Italy 2018: Back To Fascism

Long before Luca Traini carried out a drive-by shooting spree that targeted African immigrants in Macerata at the beginning of February 2018, Italy had seen many demonstrations displaying symbols and slogans inspired by nazi-fascism, such as No Ius Soli, March for the homeland or anti-Roma garrisons. Patrols, or rather “walks for safety” as the promoters define them, were organized, in the Roman neighborhood of Tiburtino III and in the Roman coastal area of Ostia. Footage of episodes recorded in the last few months are quite scary. For example, the attack against the headquarters of the Como association without borders by Veneto Fronte Skinheads, or the following demonstration by Forza Nuova at the headquarters of the newspaper La Repubblica.

Since the end of Italy’s fascist era the echoes of fascism have never really ceased to resound. Even in a violent way. But never as now have they been so deafening. Never as in this period have they gathered support, making a breach in public opinion. Leveraging on the fears of the last, they draw strength from the moods of disadvantaged classes, insinuate themselves in the urban outskirts and in the forgotten corners of provincial Italy.

The far-right tendencies of the new millennium are visible the indifference as well as in the bravado of the public positions assumed by the movements of neo-post-fascist inspiration. So for Luca Castellini of Forza Nuova “people do not give a damn about fascism and anti-fascism”. Words that pair with those of Roberto Fiore who explained to ilfattoquotidiano.it that “the Italian people have no longer been anti-fascist for years” and today “there is a strong wind, of Christian patriotism, which can not fail to strongly enter in Western Europe “. This new fascism is not just an Italian phenomenon, we have seen and heard it in recent months and in the recent past. The recent electoral results in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Hungary speak of an actual ferment in the area of ​​the extreme right.

The wind of identity, nationalist and sovereignty, loses its strength everywhere and in our country it has taken different forms. There is a great deal of contention for the broad consensus that has opened up on the anti-immigration front. At different levels: the populism of the Lega by Salvini, is only the first step. A path of consensus building on the fear that leads, already at the next election, to Casapound, but which continues in the “extreme” initiatives of Forza Nuova.