So proclaimed Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (right), lauding her party’s youth wing, even as a video emerged of its members praising Mussolini and Hitler.
Alfio Bernabei reports
Barely ten days had passed since the European elections in June, in which Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party consolidated its leading position with nearly 29% of the vote, when a secretly filmed investigation revealed militants of Gioventù Nazionale (National Youth) singing praises to Mussolini and Hitler.
Gioventù Nazionale is the youth wing of Meloni’s party. An organisation that was set up to mobilise militants from which to draw new party cadres, it operates under Meloni’s watchful eye and is given opportunities to attract national and international attention during annual conferences called Atreju.
Last year, the guest of honour was Elon Musk, and Meloni presided under the slogan Bentornato Orgoglio Italiano (Welcome back Italian pride). In a rousing speech (“I am Italian! I am a Christian!”), she turned to the assembled youths described as the “soul and motor” of the party, shouting: “I am proud of you, you are splendid!”
One can easily imagine Meloni inspired by similar gatherings when, as a teenager, she joined the youth wing of Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), the reborn fascist party after the Second World War.
One of the MSI recruiting devices was to remodel the Campi Dux which, under Mussolini, had served as an introduction to becoming soldiers. The relaunched camps were named “Hobbit”, to lend a patina of intellectual fantasy drawn from the J R R Tolkien saga The Lord of the Rings, and as a young activist Meloni had dressed up as a hobbit.
In the same pseudo-literary vein, the conferences organised by Gioventù Nazionale are named after Atreju, the soldier boy protagonist of Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story.
Disturbing echo
All this may sound esoteric or infantile, except that this “soldier boy” fantasy can take dangerous turns when exploited by fascists. It finds a disturbing international echo in the “spiritual war” advocated by one of Meloni’s admirers, Steve Bannon, in an interview he gave to the New York Times shortly before entering prison.
Predictably, Meloni showed irritation when presented with evidence of chants of “Duce!” and “Sieg Heil!” made by some of her followers. In an outburst, positioning herself as the victim, she condemned the undercover reporting by Fanpage.it as an intrusion into a private gathering and expressed outrage that “minors” had been filmed. She named the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, as if to imply that an intervention on his part would be appropriate to prevent a repeat of such scandalous investigations.
She had no choice but to distance herself and the party from the nazi-fascists caught on camera. However, she mostly expressed outrage at the methods used to dig out truths about the organisation she treasures. Shielding her troops seemed her main concern, doing so in a disturbingly combative tone that seemed deliberately intended to evoke the model of belligerent masculinity typically displayed on occasion during Italy’s dark years.
“I am Meloni the turd”, she recently said in front of cameras, introducing herself to the President of the Campania region quoting his own words. The interplay between “strong” language and fascist ideals goes back to Mussolini, who perceived advantages in portraying himself in poses of seductive crudeness. Meloni seems to be using the same device. She is not the only one.
Some of the biggest headlines during the campaign for the European elections were claimed by a genuine soldier, Roberto Vannacci, an army general who, as reported last year in Searchlight, is the author of a bestseller in which he stigmatises homosexuals as abnormal, presents women as inferior to men, and advocates a return to “normality”, suggesting that only people with white skin are worthy of being described as Italian.
Adopted as a candidate by the Lega (formerly Lega Nord, or Northern League) that is a partner in Meloni’s coalition government, Vannacci campaigned expressing admiration for Decima MAS, a fascist flotilla consisting of trained marines and frogmen, which became famous in the Second World War for daring raids against the Allies.
Decima MAS was also employed as an anti-partisan force on land. Vannacci’s T-shirts with “Decima” emblazoned across them could easily be interpreted as a nazi-fascist slogan despite denials. Matteo Salvini, the Lega’s secretary, was only too happy to give Vannacci a hero’s treatment.
Disgruntled
Lega gained only 9% in the European Parliament elections, a slight improvement on its results in Italy’s 2022 general election, but Vannacci triumphed with 538,000 votes. Not only did he win a seat in the European Parliament, but he was promptly put forward by the Lega, and installed, as vice-president of the Patriots for Europe group led by France’s National Rally (one of three far-right groupings in the European Parliament).
In all likelihood, he was the choice of those far-right organisations who were unable to participate in the elections. CasaPound does not qualify as a party, and Roberto Fiore’s Forza Nuova was disqualified when it failed to collect enough signatures to claim representation in the electoral lists.
Meanwhile, a disgruntled Meloni who was hoping to gain ground in Brussels and Strasbourg has been expressing her frustration at Italy not being given greater recognition at the heart of the European Union. She has complained that decisions are being taken without consulting her.
Italy may not be the only country that has nazi-fascist militants chanting Sieg Heil!, but taken in the historical context of Mussolini’s infamous “stab in the back” and a page of history marked by treachery, the failure to consult her may not be so surprising.
This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight