Sun, Sea and Fascism

Dear readers (and, for the first time, dear LISTENERS! I’ve recorded myself reading a more colloquial version of this newsletter, so click below if you want to have a listen:)

Greetings from a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean, just off the coast of Sardinia, called Carloforte.

It’s a little slice of heaven, my spiritual home and where I try to spend most of my summers. When my Northern European/American friends mock me for disappearing from London for weeks on end, my excuse is that I’m ‘going home’ as much as going on holiday. It’s a stretch, I know, but I’m sticking to it. Here are some pics to show you why:

I mean, talk about crystal blue waters. I’m a sandy beach girl myself but the rock pools in Carloforte are magical. Photo by Massimo Virgilio on Unsplash

Carloforte is a small community where you’ll soon meet everyone. London is home but I love living a different kind of social reality for a few weeks a year. Photo by Laura Lugaresi on Unsplash

If this was a normal summer, I’d now be sending you a newsletter about second-language English journalists and the difficulties they face in so-called ‘International’ - ie English-language - media (and I PROMISE that’s coming. I’m doing lots of research around that issue and I know it’s something many of you are interested in. Heck, it’s one of the reasons why I called this newsletter ‘News with a Foreign Accent’).

But this isn’t a normal summer.

For two reasons:

First of all, the NEWS. It’s mad to think that even as a dual national (Italian/British), I don’t actually have a properly functioning government in either country. While the Conservatives are fighting a leadership challenge, Italy is heading for full elections on September 25th. I’ll be reporting from Rome and will write more in the weeks leading up to the vote, but suffice it to say that the party leading in the polls, Brothers of Italy, led by Giorgia Meloni, is a party whose roots are unashamedly in Italy’s fascist past. Which neatly leads me to the second point.

Now that Covid is either behind us or we’re all acting like it is, the promotion for my film Fascism in the Family has kicked into gear and in between days spent at the beach I’ve also held screenings around Sardinia where I present the film and answer questions from the audience. Fascism in the Family came out at the end of January 2020, literally at the start of the pandemic. I had to cancel all the presentations I had planned because of lockdowns and travel restrictions.

I remember being upset by it at the time (though there was a whole pandemic to be more upset about) thinking that after all that hard work the film was never really going to get the audience it deserved. However, perhaps depressingly, the film and its theme are actually more relevant today than they were back then. And that’s reflected in the questions the audience ask after the various screenings.

Talking about Fascism in the Family in Carloforte itself as part of the ‘Isola dei LIbri’ Festival. Meet&Greets were organised in various corners of the town, including mine in the middle of one its most picturesque streets. It was incredible to be so close to all the people who turned out.

For those who haven’t seen Fascism in the Family (watch it here , it’s 48 mins and I’m told it goes quickly), I trace back the story of my grandfather, who was a leading member of the Fascist party in Sardinia in Mussolini’s Italy. He became mayor of a town called Carbonia, which was built in the late 1930s to accommodate a nearby coal mine. Coal was essential for Mussolini’s upcoming war effort and Carbonia was one of his pet projects. I’d always known my grandfather had been a fascist, but a few years ago, while looking through old family photos,

I found a letter addressed to my grandfather by the Nazi leadership in Berlin, complete with swastika and ‘Heil Hitler’ in the signature.

It was like being kicked in the stomach.

The letter was in German and I had to find out more about it. That’s how the idea of the film was born. The scene at the end of the film where I discover what the letter said is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to film in my entire career.

But while looking at my family’s and Italy’s past, I also concentrate on the present and future. In the film I speak to leading Italian politician Matteo Salvini from the League and attend Giorgia Meloni from Brothers of Italy’s annual conference. Both of them are at the centre of the current election campaign. Giorgia Meloni may well become the country’s first female prime minister.

There I am, the little figure in black in the middle of the stage, at the Liquida Festival. The setting was magical, at the feet of the Basilica of Saccargia, a church which dates back to the 12th century.

The right-wing coalition that Salvini and Meloni are part of (with Berlusconi! Remember him?! check out my previous Bunga Bunga post if not…) is currently hovering around 48% in opinion polls. It’s a seemingly unassailable lead. Both politicians have been defined as Far-Right for their strong anti-immigration stances and traditionalist views when it comes to rights for minorities. That does not, of course, make them fascists. But what I find most disconcerting is how they both seem to pander to a share of the Italian electorate who definitely have a nostalgic view of the two decades of Mussolini’s dictatorship, by often using words that come straight out of Mussolini’s phrase book.

I saw this nostalgia among the many ‘mourners’ who I filmed as they gathered at Mussolini’s tomb in the town of Predappio. But it’s obviously more widespread than just a few dozen men in black shirts (which they symbolically wear to channel the Black Shirts - which was the paramilitary wing of Fascist Party). Having looked into the realities of fascism, both in relation to my own family and to Italy, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would be nostalgic. But years of reporting experience tells me insecurity about the future usually plays a part in people trying to relive the past. And there’s certainly a lot of the former around these days, and not just in Italy.

The shadow of fascism will play a key role in these Italian elections and it will be worth paying attention to how they’ll unfold.

Italy was the place where the term ‘Fascism’ itself was coined by Mussolini to describe his brand of dictatorship.

More than a century later, events in Italy may once again provide advance warning of what could happen in other democracies too.

Many of the events where I’ve presented the film are actually literary festivals, with book signings after the Q&A. You can’t really autograph a film so at the Liquida Festival I ended up signing my book from nearly 10 years ago! It was an amazing night and It’s always great fun to meet people face-to-face and thank them for their interest and support.