Mussolini drawn into row over whether to cut down Rome's 'Fascist' pine trees
The legacy of Benito Mussolini has been drawn into a row over whether to cut down Rome’s 'Fascist' pine trees.
During recent storms, several trees crashed to the ground, killing a man and a teenage boy, injuring several people and crushing cars.
Public parks had to be closed because of toppled trees or those that were judged to be in danger of falling.
The mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, blamed the accidents on the age of the capital's trees, saying that many of its distinctive umbrella pines were planted during the Fascist era.
“Many of the trees that fell down are 90 years old - they were planted by the Fascist regime and they are now reaching the end of their existence,” Ms Raggi, a member of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, said.
That was dismissed as nonsense by Rachele Mussolini, a Right-wing politician and the granddaughter of Il Duce.
It was not the age of the trees but a chronic lack of pruning and maintenance that was to blame, said Ms Mussolini, a city councilor allied to the hard-Right Brothers of Italy party.
The umbrella pines planted by her grandfather during “the Ventennio” - the 20 years of Mussolini's fascist rule – needed more care, not chainsaws, she said.
“The age of a tree does not, in itself, determine whether it might fall or needs to be cut down. There are many factors that influence a tree’s stability,” she wrote in a motion presented to Rome’s city council.
Trees were at risk because of “shoddy maintenance”, Ms Mussolini said.
She called for an urgent plan to find a solution for preserving the umbrella pines, which with their distinctive flat-topped foliage are a quintessential part of the Roman landscape.
She is not the only Mussolini descendant to have gone into politics. Alessandra Mussolini, her half-sister, is an MEP and served as an MP in Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party.
They are the daughters of Romano Mussolini, the son of the dictator, who renounced Fascism and became a jazz pianist.
More than 70 years after his death at the hands of partisans in northern Italy, there is still a small but vocal minority who defend Benito Mussolini.
They claim that although he plunged Italy into war with Britain and France and introduced race laws that persecuted Italy’s Jewish population, he accomplished many positive things, from draining marshy parts of the country and eliminating malaria to building model new towns.
Matteo Salvini, deputy prime minister and head of the hard-Right League party, has alluded to his admiration for Mussolini.
Last summer, he was criticised for using a phrase that was made popular by the dictator.
Responding to criticism that he was fomenting xenophobia with his anti-immigrant rhetoric, Mr Salvini wrote on Twitter: “Many enemies, much honour”.
The words he used in Italian – “Tanti nemici, tanto onore” – were almost identical to one of Mussolini’s phrase - “Molti nemici, molto onore”.
Last week he tweeted a quote by Ezra Pound, an American poet and Fascist sympathiser who moved to Italy in the 1920s, lauded Mussolini, ranted against Jews and expressed support for Hitler.
“If a man is not willing to take some risks for his own ideas, either his ideas are worthless or he is worthless,” Mr Salvini posted.
Pound was arrested by American forces on charges of treason at the end of the war and spent years in a psychiatric hospital.
Italy’s most prominent far-Right group, CasaPound, takes its name from the American.
But many Italians are deeply critical of Mussolini’s legacy. On Tuesday, two Italian cities revoked the honorary citizenship that had been granted to Il Duce in the 1920s.
The decision was taken by the city councils of Empoli, near Florence, and Bergamo, in the north of the country.
They are the latest in a long list of towns and cities to cancel honorary citizenship granted to the dictator, including Livorno and Pisa in Tuscany, Ravenna on the Adriatic coast, Turin and Mantua.
