Fascists gaining influence, leftists caution at rally

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

Several thousand people turned out in Como, a lakeside town in northern Italy where rightwing 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 antiimmigrant Northern League Party, which hopes to take power in Italy through an electoral alliance with former Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservatives after the 2018 vote.

Last week, masked supporters of the neofascist 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 counterrally. Instead, Forza Nuova proponents 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.”

The post-war Italian Constitution, adopted a few years after the demise of Mussolini’s regime, outlaws the return of fascist organizations.

Chamber of Deputies President Laura Boldrini said it was the “duty of all democratic forces, of civil society, of citizens” to oppose fascism.