Dear readers/listeners/friends,
I suspect you’re going to be hearing the F-word a lot over the next few days. That word being Fascism. The only reason you haven’t heard it too much over the past few weeks is that it was overshadowed by that other F-word: Funeral - the Royal kind.
But now ‘news’ is back to business as usual, and the Italian elections are dominating because of Giorgia Meloni, the far-right leader of Brothers of Italy, a party with very clear roots in neo-fascism and many in its ranks who retain a current fondness for making the occasional fascist salute. A slip of the arm. It can happen to anyone really.
I wrote an opinion piece for the Al Jazeera website about why fascism still has a hold on Italy. Worth a read if you want to understand how the UK and USA were also involved in why Italy has arguably not come to terms with its past.
But here are some more thoughts I’d like to share just with you substackers without the filter of editors and publications.
A few weeks ago, a leading italian journalist warned his colleagues to be wary of giving interviews to the non-Italian press, who - he cleaimed - just wanted confirmation about the threat of fascism. Now, I’m not sure I completely agree with him and frankly I’d never dream of telling colleagues who they should or should not speak to, especially the ones who have spent decades meticulously recording examples of fascist sympathies in politics at considerable personal risk.
But I do agree that some of the international press (which invariably means the English-language press) is so focused on finding fascist links that they are overlooking the many, many reasons why millions of Italians would vote for Giorgia Meloni that have nothing to do with fascism.
First of all, she played a political blinder by staying in opposition to the Mario Draghi coalition government while it passed several unpopular covid-related measures.
Secondly, many voters may simply want to give her a chance, as they’ve already voted for all the others and been disappointed.
And crucially, she would become PM by forming a right-wing coalition, so she won’t gain power just off the back of her party’s success at the polls. And the left wing has proved unable to form a comparable coalition.
Frankly I don’t think the fact that she’s a woman has mattered much one way or the other, but the ‘First Female Prime Minister of Italy’ headline will still have an impact.
One of the things that sparked my interest in fascism is the way the word is often over used in English. While in Italian it is anchored in the two decades of Mussolini’s regime, in English it’s often used more generically to mean dictatorships in general and more specifically Nazism.
The question that we’ll hear a lot in the coming weeks is ‘Is this really Fascism?’
It’s always hard to come up with a clear definition of what fascism is, but I would say that violence is always present, as is the scapegoating of specific groups. But taking a hardline stance on migration or believing in traditional Catholic family values does not a fascist make. I believe accusations of fascism have to be anchored in specific facts, otherwise they end up helping many far-right leaders claim that they are being unfairly demonised. Something which only strengthens the support of their base.
Thank you, as always, for reading. Please send me comments below and remember that paid subscribers can email me directly, just send it to barbaraserra@substack.com from the email address you used to subscribe.
And to those in Italy next week, please do join me for the latest screening and Q&A of Fascism in the Family on October 1st at the Internazionale Festival in Ferrara, Italy. It'll be the first screening post-elections so it’s bound to raise some interesting questions!