Benito Mussolini’s granddaughter lashes out at Jim Carrey over political sketch

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Alessandra Mussolini, the Italian politician who is the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini, attacked Jim Carrey on Twitter over a political sketch.

The actor shared an image he’d drawn of the former dictator and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, hanging upside down in Piazzale Loreto, Milan, after they were executed in April of 1945.

Posted to Twitter, it was accompanied by the caption: “If you’re wondering what fascism leads to, just ask Benito Mussolini and his mistress Claretta.”

“You are a b******,” Ms Mussolini tweeted at Carrey. The daughter of Romano Mussolini, the fourth son of Benito Mussolini, she is a former actress and model who was elected to European Parliament in 2014, representing the centre-right party Forza Italia.

“President @realDonaldTrump doesn’t have to worry about poor @JimCarrey politica [sic] attacks; his drawings are only dirty paper,” she tweeted.

She then asked Carrey to draw several incidents from American history, including the atom bomb and Rosa Parks.

When one user told Ms Mussolini, “I think you’re confusing Jim Carrey with your murderous grandfather”, she replied: “Or maybe with some of your family...”

Rising to the position of Prime Minister in October 1922, Mussolini destroyed his political opposition through the use of secret police, while introducing a series of laws that transformed Italy into a one-party dictatorship.

In 1943, he was placed in charge of a puppet regime in northern Italy by Adolf Hitler, but was eventually defeated and captured by Italian communist partisans after he attempted to flee to Switzerland.

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Carrey did not respond to Ms Mussolini’s attacks. The actor has been creating and sharing political cartoons since August 2017, with subjects including President Donald Trump and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.