THE RETURN OF MUSSOLINI?

Given the surprise evinced by just about everyone over the recent victory of a political party founded by actual neo-Nazis in Sweden of all places, it seems a good idea to look at another of the other far right parties that are close to taking national political power.

Italian politics can be a joke to many - the country has had 70 governments in the 77 years since World War II. It’s also the country that was never forced to deal with its fascist past the way the Germans were following the end of World War II. In fact, because Italy surrendered and became a “co-belligerent” during the war, actual fascists who claimed to oppose Mussolini and his Repubblica Socialiste Italiana - the fascist state in northern Italy rebuilt after Mussolini’s rescue from Castel Gandolofo by Otto Skorzeny’s SS commandos, fascist parties were allowed to continue to exist and participate in politics in ways no neo-Nazi party was ever allowed to do in Germany. After the war, in the name of “national unity,” members of the RSI’s armed forces were allowed to join the Italian military without undergoing a vetting for politics the way former members of the Wehrmacht were vetted when West Germany was allowed to rebuild an armed force in 1955.

The result of this is that while Mussolini may have met his end hanging by his heels from a gas station sign in Milan at the end of the war, his party and his politics have never been refuted.

Today, the far-right Brothers of Italy party, a political descendant of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) founded by Benito Mussolini’s allies in 1945, looks like it could become the dominant member of a far right political coalition that may take power in the coming elections on September 25. The new “Mussolini” is 45-year old Giorgia Meloni, a friend and political ally of Steve Bannon, which gives you a good take on what exactly she and her party are about. When she was recently interviewed and asked about her association with Bannon, she replied, “He is an ally,” stating that she hosted Bannon at a far-right political event in Rome “because we share ideals. We need to hear what he says.”

Literally, only a month ago, for those unfamiliar with Italian politics, the question was: Giorgia who? She was as well-known internationally as was Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the Sweden Democrats. Unlike Akesson, whose party is likely not to take formal power in the new Swedish government but rather to provide voting support in parliament, Meloni would become the Prime Minister of Italy.

Meloni has called for a naval blockade of the North African coast to prevent migrants sailing to Europe. (Sound familiar?) She has excoriated left-wing politicians for financing “an invasion” to “replace Italians with immigrants,” that has left Italy facing “demographic emergency,” part of the white supremacist Great Replacement Theory that is a staple of the Thousand Year MAGA here an far-right politicians across Europe, though she does claim to be in favor of the European Union though she opposes the idea of Europe-wide bureaucracy, a position other European right wing “populist” parties hold.

And surprise surprise, she is “anti-woke” - the new favorite political position of white supremacist reactionaries in Europe and the U.S. At a 2019 rally she complained of pressures from the other end of the political spectrum “to call us parent 1, parent 2, gender LGBT, citizen X, with code numbers. But we are not code numbers … and we’ll defend our identity.”

Given the political roots of the Brothers of Italy, critics and political opponents have kept the focus on “Fascist.” As she becomes the center of political attention she has been working overtime to refute the accusation, to the point of issuing a video last week to reassure those now following the campaign that she’s not a fascist. “For days, I have been reading articles in the international press about the upcoming elections that will give Italy a new government, in which I am described as a danger to democracy, to Italian, European and international stability. None of this is true.”

Her history says otherwise. A video has surfaced of her as a teenage activist for the Italian far right, telling a French TV crew what she thought of Mussolini, that “everything he did, he did for Italy. And there have been no politicians like him for 50 years.” (For which some might exclaim “thank god!”) Her history and her current rhetoric place her firmly on the right wing of the European political spectrum; she is (unsurprisingly) an admirer of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Daughter of a single mother raised in a working-class area of Rome, she was a teenage activist for the youth wing of the pro-Mussolini MSI and won her first local election at the age of 21.

She first entered government as a junior minister in the government of Silvio Berlusconi. In 2011 she left Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and with a group of other right-wing politicians established the Brothers of Italy in 2012, taking their name from the opening lines of the national anthem. Their insignia is the same flame symbol used by the MSI.

The political background of the party has its roots in the postwar fascist nostalgia, in which “he made the trains run on time,” and in which Italy was “taken seriously” in interwar European politics, animates those who were from the favored groups in Mussolini’s society. While “fascist-curious” politicians have participated in several post-war Italian governments, they were always marginal figures - as was Meloni in Berlusconi’s government. If Brothers of Italy does emerge as the leading party in a victorious right wing coalition, it would be the first time that a party openly reflecting if not advocating such beliefs will take actual governmental power.

Unlike Orbán, Bannon, or the rest of the European far right, Meloni has repeatedly stated during the campaign that she supports Ukraine as it resists Putin’s invasion, telling Reuters in a recent interview that the war was “the tip of a conflict whose objective is the revision of the world order.”

However, her allies in the other parties that would form a new government aren’t in agreement with that position. Matteo Salvini, leader of the League Party, has questioned the utility of European sanctions against Moscow, recently stating, “If we adopt an instrument to hurt the aggressor and after seven months of war it has not been hurt, at least considering a change seems legitimate to me.”

With a government possibly coming to power that holds these beliefs, just as concern grows about rising energy prices across Europe and how the decision by Putin to cut off Europe from Russian natural gas has driven up European natural gas prices, with already-high prices rising a third following the shutdown of a key pipeline connecting Russia and Europe, the possibility of maintaining European unity through a difficult winter is increasingly problematic. Italy depends on Moscow for a fourth of its natural gas and ordinary Italians have seen their energy bills spike. In Naples, the increase in costs has already spurred protests.

Observers point out that while Meloni is pro-Ukraine in her statements, she is close to Orbán, the most shamelessly pro-Putin politician in Europe. He wrote her last year, highlighting the need for “... reliable companions in battle who have a common vision of the world and give similar responses to the challenges of our times.”

She wants a weaker European Union, saying recently at a rally in Milan, “Don’t let Brussels do what Rome can best take care of. If I win, for Europe, the fun is over.”

Domestically, there are concerns about what Meloni in power would mean for women’s rights. She has said she would not abolish an existing law that legalizes abortion, but her public statements on the issue matter. At a rally this summer, she said “Yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death.” The Brothers of Italy party has pushed to erode abortion rights, including putting forward a proposal to designate Rome a “city for life” and let anti-abortion groups into family planning clinics.

As with the Thousand Year MAGA here or the Sweden Democrats in Stockholm, the question is, how did they get to this point?

Ten years ago, the Brothers of Italy had a vote share in Italian elections under two percent and its share was four percent in 2018. But according to a Bloomberg poll in August, Brothers of Italy was polling at 24 percent and the right-wing coalition that includes Salvini’s League party and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, registered 48 percent support among Italian voters.

Some Italian political observers say the answer is the Italian version of “Throw them all out.”

As one stated, “Italians simply are in a protesting mood, and have been so for decades. And they are ready to write off politicians who take responsibility in government and don’t deliver.”

Brothers of Italy was the only major party that did not join the unity government formed by technocrat Prime Minister Mario Draghi, whose resignation this summer set the stage for these elections. Brothers of Italy, by maintaining distance and keeping their outsider status, has that now as its biggest strength, particularly with the growing economic pain that can be blamed on the policies of the government that included all the other parties.

As with the U.S., inflation is an issue, now at a 40-year high across the Italian economy. The manufacturing sector saw factory production drop in August for a second time in as many months. All this comes amid growing fears of a recession. When people fear the future, they can be easily attracted top those who confidently outline alternative outcomes.

Also, Meloni’s nationalist rhetoric fits into a broader public narrative on immigration. Italy, with an aging population and low birthrate, has a growing need for migrants, but public attitudes toward immigration are hostile and based on misinformation. A 2017 survey saw most Italians agreeing that the proportion of non-European Union migrants in their country was just under 25 percent. The real number was seven percent. On the issue of LGBT rights, a 2019 survey had 68 percent support for equal rights for gay, lesbian and bisexual people, but a significant minority of 27 percent disagreed.

This combination of belief based on misinformation, combined with economic difficulty and disenchantment with the political establishment, could put Meloni in power as the leader of the only political party that has had no political responsibility in governing the country

What all this comes down to is a similar analysis of the situations in Sweden, the United States, and across the developed countries. It is the result of 50 years of increasing social inequality as neo-liberalism took control of national social and economic policy, led by U.S. policies that began with the Nixon administration and saw their spread through the policies promoted by the International Monetary Fund during the period of inflation in the 1970s and 80s, then supported by the accession to power of center-right governments whose policies exacerbated the problem of inequality.

President Biden is right that democracy is under assault like it has not been since the 1930s, the last period of widespread economic difficulty. Unregulated capitalism led to that crisis, as it has led to this crisis. I do not say that as a Marxist; capitalism has been historically the economic engine that spread progress most widely among people, both economically and politically. But Marx was right in his analysis that unregulated capitalism would create its own destruction, and we see today just how that can happen.

And the alternative is always worse.

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