Fascism in the Family

The word fascism is often used to describe the extreme nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiments that seem to be on the rise across the world.

I've noticed an enormous decline in recent times. They seem to me like new barbarians, these certain politicians that express themselves in a way that sounds like something I've heard before. That speaks to the crowds of finding the scapegoat that must be hated, and then? How do things end for this scapegoat?

by Liliana Segre, Holocaust survivor

But what are the similarities between today’s far-right movements and the brutal ideology that was born in Italy a century ago?

In this film, Italian-born journalist and Al Jazeera senior presenter, Barbara Serra, examines her own family’s links to Benito Mussolini’s regime to see if Fascism really is resurfacing in Italy today.

Serra’s grandfather was the fascist mayor of a key mining town in Sardinia which was used as a place of exile and punishment for political dissidents and prisoners of war.

While tracing back her family’s involvement in the regime, Serra also discovers a direct link between her grandfather and Germany’s Nazi leadership – a revelation made even more poignant by the fact that her young son is half Jewish.

How much does Italy’s fascist past influence its current political situation?

By speaking to far-right leader Matteo Salvini and Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre among others, this film examines the current anti-immigration sentiment, rising intolerance and the attacks on a free media to see if these are warnings that the country where the word fascism was coined is indeed bound to repeat its history.