"Fascism is back." On the web and in traditional media the alarm reached the highest level: books on Mussolini and fascism dominate the list of bestsellers, films and documentaries imagine the return of the Duce in today's Italy. Politics itself seems to open up to the messages of 'eternal fascism.' But are we really at the gates of a new regime? Or do these signals only serve to hide the problems of our time?

One hundred years after the foundation of the Fasci di Combattimento (fighting leagues) on March 23, 1919, and seven decades after the destruction of Mussolini and Hitler’s regimes, the alarm for a new fascist danger is circulating. Characteristics of the new fascism would be: the sublimation of the people as a virtuous collectivity opposed to corrupt politicians and corrupters, the contempt of parliamentary democracy, the appeal to the square, the need for strong man in government, nationalism, hostility towards foreign migrants, and the defense of traditional religious identity. Among the rulers of the new fascism are Trump, Erdogan, Orbán, Bolsonaro, Di Maio, Salvini. In other words, now, at the beginning of the 21st century, because communism has passed away, socialism has disappeared, and liberalism has evaporated, fascism has an extraordinary revenge on the enemies who had defeated it in 1945. But are we really witnessing the rebirth of a historical, up-to-date and masked fascism? Are the neo-fascists who proclaim the advent of a 'fascism of 2000,' right? To what extent is the new fascism an updated revival of historical fascism?

Emilio Gentile, the most important scholar of fascism, tries to answer these questions and shows that talking about 'the return of fascism', and of 'eternal fascism', is not only devoid of historical meaning, but aggravates the misinformation about what fascism really was. In fact, he favors the propensity to replace the realistic knowledge of history with a sort of historical astrology, a 'astoriology', which mixes facts, inventions, myths, superstitions, prophecies, fears and illusions. It is a narration that inevitably causes the ankylosis of the critical mind and prevents us from understanding the present.