Strong controversy in Italy after a giant fascist rally in the street in Rome

A black human tide. Men, most of them with shaved heads, stand straight, in silence. “Attention!” one of them shouts. Everyone executes. “For all the fallen comrades!”, he continues. “Present!”, they shout in one voice, while hundreds of outstretched hands are raised in a fascist salute. This is the funeral ritual of the call of the Italian neofascist “comrades”, during tribute to deceased activists.

The scene took place on Sunday January 7 in the evening, on the outskirts close to Rome, southeast of the capital, via (street) Acca Larenzia, in front of the former headquarters of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neofascist party created after the death of Benito Mussolini. Filmed by local residents, and shared tens of thousands of times on X (formerly Twitter), it shocked the whole of Italy, 80 years after the death of the “Duce”.

“It feels like we were in 1927, a hundred years ago, in the middle of the fascist era,” says the center-left daily La Repubblica. “Rome, Italy, 2024. A state shame,” accuses Italian journalist Paolo Berizzi, columnist for the same daily, on X.

The paramilitary gathering was intended to commemorate the death, in the same place, on January 7, 1978, of two young activists from the MSI Youth Front, Franco Bigonzetti and Francesco Ciavatta, then, during the clashes with the police having followed, that of Stefano Recchioli, of the social right. Italy then went through the “years of lead”, a period when political violence, from the extreme left to the extreme right, reached its peak through numerous bomb attacks, assassinations and kidnappings.

The Sunday evening gathering brought together hundreds of people, including “nostalgic people, old activists from the 1970s and new adherents to the extreme right,” reports the center-right daily La Stampa.

But what shocks the Italian political class even more is the concomitance of this gathering with another earlier on Sunday, and much more official this time. Indeed, in the morning, the president of the Lazio region Francesco Rocca (center right, elected with the support of the nationalist and conservative right-wing prime minister Giorgia Meloni) and the cultural advisor of the capital Miguel Gotor (center left) had insisted on a bipartisan commemoration of these events. Both laid a laurel wreath, still via Acca Larenzia, in front of the official commemoration plaque.

Since Monday, throughout the political class, reactions have been pouring in. “From the Roman salutes at the commemoration of Acca Larenzia to the presence of the president of the Lazio region (...). Commemorating the dead is one thing, giving institutional cover to a fascist gathering is another,” reacted Emanuela Droghei, regional councilor and organizer of the secretariat of the Democratic Party (center left) in Rome.

The leader of the Democratic Party (PD) Elly Schlein in turn stepped up to the plate: “If you shout: 'Long live anti-fascist Italy in the theater, you will be arrested, if you go to a neo-fascist rally with Roman salutes with banners , No. Piantedosi - the Italian Minister of the Interior, editor's note - must clarify how this could have happened. And Meloni has nothing to say.” The PD senators also took up the matter by directly questioning the Minister of the Interior, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice.

Also read Italy: Elly Schlein wants to renew the left

At the end of the morning, already entangled in the controversy, the secretary of Forza Italia (center right) and foreign minister of the coalition government - center right and nationalist, conservative and sovereignist right - of Giorgia Meloni, had tried to delay: " We are a force that is certainly not fascist, we are anti-fascist. Those responsible for this behavior must be condemned by all, as must all manifestations of support for the dictatorship. There is a law which states that it is not possible to advocate fascism in our country.”

But the controversy is far from abating. The vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies Sergio Costa (M5S, anti-system) announced that he was going to file a complaint with the Rome prosecutor's office to "determine whether any possible crimes have been committed, including the apology of fascism, during the commemoration. In the process, Digos, the Italian anti-terrorism agency, the operational equivalent of the DGSI, confirmed that it had sent a report to the Rome public prosecutor's office. The magistrates will decide whether or not to formally open a judicial investigation.

In France, the first secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure did not hesitate to react in turn: “Georgia (sic) Meloni one year and two months later... These are the fanatical impulses released by the arrival of the 'extreme right in power'.

Upon her election as prime minister (president of the Italian council) in September 2022, Giorgia Meloni was accused of having joined the neofascist Italian Social Movement party in the 1990s, before joining, upon its dissolution, a party heir to the MSI, the National Alliance. The head of government, who in her youth had described Benito Mussolini as a “good politician”, has since distanced herself from neofascist movements and denies any proximity to fascism.