Italy’s democrats warn against return of Fascism

Italy’s governing Democrats led a rally Saturday to warn about fascism making a comeback in the nation that once suffered under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and which is now seeing a rash of rightwing protests against migrants.

Several thousand people turned out in Como, a lakeside town in northern Italy where right- wing extremists calling themselves the Veneto Skinhead Front recently barged into a meeting about migrant housing and railed about the “invasion” of foreigners.

Veneto, a region in northeast Italy, is a stronghold of the anti-migrant Northern League Party, which hopes to take power in Italy via an electoral alliance with former Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservatives after the 2018 election.

On Friday night, two brothers burst into a Veneto residence housing Nigerian asylum-seekers, one of them claiming to be a policeman, the Italian news agency ANSA reported, citing Italy’s Carabinieri police.

Earlier this week, masked supporters of the neo-fascist Forza Nuova party also attacked the Rome headquarters of the liberal paper La Repubblica and the newsweekly L’Espresso.

Fearing clashes on Saturday, authorities in Como refused to allow a Forza Nuova counter-rally.

Instead, Forza Nuova propo- nents gathered at a Como hotel, where leader Roberto Fiore contended that the Democrats, La Repubblica and L’Espresso were fostering a “climate of hate” against his party. Fiore defended the Veneto Skinhead Front’s action as “a peaceful act, a demonstration against the business of immigration.” /