Italys neo-fascism is what happens when you normalize extremism

[Soph0571]

Fascism’s rebirth and insidious spread in Italy is the result of a political process that has progressively whitewashed extremism, assisted by the confluence of recent historical factors: By the early 1990s, new generations had grown disconnected from the country’s history of resistance against fascism, as partisans and victims of racial laws aged and died. The fall of the USSR and the dissolution of the Italian communist party also meant a drop in funding to some of the country’s main anti-fascist educational organizations.
More importantly, something happened in the right at the same time. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of Italian history at New York University, calls it the rise of “fuppies,” or fascist yuppies. “Fuppies” were typically members of, or politically aligned with, Alleanza Nazionale (AN), a rightwing party that publicly rejected antisemitism and other fascist principles, such as violence.
The danger of “fuppies”

“Fuppies” used articulate, tolerant language and showed respect for democratic institutions. Founded in 1994, AN was led by Gianfranco Fini, who entered politics with the belief that deposed fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was “the greatest statesman of the 1900s,” the Fuppies positioned themselves as modern, successful conservatives. The party’s newspaper, Il Secolo d’Italia, describes AN as aiming to (Italian) move “from the ghetto to the governing right, become ‘presentable,’ scrap nostalgias, acquire moderates who are no longer scared of neofascism.

[link:https://qz.com/1114170/normalizing-extremism-a-history-lesson-from-italys-fascist-resurgence/|