How Mussolini is making a comeback on social media

Benito Mussolini is now live …”

The announcement comes across Facebook on a typical afternoon, circa 2017, as a video of Il Duce speaking from a balcony in Piazza Venezia in Rome begins to roll. Moving over to Instagram, the image-based social network, there is a survey sponsored by Mussolini imposing himself categorically on users, “Would you like to see the return of Il Duce?” If you answer, the ad promises, you could win an exclusive daily planner for history buffs.

The new frontier of Italian fascist nostalgia has hit the web. A flourishing undergrowth of pages, websites, and blogs has attracted thousands of followers in recent years, and numbers continue to make a slow but steady rise…

Social networks have become the main form of diffusion for these ideologies, as seen by the thousands of Facebook pages and groups dedicated to the Italian fascist period and its front men. Virtual platforms have won the hearts of users thanks to an ever-growing multimedia approach with the use of videos and images that are published daily. This propaganda is often adapted to the most current news cycle. One video features Mussolini’s voice carrying the message “no to jus soli”, that is, birthright citizenship. Another one of the hundreds of Facebook pages dedicated to him, declares: “Mussolini, different from our current politicians …”

The name “Benito Mussolini” obviously remains the most popular brand name on social media for the far-right in Italy, proven by the 140,000 fans with the same profile name and the hundreds of pages and groups with his namesake.