Meloni has expressed statements that generated controversy.[135][136] She praised Italian dictator Benito Mussolini as "a good politician, the best in the last 50 years" in an interview to the French newscast Soir 3 in 1996.[137][138] In May 2020, she praised Giorgio Almirante, the co-founder of the Italian Social Movement (MSI),[139][140] who was a Nazi collaborator and editor-in-chief of the antisemitic and racist magazine La Difesa della Razza,[7][141] which published the "Manifesto of Race" in 1938.[142] In December 2020, the independent journalistic TV program Report revealed through an investigative report that her party "has reached the negative record of arrests for mafia group 'Ndrangheta",[143] and also having among her ranks Mussolini's descendants,[144] as well as fascist nostalgics,[145][146][147] according to a 2021 investigative report by Fanpage.it.[148][149] In November 2018, Meloni declared that the celebration of the Liberation Day, also known as the Anniversary of Italy's Liberation from Nazi-Fascism on 25 April, and Festa della Repubblica, which celebrates the birth of the Italian Republic on 2 June, should be substituted with the National Unity and Armed Forces Day on 4 November, which commemorates Italy's victory in World War I. She said that Liberation Day and Festa della Repubblica are "two controversial celebrations".[150] Meloni has tried to distance herself from her close ties to Roberto Jonghi Lavarini,[151] a far-right Milanese politician and entrepreneur known as the "Black Barron".[152][153][154] In her 2021 biography book I am Giorgia, she wrote that Russia under Vladimir Putin defends European values and Christian identity.[155]