The anti-Fascist public nature of the Italian Republic, 1946\u201390, and (until 2022) in most senses since, means that Antonio Gramsci (the communist), Giacomo Matteotti (the socialist), and Giovanni Amendola (the liberal democrat) are almost as likely to be recalled in such naming. But Fascists, whether Benito Mussolini<\/a> or his ministers and officials, who dominated the country through the ventennio (20 years of dictatorship) 1922\u201345 are absent. Italy has now acquired in Giorgia Meloni a Prime Minister who, until very recently, was a convinced admirer of Mussolini and Fascism (Italian-style). As a teenager she stated that \u201cMussolini was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy\u201d. Will that situation now change as we see what such flirtation now means?<\/p>\n We shall have to see. What the rise does make plain is the strange way a dictator, who sent a million men, women, and children early to their graves, has retained a positive memory image in many sectors of Italian society, particularly among those with less formal education, some of whom will enter the parliament as deputies among the Fratelli d\u2019Italia (Brothers of Italy). Two Mussolini granddaughters (Alessandra and Rachele) and a great-grandson (Caio Giulio Cesare) are FdI activists. How can this be?<\/p>\n As historian Paul Corner has authoritatively shown in Mussolini in Myth and Memory (OUP, 2022), the actual history of the Italian dictatorship was based on violence, corruption, and calamitous inadequacy in fighting Italy\u2019s Second World War (as the \u201cignoble second\u201d of Adolf Hitler<\/a> and his Nazis). During the ventennio, the national economy stuttered. Fascism did offer a welfare state of a kind (for the obedient and those with contacts) but it was corrupt, bureaucratised and inefficient. The regime promised a militarisation of everyone into \u2018new\u2019 men and women, ready to \u2018believe, fight and obey\u2019 for Italy and Fascism, these two meant to have become identical in meaning. The message was reinforced by ubiquitous propaganda, often purveyed with originality and panache, where the key slogan became Il Duce ha sempre ragione (the Duce is always right). Even if it was easy to see that Fascist bosses brimmed over with self, not public, interest, Italians were told that their leader\u2019s charisma covered all and he was as infallible, as blessed and as able to bless the people as (or more than) was the Pope across the Tiber.<\/p>\n![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2022\/10\/GettyImages-92423919-b2b36a5.png?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>The memory of Mussolini<\/h3>\n