Dressed in black, several thousand fascist supporters on Sunday chanted and sang in praise of Benito Mussolini as they marched to the Italian dictator’s crypt a hundred years after he entered Rome and completed a coup that ushered in two decades of fascist rule. .
Crowds in Predappio, Mussolini’s birthplace and final resting place in the northern Emilia-Romagna region, were emboldened by the fact that a party with neo-fascist roots is heading an Italian government for the first time since World War II.
Organizers warned the participants, who came from places like Rome, Belgium and the United States, not to give the salute used by fascists or risk prosecution. But some couldn’t resist as crowds stopped outside the cemetery where Mussolini’s remains lie to receive prayers and greetings from Mussolini’s great-granddaughter, Orsola Mussolini.
“After a hundred years, we are still here to pay tribute to the man this state loved and whom we will never stop admiring,” Mussolini said to cheers. The crowd shouted “Duce, Duce, Duce,” Mussolini’s honorific as dictator of Italy.
Anti-fascist activists staged a march in Predappio to mark the anniversary of the city’s liberation and prevent fascists from marching on the exact anniversary of the March on Rome.
Inside the cemetery, admirers of the fascist dictator lined up to enter his crypt. They each received a memory card signed by their great-granddaughters with a photo of a smiling Mussolini holding his leather-gloved hand aloft in a Roman salute. “History will prove me right,” says the card.
The crowd of some 2,000 to 4,000 people, many wearing fascist symbols, was larger than in the past, when nostalgic fascists celebrated the centenary of the March on Rome.
Associated Press/OnCuba.
