A Belgian politician has sparked outrage across the political spectrum after defending Mussolini in a video posted on social media.
In the video, which quickly went viral after being posted on Facebook last Saturday, Jean-Jacques Flahaux claimed that "Mussolini was an Italian who they [Italians] could partly be proud of." The Belgian politician is currently President of the Mouvement Réformateur (MR) International – the international branch of the centre-right MR party.
"Mussolini restored pride to Italy, which was in a catastrophic economic situation," Flahaux said. "There are indeed all the mistakes and the dramas that he carried out, but some Italians still retain a memory [of him] that is not so negative."
Widespread condemnation
Flahaux's remarks were instantly denounced by prominent Belgians across the political spectrum.
Paul Magnette, head of the Socialist Party (PS), tweeted that Flahaux's remarks were "undignified" and "trivialized fascism and Mussolini," thereby potentially "open[ing] the door to [fascism's] return."
Similarly, Ecolo (Green) MP Guillaume Defossé condemned the MR party as a whole for "defend[ing] Mussolini's fascism," and also claimed that the party had a history of crossing the lines of political permissibility.
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On Saturday evening, the political pressure had become so great that the president of the MR, Georges-Louis Bouchez, demanded that Jean-Jacques Flahaux delete the offending video.
"Mussolini committed the worst horrors in history," Bouchez tweeted. "There is no ambiguity... These comments are inappropriate and condemnable but cannot call into question the values and commitments of Jean-Jacques Flahaux. So I asked him to remove this video."
Benito Mussolini, a fascist ally of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany during the Second World War, served as Italy's Prime Minister from 1922 until 1943. He was executed by Italian partisans in 1945.
