"The flame in the symbol of the Brothers of Italy has nothing to do with fascism, but it is the recognition of the journey made by the democratic right through the history of our Republic. And we are proud of it".
This was stated by the leader of the Brothers of Italy,
Giorgia Meloni,
in an interview with the British weekly
The Spectator
, which on the cover shows a caricature of Italian politics with the title 'Is Giorgia Meloni the most dangerous woman in Europe?'.
In the long interview with the interviewer Nicholas Farrell - author of the biography 'Mussolini: A New Life' - Meloni explains that "when we founded Fratelli d'Italia, we founded it as a center-right, with our heads held high. I declare it. I am not hiding. If I were a fascist, I would say that I am a fascist. I never spoke of fascism, however, because I am not a fascist ".
"In the DNA of the Brothers of Italy there is no nostalgia for fascism, racism or anti-Semitism. There is instead a refusal for all dictatorships: past, present and future", he adds.
Meloni considers herself and the party she leads closer to the positions of Roger Scruton, British philosopher and exponent of traditionalist conservatism, than to Mussolini's revolutionary socialism.
"I think that today the great global challenge, not only in Italy, is between those who defend identity and those who do not. This is what Scruton means when he says that if you destroy something, you don't necessarily create something new. new and better. If I were British, I would probably be a Tory. But I'm Italian ", is the gloss.
