Original subtitles

Italy 2024, where the battles of the past still smoulder.

Are you a fascist?

If you ask me like that, I probably would say yes

but I have to complete the term and say I'm a revolutionary.

A march in Milan for a far-right student

killed almost 50 years ago by the far-left.

You're seeing things in these recent years that are

very similar to what happened at the beginning of the regime.

The years of violent clashes between fascists

and anti-fascists have gone,

but the words and the polarisation live on.

Being anti-fascism in Italy means be a violent person

who shut the door to all others.

Competing narratives in the country that created fascism...

The Mussolini calendar.

You said this is the most sold calendar in Italy?

..and still allows its sympathisers.

As it draws to a close, the finale...

..with a chilling throwback to Italy's dictatorship decades.

ALL: Presente!

Presente!

Presente!

These kinds of demonstrations with the fascist salutes happen

across the country year in, year out.

The state allows them to take place and society somehow

seems to tolerate them.

I want to find out why, and why some of the images associated

with the dark chapters of Italy's past

still infuse the present.

Presente!

For the hardcore believers, a return to where it,

or rather he, began.

The small town of Predappio in north-east Italy,

the birthplace of Benito Mussolini, the country's

fascist dictator, assassinated in 1945 after a ruthless

20-year rule.

Every year on the anniversary of his death

the faithful gather to honour him.

Not for them the established narrative

of his reign of terror.

Down the road, Mussolini merch.

From the traditional to the tacky,

an extraordinary world of dictatorship kitsch.

Can you imagine an equivalent place existing in Germany

selling Hitler and Nazi paraphernalia?

It just wouldn't happen. This is extraordinary.

It's Mussolini marketing, and it sells.

Then it begins.

Part funeral procession, part military parade.

A pilgrimage to his resting place.

BELL TOLLS

They're called to attention.

And then silence for their victim.

They file in towards his tomb.

No.

We're not welcome.

ARCHIVE: In Milan, Mussolini made an important statement...

It's a salute deriving from ancient Rome,

adopted by the fascists and passed on to the Nazis.

Benito Mussolini, nicknamed "Il Duce" or "The Leader",

swept to power in 1922,

beginning two decades of totalitarian rule

marked by a brutal repression of opponents,

concentration camps and invasions abroad.

He came by armoured train for the meeting

with Signor Mussolini.

Anti-Semitic laws persecuted Jews, worsening after Italy's

wartime alliance with Hitler's Germany.

..from Germany, unless he wanted something.

After the war, a neo-fascist party was allowed to form

and figures from the Mussolini era filled state institutions.

The party remained sidelined until Silvio Berlusconi

brought it into his coalition, legitimising the extreme.

Today, the blackshirt salutes fill various yearly tributes.

ALL: Presente!

They say it's historical commemoration.

Critics call it glorification of past crimes.

ALL: Presente!

Italy's post-war constitution has one article that bans

reforming the fascist party.

The subsequent so-called Scelba law forbids groups

pursuing the same anti-democratic aims,

glorifying fascism, using violence to do so,

or promoting the suppression of freedom.

But it's only been used twice to dissolve fringe movements,

and it leaves it up to judges to decide whether acts

like the salute are a crime.

Many think the law could've been used after this -

protests over Covid restrictions that attacked

Italy's main trade union.

It was seen as out of the fascist playbook,

since the unions were targeted under Mussolini.

Forza Nuova took part that day - a fringe, hard-right party

still not banned.

THEY CHANT

Hi. Wow. Well, this is...

Luca Castellini, its deputy leader, was jailed

for the violence but freed pending appeal.

..the flag up here of the Donetsk People's Republic.

Esatto, Donbas.

Donbas in Ukraine, the part of Ukraine taken by Russia

or claimed by Russia.

The Mussolini calendar.

You said this is the most sold calendar in Italy?

"We are fascists."

"A call to arms." "We are fascists."

And then up here, this is the, of course,

the flag of the old...

..fascist republic.

This was also Luca Castellini...

CHEERS

..as head of Verona's Ultras, Italy's hardcore football fans,

long a breeding ground of extremism.

He's been banned from the stadium after saying

a black player could never be truly Italian.

Do you think it's acceptable to joke about Adolf Hitler?

Would you say the same thing again?

You would repeat the same thing?

What would you say to a Jewish person,

an Italian Jewish person, who has lost,

who lost their family to the Holocaust?

The Scelba law in the Italian constitution

prohibits what it calls the praising, the threatening,

or the use of violence, and says that that

could allow a group to be banned, dissolved.

Isn't that exactly what Forza Nuova did against CGdL,

against the trade union? Did they not use violence?

Did you not use violence, you used threats,

you targeted that union?

No government has cracked down,

but some feel Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni

is even less likely to do so.

She started in politics in the neo-fascist youth,

interviewed aged 19 by French TV.

The party she formed, Brothers of Italy,

has its roots in post-war fascism, keeping the same

tricolour flame logo.

But she has moderated and moved it away from the far-right

to the mainstream.

She's topping polls before the upcoming European elections,

an example for Europe's nationalist politicians

hoping she'll lead a new right-wing wave -

and hoping to emulate her success in their countries.

And on the past, she had this message.

The Italian right has handed fascism over history

for decades now, unambiguously condemning the suppression

of democracy

and the ignominious anti-Jewish laws.

And yet, overt political extremism has continued

to fester and flourish here...

..seemingly without punishment.

A Nazi birthday cake for a senior Forza Nuova figure

drew little public reaction.

But Meloni's supporters say the issue is with the way

in which anti-fascists have protested over the years,

both in clashes with the other side and with police.

And so, while the Prime Minister has never directly

called herself anti-fascist,

one of her oldest political allies says it's a nuance

in Italy that needs to be understood.

Being anti-fascist during the fascism was a very brave act,

brave for freedom, brave for democracy.

But after the falling of the fascism,

being anti-fascist means

violence, means a lot of young students killed.

This is why she's very clear -

I always condemned the fascism every day of my life,

but please don't tell me to share what the anti-fascists

did after the falling of fascism.

If somebody looks from outside and they see Italy in 2024

with hundreds of people in the main second city of Italy

doing the fascist salute, how do you think that looks?

If you are commemorating, er...

..um, a person dead,

even if he was a fascist,

this is not a crime, because... But should it be?

..being a neo-fascist is another thing.

Should it be a crime to use that gesture,

to use the fascist salute in the middle of an Italian city?

No, no, I don't think so. You are fascist

if you want to reintroduce the fascism in your country,

not if you make the fascism salute.

That is the Roman salute.

Because the fascism is only 20 years in the Italian history.

Italian history is really bigger than 20 years

of fascism.

Every, every Prime Minister goes to the most important

Italian monument to say every year

that we condemn the fascism.

But more than this is an obsession.

And so one side of Italy sees fascism and its threat

as a ghost haunting the present -

the other as a fantasy whipped up by the left.

Geographically, socially, politically, Italy is divided,

but it's also split in the historical narrative

people believe and are fed.

Across Italy, the past, politically speaking,

lives on. Historical battles still part of the present.

We've come to Bologna, which has always been at the centre

of the fight against fascism.

Here are the names and faces of the partisans that died

defending this city from the fascists in the 1940s.

But then it went on to 1980

with Italy's worst terror attack,

bombings at the train station here in Bologna by neo-fascists

that killed 85 people.

And so fascism and anti-fascism have always been at the heart

of this city's, this country's, political lexicon.

We're seeing things in these recent years

that are very similar to what happened at the beginning of

the regime, and at the beginning of fascism

a century ago.

Attacks on freedom of press, censorship, um,

freedom for the LGBTQI community,

attacks on the liberty and freedom of women

to determine what they can do on their own body.

So do you feel that the fight, the anti-fascism fight,

is still relevant today? Definitely.

I definitely believe it's very relevant.

And I also see again, to strike a parallel, the fact

that the far-right, not only in Italy but all over the world,

is sort of trying to find a scapegoat for people's

difficulties in everyday lives by attacking the stranger,

the person who comes from abroad, the migrant.

It's something similar again to what was done

a century ago. So to me, it's quite striking

as being very close to fascism. You know,

a new form of fascism, neo-fascism, in fact,

because it's again that same sort of tactic -

I'll make you scared of something

that's different to you.

It's that same sort of rhetoric of many governments in power,

from Trump to Orban, which really singles out

a lot of battles for social justice or for civil rights

and says they're wrong.

In Germany, you could never have somebody going and making

a public declaration of support for Nazism.

You could never show a swastika.

In Italy, there are groups that exist, plenty of them.

These skinhead groups, the far-right groups, you know,

the Roman salute. Why is this all allowed to happen?

Germany in some ways sort of had to address the past

because there was victors and those who had lost the war.

Italy's role was a little more ambiguous, right?

So, first with Hitler and then surrendered.

And there's much to be said about really grappling

with that legacy.

That legacy is still being debated and dissected.

The next generation learning about the wounds

of the past one.

History is weaponised in a country

still not at peace with its past.

Nostalgia given free rein.

Sugar coating the bitter parts of collective memory.

The political extreme here is perhaps small,

but they're outspoken, they're permitted,

and some of their views are seeping into the mainstream.

Camerata Benito Mussolini!

ALL: Presente!

My name is Roberto Fiore and I'm the national secretary

of Forza Nuova.

I define myself as someone who really, who has certainly got,

some ideas, some inspiration by certain parts of fascism.

Are you a fascist?

If you ask me like that, I probably would say yes,

but I have to complete the term and say I'm a revolutionary.

Italy hasn't got the intelligence and the courage

to say, well, OK, fascism was good on this and this and that,

and maybe not good in other things.

So as a reaction,

I really, I accept,

I don't refuse the term of fascism.

But are you denying that the fascist regime

was violent and criminal? Yes, absolutely, I deny that.

Mussolini signed the racial laws, I mean, he deported,

this was a regime that deported Jews to death camps,

that outlawed the opposition, that put political opponents

in internment camps.

Are you honestly saying that you support those measures?

The internment camps are things that happened with the war.

The Americans did it, the Germans did it,

the Italians did it, and so on.

I'm talking about people who were gassed,

who were shot, who were exterminated

for their religion. Fascism has never been accused of this.

I'm talking about fascism as a regime.

Mussolini and all his ministers have never been tried for this.

Do you believe that this government in power in Italy

is occupying your political space?

No, I believe that they are freeing a lot of

the political space that we are going to take. Why?

One of the main points is immigration.

We have always been against immigration.

Meloni has always been against immigration,

sometimes with our same tone and strength.

Now, immigrants last year, this year,

have increased the number of 50%.

Where do you think Italian people are going to go

after this betrayal of, um, original positions?

Your movement or a movement like yours would not exist

and has been banned in Greece, for example Golden Dawn,

in Germany it would never exist.

You would never be able to use the symbols and the slogans

that your party uses in a country like Germany.

Why is that the case?

Because Germany has got a bigger problem.

You think Germany's got the problem rather than Italy?

No... Yes, because freedom is freedom.

Neither victor nor vanquished.

Italy memorialises in a way others do not.

The name, architecture and gestures of the regime

allowed to live on.

What do you think, we have to destroy everything?

This is the cancel culture that we don't share.

The question is, does the ideology itself survive?

I would say there is a silent majority that would say

yes, yes, yes on a lot of our ideas.

And is Italy the laboratory of fascism,

once again a political testing room?

What should be seen as a crime, as apology of fascism,

is actually again downplayed as,

oh, no, it's just nostalgic, it's a tribute.

The worry here is not that Italy's democracy per se

is under threat, but that a governing party

which has not severed its historical roots

still winks to that support base.

And that speech, notions, even policies once banished

are increasingly normalised.