Italy’s fascist past under scrutiny a century after putsch

By COLLEEN BARRY
Associated Press

MILAN (AP) — Exactly 100 years ago Friday, the Black Shirt March on Rome triggered events that brought Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini to power. And with Italy’s first post-World War II government led by a party with a neo-fascist past newly in office, never before has the country’s failure to come to terms with its fascist past been under greater scrutiny. The National Association of Italian Partisans, which preserves the memory of the wartime resistance, has noted some signs of an emboldened far-right in regions governed by the Brothers of Italy. In one region, for instance, the governor has cut off funding to maintain memorials to Holocaust victims.