On South Tyrol – Walter Mayr in Der Spiegel:

‘Galateo is a member of the post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia, the party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The party’s symbol, the Italian tricolor in the shape of a flame, resembles that once used by the neo-fascist party MSI, which disbanded in 1995. The same party whose former headquarters in Rome was the focus last Sunday of a rally which saw hundreds of people raise their right arms in the fascist salute.

The interesting thing about Galateo is that he will most likely soon become deputy governor of Italy’s Alpine province of South Tyrol. Since 1948, the region has been dominated by the South Tyrolean People’s Party (SVP), and fascists – whether avowed or latent – have had very little influence.
Now, though, the province’s second highest political office is supposed to be handed to a political heir of Il Duce, a man who, starting in 1923, forcefully Italianicized this province, which had been part of Austria until 1919. He banned German from the schools, and in 1939 – with the approval of Adolf Hitler – obliged the majority German-Tyrolean population to decide between emigrating or assimilating.’

(…)

‘The situation in South Tyrol is a complicated one. By law, at least three ethnic Italians must be members of the government. From a purely mathematical point of view, a coalition without the Italian right-wing parties was a possibility, if only just. But given the power structures in Rome, it would have been risky. The government in Rome has control over the purse strings, and also makes decisions about the degree of autonomy enjoyed by South Tyrol.’

(…)

‘"Here in the future provincial government of South Tyrol, we don’t want to be a platform for anything larger. We just want to be a working partnership," says Kompatscher. Those who don’t believe that he will be able to tame recalcitrant right-wingers, he says, should just take a look at the government official from Lega who used to spew homophobic jargon. "Now, I’ve got him to the point that he stood next to me under a rainbow flag at a press conference against discrimination based on sexual orientation."’

(…)

‘Has the passage of time now healed more wounds than thought? To cite just one example: The tomb of the fanatic Tolomei, bestowed even before Mussolini’s death, can be found in the cemetery of the South Tyrolean municipality of Montan. Buried in an ancient Roman toga and facing north, as he said himself, "to watch as the last German" is driven northward across the Brenner Pass, lies the ma+n who some refer to as the "gravedigger of South Tyrol."
Because his studies paved the way for annexation and allegedly served to prove that "the holy soil of the Italian fatherland" extended to the peak of the Alps, Tolomei’s tomb was the target of a number of bomb attacks. In the most recent of those attacks, which took place in 1979, the remains of the fervent fascist were scattered about – before then being recollected and encased in concrete. For a long time thereafter, right-wingers would lay wreaths in his honor.’

Read the article here.

South Tyrol might be exceptional in many different ways, but the rise of the extreme-right, the populist-rights, has not come to an end yet. Quite the opposite.
And it is increasingly likely that these parties also elsewhere in Europe, for example in the Netherlands, will be part of the government in one way or another.

The rehabilitation of old fascists is then only a matter of time.

But compared to Austria South Tyrol still feels rather benign.