Thousands commemorate Italy’s fascist dictator at crypt

By COLLEEN BARRY
Associated Press

PREDAPPIO, Italy (AP) — Several thousand black-clad fascist sympathizers chanted and sang in praise of Benito Mussolini as they marched to the slain Italian dictator’s crypt Sunday, 100 years after Mussolini entered Rome and completed a bloodless coup that gave rise to two decades of fascist rule. The crowd of some 2,000 to 4,000 marchers was more numerous than in the recent past, as the fascist nostalgics celebrated the centenary of the March on Rome when thousands of fascists entered the Italian capital. The crowd in Predappio, Mussolini’s birth and final resting place, also was apparently emboldened by the fact that a party with neo-fascist roots is heading an Italian government for the first time since World War II.