Fascism and nostalgia

Benito Mussolini during the March of Rome (1922) - Public domain

These are good times for Italian fascists; they might no longer need to feel nostalgic

In March 1919, Benito Mussolini founded the Fasci di Combattimento. A hundred years have past since the day when ll Duce and his fellow fasci met at the Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan and established a new organisation that would then become the National Fascist Party. A hundred years. Enough time for fascism to grow, reach power, fall and regain popularity.

Just like any other ideology on either pole of the political spectrum that pursuits a concept of purity —imposing a binary scenario of ‘us, the good countrymen’ vs ‘them, the enemies of the state’— Mussolini’s fascism was the seed of years of violence, discrimination and hatred. The Italians found themselves joining the Second World War, being part of the Axis — should you get involved in a conflict, you rather not be remembered as the one who stood by Hitler’s side. Mussolini did. The war brought extreme poverty.

And yet, for all the shameful aspects of Mussolini’s dictatorship, there were still many people who looked back to his regime with nostalgia. They remembered him as a fervent defender of Italian nationalism who allocated huge amounts of money to improve the public sector, build roads, bridges, canals, railways, hospitals, schools… “We were fine with fascism,” said the famous Roman actor Alberto Sordi. A democratic Italian Republic did not really satisfy these nostalgics. Then came Silvio Berlusconi, a man who once claimed that, despite supporting the Nazis, “Mussolini did good”.

These days, after a series of left-wing legislatures, with the country still recovering from the economic recession and with thousands of immigrants arriving from African countries, the far right-wing is once again winning power as they appeal to the nostalgics of fascism.