such as Germany, he says: “Freedom is freedom.”