Italy chooses a party with a neo-fascist legacy

Beside a road winding into the Apuan Alps sits the village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema. In 1944 ss troops and Fascist paramilitaries massacred several hundred people here, including children, to deter collaboration with the resistance. In Italy’s general election on September 25th, Stazzema, the municipality that includes Sant’Anna, helped elect a senator from the Brothers of Italy (fdi), a party descended from a post-war neo-fascist group. The fdi’s candidate took 49.6% of the votes.

Il Tirreno, the local daily, was outraged. Stazzema and the surrounding region of Tuscany had “shelved [their] memory”, it thundered. The historical significance of fascism had been lost in “a sea of indifference and populism”. Of the 36 lawmakers elected in Tuscany, once part of Italy’s communist “red belt”, 19 were from the nationally victorious right-wing alliance. Six belong to the fdi, led by Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s probable next prime minister. But do the results of Italy’s election truly mean it has re-embraced its fascist past?