“If a match nominates a person named Mussolini and is Granddaughter of Mussolini does so to attract the votes of those who long for Mussolini.”
The phrase, from the columnist Massimo Gramellini in Corriere della Sera synthesizes one of the extremes of the debate in which the municipal policy of Rome today moves, the capital in which the surname of the dictator returns to survive.
He does incarnate in his granddaughter, the Rachele Mussolini policy (47), which in the last local elections has managed to be the most voted on Rome.
Nostalgia or overcoming the past?
Electoralist and victory advantageousism despite the burden implying the surname Mussolini?
There are two of the questions that the Roman people are made today.
First you have to clarify that Rachele Mussolini is the most voted councilor does not mean that it is going to be mayor of Rome and that it will not even happen to the second round of the elections that will be held next week.
The peculiar Italian municipal electoral system allows dual vote with open lists, in which there is the option to mark who is your favorite candidate even if it is not the head of the coalition or the party you have voted.
Thanks to this system, Rachele Mussolini has obtained more than 8,000 acolytes votes from her, a figure with which she reaches a record record.
“Surname has not had anything to do, it is a reward for my commitment to Rome,” he said in the Repubblica after scrutiny and to claim the work that since the 2016 elections he has developed in the Roman Consistory as Vice President of the Commission of
Transparency and visible face of his party, the Fratelli d’Italia (brothers of Italy), in his hometown.
But … Does Rachele have connections with fascism beyond consanguinity? Does she have her the game she represents her? In the statements of her, the granddaughter of Mussolini has never been reneged or from her surname or where she is from, at the same time she passes on tiptoe when it comes to rating fascism. “It’s a topic too long to respond in an interview,” she answers when they ask him. The party of her, the Fratelli d’Italia, verse of her national anthem, is a group at the right end of the political spectrum led by another woman, Giorgia Meloni, and heir first of the political pupils of Silvio Berlusconi. A movement (the capital letters is from them) based on “respect for sovereignty, independence and national unity”. The party, like Rachele, moves on the wire: fearful on one side of her identification with the fascist Italian social movement and lose, on the other, an important range of days born from the discontent generated by the pandemic and who has as Great adversary to the Government of Union of Draghi. An important wave that in these municipal elections has made them overcome the North League of Matteo Salvini and in which Rachele Mussolini is up, beyond a surname and a name that can not be separated from the political success of it.
A name, Rachele, in honor of her grandmother, the second wife of Mussolini and official widow of the dictator, although the partisans hang next to Benito to her favorite lover, Claretta Petacci.
Of that second marriage, five children were born, one of them the father of Rachele Mussolini, Roman, Jazz musician who married at first nuptials with Anna Maria Scicolone, Sister of Sophia Loren, and in second with Rachele’s mother: Carla Maria Puccini
, That despite his operatic name was an actress of television and the Italian cinema of the 60s.
Rachele, who knows if first following the maternal genes, made his steps in the world of image and modeling and was one of the pre-selected Miss Italy in 1996, with 22 years.
She then followed her academic training and graduated in languages (she speaks English and German) and sociology.
She also has a master’s degree in communication that earned him to work for a time at RAI, Italian public television, as a drafting in an interview program.
On the most personal plane she is a mother of two children and is divorced.
Its linking with the right on the right and its surname are the two ingredients of a cocktail called to be a controversy generator.
The most recent with Italian antivacunas, issue that his party wade with the defense of freedom of choice, but not identified with the extremist positions of the neo-fascist parties, such as Forza Nuova, which last Saturday manifested in Rome against the policy of
Mandatory vaccination of the country.
Two years ago, already in the town hall, he gave the bell on April 25, the anniversary of the liberation of Italy, when he said that day “only San Marco celebration”.
He then clarified that his ex and father of his children is called like this, hence the confusion …
