22 January 2018

Al Jazeera: Anti-fascists vow to fight Mussolini-loving 'militants'

A charismatic man with a patchy beard, Gianelli speaks with jubilance despite running through a laundry list of violence he attributes to CasaPound.

The self-proclaimed fascist party made landmark inroads in municipal elections in November when it obtained nine percent of the overall vote and hopes to make gains in Italy's upcoming national elections in March. [...]

Born as a political movement in 2003, when far-rightists occupied a vacant municipal building in central Rome, CasaPound's name is an ode to the American poet Ezra Pound, who was a supporter of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. [...]

Guido Caldiron, a Rome-based journalist and author of Extreme Right, a book that examines the growth of the far right in Europe and elsewhere, says the electoral results in Ostia are "very important because Rome is CasaPound's core. For them, it's a very significant victory". [...]

The efforts at protecting its brand and presenting a respectable face to the public, Caldiron argues, distinguishes CasaPound from other far-right groups that openly celebrate violence against anti-fascists and migrants.

No comments:

Post a Comment