Mussolini granddaughter says not running for FdI

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 17 - Conservative Brothers of Italy (FdI) party Rome councillor Rachele Mussolini, one of the Duce's granddaughters, said Wednesday she was not running in the September 25 general election so as not to cause embarrassment for Giorgia Meloni's post-Fascist party.
    The 48-year-old daughter of dictator Benito's jazz pianist son Romano garnered the most votes of all candidates in last year's council elections in the Italian capital, over 8,600.
    But she told ANSA that though she had been asked - not by the party however - she had decided not to stand because of her "awkward" surname, which would have put the FdI on the defensive just as Meloni has again condemned Fascism.
    "If I had been a candidate the party would have had to defend itself and it would have been in difficulty," said the councillor, who bears the name of Benito Mussolini's wife.
    Meloni sent a video to the foreign press in English, French and Spanish last week in which she said the Italian right had long "handed Fascism over to history", with its "ignominious laws against the Jews", and said the FdI shared values with Britain's Conservatives, US Republicans and Israel's Likud.
    She has shrugged off as irrelevant calls for her to ditch the neo-Fascist Tricolor Flame from the party logo. (ANSA).