The new Italian Senate president has a vault full of fascist memorabilia from WWII

Rome — On the first cold, rainy day in Italian capital After a long hot summer, Italian senators elected their president, Ignazio Benito Maria La Rosa, who publicly gathered World War II Fascist memorabilia, including busts and statues of dictator Benito Mussolini in the basement of his home. His father was a secretary of the Fascist Party under Mussolini, and some of the symbols are directly linked to Il Doss, he told an Italian television crew who was allowed into the trophy room.

He was elected against the backdrop of the September 25 elections in Italy Giorgia Meloni Brothers of Italy Party It became the most far-right elected government in Italy since the end of World War II. La Rosa won despite Forza Italia’s coalition member Silvio Berlusconi abstaining, after Berlusconi – after being barred from office for a decade due to tax crimes – wanted the job. The additional votes were obtained from 17 members of the opposition who are clearly not so much in opposition, and who would give the far-right majority more power if the first test sets a precedent.

La Rossa served as the Italian Minister of Defense and is well known in international circles. He has kept his views on continuing Russian sanctions close to his chest, but has previously spoken in favor of Vladimir Putin. Party leader and potential Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni has urged her party members to stand by Ukraine, and said her first state visit after the swearing-in may be in Kyiv.

The La Rosa election paves the way for the election of the speaker of the lower house of parliament, who is expected to pass to a member of the far-right Lega party led by Matteo Salvini.

Holocaust survivor Liliana Sejri, 92, inaugurated the new parliament, a miniature version of previous parliaments thanks to changes made in the last government before its fall, which reminded lawmakers, 92, that October 25 October will mark the centenary of March for Mussolini. in Rome. “It is impossible for me not to feel a kind of dizzy recollection that the same little girl who, on a day like this in 1938, lost solace and loss, was forced by racial laws to leave her empty desk in elementary school, is now,” with a strange touch of fate, On the most prestigious office of the Senate,” she said to applause before the vote and before handing the symbolic opening bell to La Rosa.

Meloni is expected to be sworn in as Italy’s first female prime minister on October 21.