ROME, 12 September 2003 — Italy’s outspoken Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi unleashed new controversy yesterday, declaring that the former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini did not kill anyone, just sent them on holiday.
“Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on holiday within the borders (of the country),” Berlusconi was quoted as telling the Voce di Rimini newspaper.
His comment immediately triggered outrage in Italy, with some claiming it was an apology for fascism and embarrassed his coalition partners, even though Berlusconi said he had not intended to rewrite his country’s history.
“These are shameful remarks,” said the leader of the country’s main leftwing opposition party Piero Fassino.
Mussolini’s fascist blackshirts ruled Italy between 1922 and 1943 before he was executed at the end of World War II.
The remarks came in the second instalment of a long interview Berlusconi gave to two British journalists, including Boris Johnson, editor of the Spectator, a London-based weekly.
The first instalment caused a scandal last week when Berlusconi said some Italian magistrates were “mentally deranged.”
The premier’s latest controversial comment came as he explained his support of the US-led war to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The idea was “to put an end to a dictatorship,” Berlusconi said, before elaborating about his feelings on Mussolini at the prodding of the two interviewers.
“Technically, this is called an ‘apology of fascism’, which is an offense under our legal system,” said Fabio Mussi, vice president of the lower house of Parliament and a member of the main left-wing opposition party.
Giorgio La Malfa, who chairs one of the ruling coalition parties, stressed that “fascism had been a vicious dictatorship which murdered, injured and imprisoned for years and years thousands of political and trade union militants and also exiled all opponents abroad.”.
A press conference after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak yesterday gave Berlusconi his first opportunity to defend himself.
“I did not mean to make a historical analysis of fascism, I never sought to reappraise Mussolini,” he said.
“I reacted as a patriot, as a true-blue Italian, to a comparison I did not accept between Mussolini and Saddam Hussein,” Berlusconi added, saying that “millions had died under Saddam’s dictatorship.”
“Once again, the left is making use of a summer conversation. This is a fresh instalment in serialised propaganda,” he went on to say.
