Fascism is a Beautiful Thing
At least according to Italian fascists.
From the U.K. Times Online:
The new mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, a former fascist, has launched a campaign to promote Italian films at the expense of those featuring Hollywood stars such as Nicole Kidman and Leonardo DiCaprio, who are to be blacklisted.
American actors who flocked to Rome for its film festival will no longer be invited, on the orders of Alemanno, 50, of the National Alliance party, who last week became the first rightwinger to win the mayor’s job in 15 years.
Outside city hall, his followers greeted him with fascist salutes and shouts of “Duce! Duce!” – the title used by the dictator Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943.
Alemanno, a former minister of agriculture, has a colourful past. He was arrested in 1981 with four other neo-fascists for allegedly beating up a student with baseball bats, but no charges were pressed.
The following year he was incarcerated for eight months, accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the Soviet embassy, but was eventually acquitted. He was also arrested in 1989, this time for trying to block the motorcade of President George H W Bush, and was again found not guilty.
Alemanno made an overhaul of the star-studded Rome film festival one of his manifesto promises.