A Brothers of Italy politician who collects fascist memorabilia has been elected President of the Italian Senate as part of the new government’s first step in forming Italy’s most right-wing government since the Second World War.
Ignazio Benito La Russa, whose father was secretary of Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, co-founded Brothers of Italy alongside leader Giorgia Meloni in 2012.
A video emerged in recent days of La Russa from 2018 showing off his personal home collection of fascist relics that included photos, medals and a statue of Mussolini.
Giorgia Meloni, who is set to become Italy’s new Prime Minister, has tried to distance her party from its well-documented neofascist roots, and just last month said the party had “handed fascism to history decades ago.”
In a video that went viral last month, La Russa’s younger brother, Romano La Russa, attended a funeral at which he performed a Nazi-looking straight-armed salute and, despite calls for Brothers of Italy to suspend him, has maintained his innocence and retained his seat in Lombardy Regional Council.
On Thursday, a Holocaust survivor, and the only member of her family to survive Auschwitz concentration camp, opened the Italian parliament and warned against fascism ahead of the centenary of the March on Rome that brought Mussolini to power.
