Italian official resigns after riot over honoring Mussolini’s brother

ROME – An Italian government official resigned Thursday after heavy criticism for his proposal to rename a park in his hometown after the fascist brother of former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

The proposal to rename the park after Arnaldo Mussolini was made earlier this month by civil servant Claudio Durigon, an undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Economic Affairs who is a member of the right-wing league party.

It sparked a debate about the memory of Benito Mussolini in a nation still struggling to reconcile its fascist past. Unlike other countries that long ago agreed on blanket condemnation of their authoritarian rulers, debates still flare up in Italy over whether to distinguish between what Mussolini’s supporters see as the good he sees during his life Reign did from 1922 to 1943, and the atrocities he ordered.

“The case is a clear example of how history can be revised in Italy today,” said Andrea Mammone, an Italian historian at the Royal Holloway University of London. “Fascist ideology and culture are not only present again in smaller, extremist movements, but also in large national parties.”

In recent years, Italy’s far-right parties have gained support. One of them, Brothers of Italy, once put Mussolini’s great-grandson as a candidate for the European Parliament and is now Italy’s most popular party, according to polls. It is closely followed by Mr Durigon’s Anti-Immigrant League Party.

In an open letter of apology announcing his resignation, Mr. Durigon denied ever being a fascist. But he said he wanted to pay tribute to the “great work” of the Mussolini regime to recapture and eradicate the area around Latina, the city near Rome where the park is located. Arnaldo Mussolini’s name “is part of the memory of the city,” he wrote.

“I was attacked for proposing to save historical memory,” he added.

The park was once named after Arnaldo Mussolini, but in 2017 the city council renamed it Falcone and Borsellino Park to honor two murdered anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, killed by the mafia in 1992.

Mr Durigon, speaking at a rally in Latina this month, said he wanted to revert to the park’s previous name to honor Arnaldo Mussolini, who wrote for a fascist newspaper and was seen as his brother’s mouthpiece.

“It must be Mussolini Park again, as it always was,” said Mr. Durigon to the applause of the crowd.

Giuseppe Conte, the former prime minister who leads the populist five-star movement, described the proposal as “serious and worrying” and called for Mr Durigon’s resignation. Left-wing parties, anti-mafia associations and groups of anti-fascist fighters expressed outrage.

Gianfranco Pagliarulo, president of the left-wing National Union of Italian Partisans, wrote in the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano this month that the proposal is alarming and the latest in a series of cases in which politicians have expressed fascist sympathies – including regional officials, the fascist one Songs sung on the radio or festivals sponsored by neo-fascist fringe groups.

“The resignation of Undersecretary Claudio Durigon is excellent news for democracy and anti-fascism,” Pagliarulo said in a statement on Friday.

Right-wing newspapers criticized the allegations against Mr. Durigon and alluded to a “culture of demolition of political correctness” in Italy.

Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League party, rejected the debate, saying there was no nostalgia for fascism either in his party or anywhere in Italy.

But the lowlands south of Rome where Latina is located is known as a reservoir of fascist feelings. In the late 1920s, the regime reclaimed the land from the malaria-rich Pontine swamps, both to gain fields for cultivation and to prove that it could make the area habitable.

Workers drained swamps and built roads and infrastructure, while architects designed entire cities to which the regime relocated families from northern Italy. When it was inaugurated in 1932, the city was called Latina Littoria, alluding to the “lictors” or Roman troops who wore bundles of rods or fasces, a symbol of authority and order that gave the fascist party its name.

Mr Mammone, the historian, said that Arnaldo Mussolini has no direct connection to Latina, but his name is simply a tribute to fascism. The monumental work in the area is still seen by many as a symbol of fascist achievement.

In his apology, Mr. Durigon wrote that his own grandparents were colonists from the north who were involved in draining the Pontine swamps.

“It was just a matter of remembering such an intense and special story,” he wrote, admitting that his proposal was “poorly worded”.