As an American of Italian heritage, I find it disconcerting to see modern Italian politicians earnestly trying to rehabilitate and reintroduce Italian fascism. 

With the election of Georgia Meloni, a member of Parliament, a fascist activist and the leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, there will likely follow a story, a revisionist Italian historical story, that ignores the brutality of Mussolini’s disastrous regime, his racist dogma, his imperialism, even his ultimate disgrace and hanging by the outraged people of a liberated Italy; who were liberated by Allied forces (U.S.). 

Meloni and her leadership will continue to preach anti-immigrant racial purity, God and country, and likely will soon morph the message from a special Italian “natural” nobility to a special god-given superiority. We saw how that worked out for Mussolini in that WAR that killed 50 million and sent humanity reeling in the last century. 

In their revised version of history, it is likely that the Italian fascists will conveniently begin their muddled argument with the Roman Empire. The basic argument is that it was “great” because we (Italians) are great and naturally superior. 

First, that imperial army was scientifically organized, brutally murderous and plundered much of the known world against massive but largely disorganized and primitive opposition. Second, no Italians took part in the destruction and havoc that lasted nearly a millennium. There was no Italy, only Rome and a Mediterranean theater in which it largely operated. 

It was not the superiority or purity of “race” that enabled conquest, but rather military strategy and infrastructure (especially roads) and, finally, the administrative intelligence (counter-intelligence) that allowed conquered peoples loyal to Rome to earn Roman citizenship and join the side of the conquerors.  

In particular, racists should note the irony involved in the fact that a thousand years of Roman warfare did as much as any historical event to genetically diversify the various peoples of the Mediterranean. It blended with the tribes of what is today’s Northern Europe (Gauls, Scots, Teutons, Celts, etc.), various north African tribes (Hannibal’s Carthegian troops encamped on and plundered the Roman peninsula for a generation) and various Asian peoples (Asia Minor) mainly through what is today’s Turkey and Iran (Persia). 

Nonetheless, the myth of race and the cartoonish notion of racial purity obstinately lives on in the nervous minds of demagogues and their ilk. Modern science and the Human Genome Project be damned, the weak-minded will never let science and fact stand in the way of their prejudices. It’s not that these new fascists simply will tell the Italian people of their superiority and their “exceptionalism”—it is that these fascist charlatans, self-proclaimed “messengers of God,” will soon be telling what they’ll claim God told them to tell—it is by “nature” that Italians are the greatest! 

Listeners, beware of pandering prophets! We are all humans; WE are one race. To avoid chaos and worldwide conflagration, each one of us should always be treated equally and with due respect—no more, no less. I say here (especially) and abroad, reject these false fascist prophets or humanity may yet again suffer the dire consequences of their brutal control. We can learn from history.

John Pace lives in Honesdale, PA.