Meloni heads Italy’s most rightwing government since the second world war. Italy’s criminal code punishes with a fine ranging from €1,000 to €5,000 anyone who “publicly defames the republic”, which includes the government, parliament, the courts and the army.
Somebody once remarked that it’s funny how everyone acts like Italians all walk around being Mario Brothers but the Italians just roll with it.
It’s because some Italians were the people who invented Fascism as a formal political movement, and you know damn well how that ended up, so if going “It’s-a me, Giancarlo!” every once in a while gets the world to forget, they’ll take it.
But then this happens, and you have to start talking about spaghetti as much as possible.
Don’t even have to go that far back: Italy is massively corrupt with organized crime running parts of the country and with a literal facsist representing them in the EU Parliment(Mussolinis granddaugher in fact). This current prime minister that is being referred to in the post is a self-proclaimed “national conservative”.
And the fact that they kept letting Berlusconi run things is all the proof you need of how corrupt the entire country is(his “controversies” part on wikipedia is so large that it has its own page with 160 citations, he is also connected to the party of the person mentioned above).
But it has some amazing tourist locations and food, so people gloss over that as well.
Italians where also the ones that invented the republic, so what?
Fascism was and will always be a disgrace in Italian history, but maybe you should research Piazzale Loreto to see how much people ended up liking fascism in the end.
Of course there are extremist idiots in Italy like in any other country, but Italy official position on it was made very clear.
Even making a fascist group or association is literally a crime in Italian law.
This doesn’t change that the current situation is very bad of course, but right wing populism and fascism are not nearly the same thing, even if one could lead to the other
This has to be one of the most stereotypically racist remarks I’ve read in a while here on lemmy. They might be remarks, but still sheesh
Italians embrace their cultural and gastronomic exports while shunning certain parts of their history - I wouldn’t say that’s racist… In fact I would call that humanizing