ROME (AP) — Dozens of people raised their arms in fascist salutes and shouted a fascist chant during ceremonies Sunday honoring Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on the 79th anniversary of his execution.
Dressed in black, the neofascist supporters marched through northern Italian towns where Mussolini was arrested and executed at the end of World War II, as well as in Predappio, Mussolini’s birthplace and final resting place.
Mussolini was stopped by anti-fascist partisans in Dongo, on the shores of Lake Como, on April 27, 1945, while trying to escape with his lover. Clara Petacciafter the Allied liberation of Italy.
On Sunday, a group of neo-fascists marched through Dongo and placed 15 roses in the lake in memory of the ministers and officials of the Mussolini government who were murdered there, according to a video from the LaPresse news agency.
The partisans executed Mussolini and Petacci the next day in the nearby lakeside town of Mezzegra-Giulino, where commemorations were also held on Sunday. After a rendition of Taps, the leader of the commemorations shouted “Camerade Benito Mussolini,” and the crowd responded with a strong-armed fascist salute and chant of “present.”
Several police trucks separated the demonstrators in Dongo from hundreds of demonstrators who sang the famous partisan song “Bella Ciao” during the ceremony.
The anniversary of Mussolini’s execution fell on the same day that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni led her far-right Brothers of Italy party at an election rally in the city of Pescara. The Brothers of Italy has its origins in the Italian Social Movement, which was founded in 1946 by a chief of staff in Mussolini’s last government and attracted fascist sympathizers and officials into its ranks after Mussolini’s fall.
Meloni, who joined the MSI youth wing as a teenager, has tried to distance her party from its neo-fascist roots. She has condemned fascism’s suppression of democracy and emphasized that the Italian right consigned fascism to history decades ago. On Sunday, Meloni accused the left of posing a more totalitarian threat to contemporary Italy.
She noted that members of the Communist Party had filed a formal complaint about the tents built on the beach of Pescara to host the meeting of the Brothers of Italy, in which Meloni announced that she would lead the party’s campaign ahead of the European Parliament elections in June.
“I note that the Communist Party still exists, and I say that to show where nostalgia for totalitarianism exists in Italy today,” she said.
