Somehow, this guy doesn’t strike me as a compatriot of the “American Left.”
From the Associated Press, via the International Herald Tribune last week:
Italian candidate at April vote says he is lifelong Fascist, embarrassing Berlusconi
ROME: Silvio Berlusconi’s conservatives suffered a major embarrassment this week as one of their candidates for April elections said he is an unrepentant and lifelong Fascist.
The comments by Giuseppe Ciarrapico, a veteran Rome businessman who is running for a Senate seat, drew quick criticism from center-left politicians and leaders of the Jewish community.
His candidacy was not withdrawn, however, even though some fellow conservatives demanded that he give up running.
“Fascism has given me joys and pains,” Ciarrapico was quoted by the daily La Repubblica as saying in an interview published Monday. “I’ve never renounced it.”
Ciarrapico, 74, owns some small local newspapers in the Lazio region near Rome, and during the interview he was asked why pictures of Mussolini hang on the walls of his newsrooms.
…
“I am not an anti-Semite. I never have been,” he was quoted as saying in Corriere della Sera, Italy’s leading newspaper, on Tuesday. “But I do not renounce Fascism and have great admiration for Mussolini.”