Italy riled up by stamp honouring Fascist football pioneer

FE Team | Published: June 07, 2024 22:36:52

ROME, June 7 (AFP): The decision to honour the founder of the AS Roma football club on a postage stamp has caused a furore in Italy due to his Fascist past.
The stamp issued on Thursday bears the face of Italo Foschi, a Fascist militia leader who was accused of persecuting Jewish people.
The legacy of Fascism, to which many Italians have an ambiguous attitude, has faced renewed debate since the 2022 election of Giorgia Meloni, Italy's first far-right prime minister.
And the decision to honour Roma's founding president has caused bewilderment, coming at the same time as another stamp honouring a Socialist MP assassinated 100 years ago by Fascist hitmen -- one of whom was praised by Foschi.
La Stampa daily reported that the idea to commemorate Foschi came from an undersecretary in Italy's industry ministry who is a member of the far-right Brothers of Italy party headed by Meloni.
The choice set off a wave of incredulity within the opposition.
Foschi was the "author of brutal crimes against political opponents and of ruthless persecutions against Jews," wrote two MPs from the opposition Democratic Party, Francesco Verducci and Dario Parrini, calling the choice "offensive and shameful".
Another, Michele Fina, said it represented a "continuous regurgitation of clearly Fascist impulses" by Meloni's government, which is Italy's most right-wing since the end of World War Two.
Italian newspapers seized on the irony, given that the post office is due on Monday to issue another stamp to honour Giacomo Matteotti, a Socialist MP abducted in broad daylight and killed by Fascists in 1924.
Following Matteotti's death, Foschi wrote to one of Matteotti's killers, Amerigo Dumini -- a member of the violent Fascist paramilitary squads whose beatings, murders and raids on property in the early 1920s helped consolidate Mussolini's power -- telling him "You are a hero".