The Long Shadow of Silent Fascism

When we talk about Italian fascism, our minds immediately go to Mussolini, the Blackshirts, the dictatorship, and the tragedy of World War II. The common idea is that it all ended in 1945: the regime collapsed, Mussolini was executed, Italy wrote a new Constitution, and moved on.
End of story.

But it’s not that simple.
Historical fascism may have fallen, yes, but the culture that generated it did not: a mix of impulses, nostalgia, virile myths, cult of violence, the idea of the “other” as the enemy, and the belief that hierarchy and strength are natural and necessary.

That culture did not vanish: it went underground, changed its language and form. And at certain moments in recent history, it has resurfaced with alarming clarity.

One of these dark, often overlooked moments emerges today in light of investigations into the so-called “criminal tourism” during the siege of Sarajevo.

Sarajevo: the return of hatred disguised as sport

The Italian investigation into the “weekend snipers” speaks of individuals—wealthy, weapon enthusiasts, often far-right sympathizers—who allegedly paid Serb militias to shoot at civilians.
It doesn’t take much historical analysis to see that this is not simply a war crime:
it is the manifestation of a mentality that considers others inferior, expendable, less human.

This is the essence of fascism.
Not the political, organized kind with a party and a Duce, but the anthropological, internal, toxic kind.

A fascism that thrives on the idea that the life of another is worth less.
That the strongest has the right to crush the weak.
That violence is not a horror, but a form of identity.
And in the illusion of a “pure Italy,” superior to the culture of other countries, it justifies contempt, arrogance, and symbolic erasure of the other.
It is a silent fascism, no longer expressed in mass rallies, but through an invisible, ingrained sense of superiority, ready to erupt when it finds an easy target.

Fascism after fascism

After 1945, fascism did not disappear:
it transformed into marginal communities, private clubs, paramilitary groups, underground nostalgia.
Then, during the “Years of Lead,” it became a tool in the hands of larger powers.
In the 1980s and 1990s, it renewed itself in political subcultures and in groups seeking war as “adventure.”

Many Italian extremists sympathized with the Bosnian Serb militias, not because they truly believed in Balkan politics, but because they saw in it a return of war as myth, a “mission of identity,” of dominance, of blood.

It is fascism without uniform, without a party—but no less real.

Why talking about it today is necessary

Not to judge the past.
Not to create alarm.
But because accepting that this still exists — in its hidden, transformed form — is the first step to defusing it.

Fascism never returns announcing itself.
It reappears in gestures, language, myths, symbols.
It reappears in forms of dehumanization, when a human group is portrayed as “other,” “enemy,” “impure,” “invader.”

Recognizing it does not mean condemning the present, but strengthening our defenses. It means facing the truth: institutional Italian fascism ended in 1945, but cultural fascism, the kind that dehumanizes others, never stops looking for new forms.

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