Italian Elections and Politics 2022 - Our Time to Schlein

[NewYorkExpress]

Interestingly, Benitio Mussolini's grandaughter won the most votes in the City Council elections in Rome.

The granddaughter of former Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini has won a second term as city councillor in Rome, reportedly bringing in more votes than any other candidate.

Rachelle Mussolini belongs to the far-right political party Brothers of Italy, which has roots in postwar neofascism and, after formerly being somewhat of a fringe party, is rising in popularity.

This year, Mussolini racked in 8,200 votes, compared to only 657 in 2016. Support for Brothers of Italy has gone up, even in the left-leaning northern part of the country.

[NewYorkExpress]

The frontrunner in the race for Mayor of Rome, Enrico Michetti, has been forced to apologize for comments on the Holocaust that some have deemed Anti-Semitic.

A leading candidate for mayor in Rome has apologized to Italy’s Jewish community over an article he wrote last year in which he suggested that victims of mass murders other than the Holocaust gain less attention because they “didn’t own banks.”

Jewish community leaders and others had decried the comments by Enrico Michetti, a radio host who is the center-right coalition’s candidate in the October 17 and 18 mayoral election. He received more than 30 percent of votes in the election’s first round earlier this month, more than any other candidate.

“Each year, 40 Holocaust-related movies are shot, trips and cultural initiatives of all sorts are financed to commemorate that horrible persecution, and up to here, I have nothing to say,” Michetti wrote at the time on the website of the radio station where he is a host. “But I wonder, why the same pity and the same consideration are not given to the dead killed in the foibe massacres [of Italians by Yugoslav Partisans], in the refugee camps, and in the mass murders that still take place in the world?”



Among the answers he offered: “Perhaps because they did not own banks, perhaps because they did not belong to lobbies capable of deciding the destinies of the planet.”

[NewYorkExpress]

The Brothers of Italy sacked one of their candidates for statements comparing Meloni and Hitler and calling both "great leaders".

The far-right Italian party Brothers of Italy, tipped to win Sunday's election, has suspended one of its candidates for praising Adolf Hitler on social media.

In a 2014 Facebook post, Calogero Pisano, a party co-ordinator in Agrigento in Sicily, compared party leader Giorgia Meloni to "a great statesman of 70 years ago".

He added that he was referring to a "German" and not Benito Mussolini.

The party said Mr Pisano no longer represented it at any level.

Ms Meloni has been trying to distance the Brothers of Italy from its neo-fascist roots.