Italy: Fascism's shadow »

Posted By JamesMarcus 9 months ago in News

Prop it 9 Drop it

Silvio Berlusconi 's central objective as Italian prime minister has long appeared to be dazzlingly and shamelessly obvious. Ever since he strode into the political vacuum created in 1993 by the simultaneous government corruption scandal on the right and the collapse of Italian communism on the left, Mr Berlusconi has used his political career and power to protect himself and his media empire from the law.

During the longest of his three periods as prime minister, Mr Berlusconi not only consolidated his already strong grip on the Italian media industry--he now owns around half of it--but passed legislation granting him immunity from prosecution. Then, when that law was ruled unconstitutional, the newly re-elected Mr Berlusconi brought it back in a new guise last year and has had it successfully signed into law.

Yet Mr Berlusconi's latest action--the merger into his new People of Freedom bloc, completed yesterday, of his own Forza Italia party with the Allianza Nazionale which derives directly from Benito Mussolini's fascist tradition--may leave a more lasting mark on Italian public life than anything else the populist tycoon has done.

Unlike postwar Germany, postwar Italy never properly confronted its own fascist legacy. As a result, while neofascism has never seriously resurfaced in Germany, in Italy there were important continuities - inherited Mussolini-era laws and officials and the postwar rebirth of the renamed Fascist party among them--in spite of Italy's nominally anti-fascist public culture. Those continuities have just become stronger. It is a day of shame for Italy.