Of Massimo Fini
Source: Massimo Fini
In his column The Hammock, published by Repubblica, Michele Serra finds it extremely disgraceful, and almost criminal, that Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, Caio Giulio Cesare Mussolini was a candidate for the European elections, great-great grandson of the Duce. The surname alone makes him swoon and even his nose curls up over the name because it recalls that Roman style which the leader of fascism was inspired by (if he could, Serra, would put him in shackles, exhuming it, also Caesar, but for that said, "the lot has been cast."!”). Rather than lying calmly in a hammock, Serra seems to be sitting on hot coals and writing: “Mussolini was a dictator, a racist, an icon of ridicule and the ruin of his people". It is not even necessary to remember that fascism was a dictatorship, even if less ruthless than those of his contemporaries, but still carrying the Matteotti crime on his conscience, the assassination, in France, of the Rosselli brothers and the shutdown, intellectual and physical, in prison by Antonio Gramsci, the founder of the Italian Communist Party. Then Mussolini, unlike Francisco Franco, had the very serious responsibility of going to war with an ally with whom we should not have allied ourselves and of losing it with all the consequences that this entailed. Otherwise he would have died peacefully in his bed, like Franco, instead of being rightly shot and then hung by his feet in Piazzale Loreto, together with Claretta Petacci, to the hierarchs, those responsible, those less responsible and others not responsible at all, in one of the most shameful pages of our history which horrified the American victors themselves who were then very different from what they are today. But the rhetorical power of Mussolini's speeches, which fascinated tens of millions of our ancestors, may seem ridiculous today, when three quarters of a century have passed since its apogee, then it wasn't at all (to see the ridiculousness in Michele Serra's rhetoric we won't have to wait long, we just need to read it today). Nor can Fascism be reduced to 'Absolute Evil', as Michele Serra does in very worthy company.

Fascism, despite all its errors, and also horrors, he had an idea of ​​the State and the Nation in his head, which he tried to achieve consistently. The IRI, became a Christian Democrat bandwagon after the war, it was an intelligent response to the crisis of 1929, furthermore facilitated by the fact that back then the world was much less 'interconnected'. The 'battle of wheat' (which Michele Serra probably finds 'ridiculous') it was the attempt, far-sighted, to find a balance between advancing industrialism and agriculture, a suggestion that would be of capital importance to recover today when industrial and financial capitalism is murdering entire populations. After all, I didn't invent the "years of consensus".. Michele Serra, who is a cultured man, as well as a man of honor, he will certainly have read Renzo De Felice and Denis Mack Smith.
I write these things with a clear conscience because my father, Benso Fini, he spent fifteen years in exile in Paris, suffering from hunger and poverty like the others, few, escaped, in the name of freedom. If I had Michele Serra's cop mentality I would go and check how his parents and grandparents behaved during the Mussolini regime. But I'm not a cop and the objective of my article is different. It strikes me as a 75 years after the end of the fascist regime the radical chic and radical snob left (“heart on the left, wallet on the right”) come back, yes it does, ridiculous by making the bridge hysterical at just hearing the name Mussolini, even if of a great-great grandson. I would like to remind Michele Serra that in the post-war period, when the wounds of the conflict were still bleeding, nor Rachele Mussolini, nor the Duce's children, nor Edda Ciano were ever touched, not only for the generous intercession of that great man who was Pietro Nenni, but because the left was still a serious thing and, more generally, the Italian community was less barbaric than it is today, in the year of grace 2019. It's surprising that a person who has a completely respectable professional past and present (naval officer and manager of Finmeccanica) like Gaius Julius Caesar Mussolini, be pilloried just for his surname, from Michele Serra and from all the Michele Serras who live in our country, thus giving Mino Maccari full reason: “Fascists are divided into two categories: the fascists proper and the anti-fascists".