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Italians accustomed to ferocious rows between their leaders have seen political slanging matches reach new levels of vitriol as two outspoken women opened hostilities with only a fortnight to go before the general election.
In a breathtaking bout of mud-slinging, hard-right candidate Daniela Santanche and Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of Fascist dictator Benito and an ally of Silvio Berlusconi, accused each other of prostituting themselves politically and dishonouring the memory of Il Duce.
The row came as the main electoral rivals - Berlusconi, leader of the centre-right, and centre-left leader Walter Veltroni - pitched their similar programmes and aimed feeble jabs at each other.
Santanche, 46, a former ally of Berlusconi, is now heading a small party called The Right. In a week in which she descended on a gypsy camp near Milan to argue with residents and slam illegal immigration, Santanche also found time to warn women not to vote for Berlusconi, "since he only sees us in the horizontal". The media mogul had done little to suggest otherwise, claiming the previous week that he would not be sending TV showgirls into Parliament this year, "because with them we do other things".
Quick to defend Berlusconi from charges of sexism was Mussolini, 45, whose career path has taken her from an actress who posed topless to pop singer to a European MP who once claimed "better a fascist than a faggot". Calling Berlusconi "gallant", Mussolini spat back that Santanche was "horizontal, politically", after clawing her way into politics thanks to the backing of Gianfranco Fini, who has renounced his neo-Fascist roots and joined the Berlusconi ticket.
The response was minutes away. "I believe Alessandra's grandfather Benito is turning in his grave at the sight of her working as an assistant to [Fini], who said Fascism was the absolute evil," said Santanche, adding that Berlusconi "would probably like to wear Mussolini's boots; after all, he wears lifts in his shoes already."
In response, Alessandra claimed that her grandfather came to her in a dream to tell her " exactly what he thinks of Santanche", and a later bout, compared Santanche to the transvestite Italian MP Vladimir Luxuria.
In a country where newsagents continue to sell Mussolini calendars, and the dictator's racial laws and throttling of democracy are widely overlooked, such stump speeches draw crowds.
Both combatants have previously fought for women's rights. Mussolini - Sophia Loren's niece as well as the Duce's descendant - led a protest against a judge who threw out a rape case in 1999 on the grounds that the woman was wearing jeans too tight to be removed forcefully.
Santanche has proposed a law forbidding the wearing of the veil under the age of 16, comparing it to the yellow star worn by Jews in Nazi Germany, a move supported by a Muslim women's group in Italy but earning her police protection against feared attacks by Islamists.
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