Italy fights sale of images, but Il Duce popular with many

MILAN — Earlier this spring, the owner of a tobacco shop in Jesolo, Italy, a beach town near to Venice, got into a fight with a group of international tourists. The reason? They were stunned and angered when they saw the shop was selling lighters with pictures of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

While the tourists may have been shocked, the cult of Mussolini is “alive and well in Italy,” as a German magazine noted a few years ago. Trinkets bearing the images of Il Duce, as Mussolini is known, are readily available to purchase — Mussolini’s birthplace, a small town in central Italy called Predappio, has a popular gift shop — some restaurants and cafes across the country display pictures of the dictator, and a beach resort in Chioggia, another town near Venice, recently made headlines for its fascist regime theme.

Now the Italian government is trying to clamp down on that cult with a law that would ban the production and distribution of goods that celebrate Mussolini and his regime. Parliament is discussing the bill, which has the backing of the ruling Democratic Party. If approved, the law will also introduce harsher penalties for those engaging in neofascist propaganda online.

The proposed law arrives as analysts are warning about the reemergence of fascist movements across Europe. The bill, however, has sparked a wave of criticism at home.

Italy’s conservative parties, which have an ambiguous but sometimes subtly sympathetic relationship with fascism, were outraged. “With this new law, my own existence would become illegal,” said Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the dictator and a lawmaker with Silvio Berlusconi’s centerright Forza Italia party, in a radio interview.

Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigration Northern League, tweeted that it is “ridiculous” to prosecute someone just because he “wants to buy a lighter with (a picture of) Mussolini.” The anti-establishment Five Star Movement, which eschews the left-right distinction, also issued a statement saying the bill violates freedom of expression.

The probably will pass in the lower house of Italy’s parliament, where the Democrats have a solid majority, though it could be stopped in the Senate. But even if it does become law, some analysts argue that the measure will be ineffective and hard to enforce.

“Our Parliament believes that flooding the Italian people with laws and norms will suddenly make them better citizens, but evidence suggests otherwise,” wrote blogger and author Massimo Mantellini.

He noted that Italy has already two separate laws aimed at curbing fascist propaganda: One, from 1952, explicitly bans any propaganda activity aiming at the reconstruction of the Fascist Party; the second one, introduced in 1993, forbids the use of fascist imagery and slogans, but only when their purpose is to incite racial violence.

Both laws, Mantellini said, are rarely enforced. He argued that the popularity Mussolini still enjoys among Italians should be dealt with through better education. Progressive journalist Fabio Chiusi expressed a similar view: Rather than preventing far-right activists from posting their opinions on social media, he wrote in the magazine l’Espresso, authorities should find more effective way to inform the public. A German magazine noted a few years ago that the cult of dictator Benito Mussolini is “alive and well in Italy.”