Benito Mussolini: Bad Guy on the International Block?

On what may have been the still evocative day of 1 May 2008, The Economist reported that Rome had a new mayor. The politician celebrating electoral victory was Gianni Alemanno, a member of Silvio Berlusconi's rightist coalition through the Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) party. This group had emerged during the 1990s from what had until then been called the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI, Italian Social Movement) under the astute leadership of Gianfranco Fini, a man soon to be minister of foreign affairs and deputy prime minister. At the time of writing Fini holds the crucial office of president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and stands as the most obvious potential successor to Berlusconi as chief of the Italian right. Fini's journey out of Fascism, with his public renunciation of antisemitism and his full endorsement of democracy (but more reticent positioning on Fascist crimes against Arabs, Ethiopians, peoples of the Balkans, Marxists, the liberal rule of law and contemporary historical revisionism) has been recounted often enough and will not be repeated here.