Mussolini didn’t kill anyone: Berlusconi
ROME, Sept 11: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi set off a ferocious political storm on Thursday after saying that former Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was a benevolent leader who had never killed anyone.
Italy’s Jewish community expressed outrage at the explosive comments and opposition centre-left parties demanded an apology.
In an interview published on Thursday, Berlusconi told two British journalists that there was no comparison between deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Mussolini, who led Italy to disastrous defeat in World War Two alongside Adolf Hitler.
When asked if Mussolini was “benign”, Berlusconi replied: “Yes”. He went on to say: “Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini sent people on holiday in internal exile”.
Facing a wall of protest over his remarks, Berlusconi later said that he had reacted “as a patriot, as a real Italian” when the journalists from Britain’s Spectator magazine and Italy’s La Voce di Romagna newspaper had compared Mussolini to Saddam.
“I never intended to re-evaluate Mussolini,” said Berlusconi, who has repeatedly raised eyebrows with his outspoken comments during his two years in office.
A MILLION DEAD: Mussolini ruled Italy with an iron fist from 1922 to 1943, launching bloody colonial wars in Africa before hooking Italy up to the Nazi bandwagon.
One Mussolini biographer, Richard Bosworth, estimates at least one million people died as a result of his 20-year rule, with “atrocious massacres of Libyans, Ethiopians, inhabitants of the ex-Yugoslavia and...thousands of Italian Jews”.
Mussolini introduced Italy’s first anti-Semitic laws in 1938, opening the way for the eventual deportation of around 7,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps. Some 5,910 died.
“Berlusconi’s comments cause me profound pain,” Amos Luzzatto, said the President of the union of Italian Jewish communities.
Pierluigi Castagnetti, parliamentary party leader of the centre-left Margherita party, said the prime minister’s remarks were “incredible and shocking”.
Berlusconi accused the opposition of manipulating his words, but significantly very few of his political allies rallied to his defence.
“I hope that this is a journalist error,” said Agriculture Minister Gianni Alemanno, who is a member of government coalition party the National Alliance, which traces its roots back to Mussolini’s Fascist movement.—Reuters