Echoes of the Past: Fascism and Hate Speech in Italy’s Current Political Climate

In the aftermath of the September 2022 Italian elections, dominated by the victory of the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party, a new government emerged under the leadership of Giorgia Meloni, who heads the aforementioned party. The incumbent prime minister, alongside fellow government officials, faces relentless accusations of being labeled “fascist” on a daily basis. This epithet is wielded by political adversaries, commentators, journalists, and leaders of left-wing factions, drawing historical parallels with the era of Benito Mussolini, the dictator who held power in Italy from 1922 to 1943. This study endeavors to dissect the contemporary connotations of the terms “fascism” and “fascist” within the framework of Mussolini’s legacy, mindful that his autocratic regime was dismantled and defeated eight decades ago. It seeks to elucidate the significance attributed to this terminology in the context of Italy’s contemporary liberal democracy, investigating the motivations, methods, and agents behind its routine invocation against the sitting Prime Minister and her administration, and assessing its societal repercussions. To address these inquiries, the researchers employ a qualitative case study methodology, incorporating systematic observation and analysis of press articles, televised debates, posters, advertisements, linguistic expressions, multimedia content, and emblematic propaganda materials. Through rigorous thematic and discourse analysis, this study illuminates the character of this novel brand of political rhetoric, unequivocally falling under the rubric of hate speech. The findings of this investigation underscore that the invocation of fascism is predominantly instrumental and ideological, unlinked from its historical context. Presently, political discord no longer hinges on the democratic and respectful contestation of ideas, as has been customary since the 1950s. Rather, it has assumed manifestations of intolerable physical and verbal violence, antithetical to the ethos of a democratic system, thereby impeding the fabric of national societal cohesion.