Mussolini’s home town fears ruin from ban on glorifying Italy’s fascist past
When several thousand Fascists descend on a small town in Italy this weekend to commemorate the 95th anniversary of Benito Mussolini’s seizure of power, the first stop for many will be the bizarre high street souvenir shops.
For decades, the town of Predappio, where the future Il Duce was born in 1883, has done a roaring trade in Fascist memorabilia, from lethal looking daggers to T-shirts, posters, pasta in the shape of his head profile and even baby bibs stamped with Mussolini’s most pugnacious sayings.
For those whose tastes extend further, there are SS knives, swastikas and coffee mugs decorated with the words Sieg Heil and photos of Hitler.
But a law to criminalise the glorification of Fascism, passed last month by Italy’s lower house of parliament and due to go to the upper house, threatens the trade.
The law is somewhat belated recognition, more than 70 years after the Second World War, that Italy needs to do more to come to terms with one of its darkest chapters.
It would outlaw the stiff-armed Fascist salute as well as Nazi souvenirs and the distribution of propaganda. Offenders risk two years in prison.
The souvenir shop owners of Predappio are not happy.
“If the Senate passes the law then I’ll load up a van with all my stuff and drive down to Rome to protest outside parliament,” said Pier Luigi Pompignoli, one shopkeeper.
“I’ve been selling these things for 35 years – how come the politicians have suddenly woken up and said they should be banned?”
Launching into a combative defence of Mussolini he went on: “Hitler was a criminal, but Mussolini absolutely was not. Hitler made him go to war and made him introduce laws against Italian Jews (which led to thousands being murdered in death camps). Mussolini did many good things, including building this town and others like it all around Italy.”
Predappio, in the northern region of Emilia-romagna and about 40 miles north-east of Florence, did not exist until 1925, when Mussolini ordered a model new town to be built around the crumbling stone farmhouse where he was born. The town is a vast open-air living museum of modernist Fascist architecture, with the town hall, police station and basilica built around a central square.
After Mussolini was shot dead by partisans in northern Italy in 1945, Predappio became a place of pilgrimage for neo-fascists and apologists – many of whom still refuse to acknowledge the evils of Fascism and long for the return of a strongman to lead Italy. Three times a year – on the anniversaries of Mussolini’s birth, death and his 1922 March on Rome – they gather at his crypt in a cemetery just outside Predappio.
His remains are in a softly-lit, underground stone tomb surrounded by personal possessions including a pair of jackboots and a black shirt.
A bag of sand from El Alamein, where Italian troops fought the British in 1942, sits above the tomb, which is decorated with stone “fasces” – tightly bound bundles of rods which symbolised power in ancient Rome and adopted by the Fascists.
The walls of the mausoleum are lined with messages and slogans with which modern-day Fascists express their abiding devotion to Il Duce.
“Dear Benito, you are always in our hearts, we will never forget you,” reads one brass plaque, while another says: “History proved you were right.”
Tributes are recorded in a visitors’ book, past copies of which are carefully preserved and archived. “Fascist forever,” reads one message. A road sign outside is plastered with stickers from extremist groups, with one declaring: “I Love Fascism.”
The paradox of Predappio is that while it lures extremists from all over the country, the town has been run by the centre-left for decades and many of its 6,000 inhabitants are deeply uncomfortable with its past and are keen to embrace a new identity.
It will not forget its origins – there are plans to turn a disused Fascist building on the main piazza into a museum about the rise of Fascism and a study centre for international academics.
The idea is to analyse the catastrophes that Fascism wrought on Italy – the deportation of thousands of Italian Jews, the persecution of political opponents, the invasion of Abyssinia, the alliance with Hitler and defeat in the Second World War. The project is spearheaded by Giorgio Frassineti, Predappio’s mayor, who hopes work on the building, known as the Casa del Fascio, will start next year.
A member of the centre-left Democratic Party, he runs Predappio from a 19th century town hall that was altered by Mussolini and inaugurated in 1927. His office is Mussolini’s former bedroom, and still contains some of the original furniture.
“We want to change Predappio’s image and we also think the museum will be of value for the rest of Europe, a place to understand what happened during the 20th century,” said the mayor, who grew up in Predappio. “It’s fundamental to tell Italians what really happened – that Fascism was an enormous tragedy for us.”
He said he would welcome the closure of the Fascist souvenir shops, but added: “It’s more important to change people’s mentality.”
Most local people appear to be behind him. “The museum will hopefully bring a lot of people to the town and will clarify what happened during the Fascist years,” said Riccardo Menghi, who runs a taverna in Predappio Alta, a hilltop village.
For now, the owners of the town’s Fascist emporiums can only watch and wait to see whether the Senate passes the law. In another shop on the main street, where Mussolini’s bull neck and jutting chin loom down from every shelf, the woman behind the counter was glum.
“We will do whatever the law tells us to do,” said the owner, who declined to give her name. “If they tell us to close, we will have to close.”
‘I’ve been selling these things for 35 years – how come the politicians have suddenly woken up and said they should be banned?’