Mussolini’s Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy

Broder starts by hinting that, beneath the surface, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her associates are unmistakably fascist. They come from a political tradition dating back to the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in the early twentieth century. They promote a resentful nationalism and express concern about the dilution or extinction of italianità, or Italian identity. They occasionally invoke postwar extreme-right symbols as “dog whistles.” Yet the author, an extremely well-informed nonacademic historian of the Italian and French far right, does not seem to believe his own thesis. Soon he concedes that the Italian right has embraced democracy, renounced fascism, rejected anti-Semitism, left behind violent tactics, lost interest in grand projects for reorganizing society, and turned to generic global conservatism. Politically, Meloni got where she is by moving far to the center; she is now a staunchly anti-Russian, pro-Ukrainian, pro-European, and pro-NATO leader. Now that Meloni’s Italy has made its peace with the European Union, he concludes, the worst one can expect is an effort to transform Brussels from within—a quest that seems destined to fail. Far from harking back to the dark days of the 1920s, Italy today is, according to the author, firmly “post-fascist,” although it is unclear what that means.