Joe McCarthy
05-04-2009, 11:05 AM
Here's an item from late October dealing with Gianfranco Fini and his attempt to become Italy's next PM.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ac1P6d0HpJaw&refer=home
Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Gianfranco Fini, head of the National Alliance party, is trying to position himself as Italy's next prime minister by renouncing his past as a neo- fascist leader.
Fini's three main conservative rivals as he seeks to succeed Silvio Berlusconi are taking the opposite tack.
``Fascism created important social programs,'' said former health minister Francesco Storace, in an interview. His new party, The Right, holds its first national convention on Nov. 7.
Berlusconi has refused to name an heir, creating a contest between the country's most popular and ambitious rightists. They also include Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno, who on Sept. 7 said fascism as a philosophy was not an ``absolute evil,'' and Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa, who a day later praised Italian soldiers who fought alongside Nazi Germany between 1943 and 1945. Both are in Fini's party.
``There's still nostalgia among some Italians for fascism,'' said Maurizio Pessato, chief executive officer of polling company SWG Srl in Trieste, Italy. ``And the political class commits the flaw of never putting the past to rest.''
Storace, Alemanno and La Russa are seeking to tap into Italian memories of Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini, who -- though he allied Italy with Adolf Hitler's Germany and deported Italy's Jews to Nazi concentration camps -- also created jobs, introduced a national pension plan, built roads, drained marshes and improved railway punctuality.
Democracy Supporters
All three politicians say they are firm believers in democracy and denounce totalitarianism and racism, while embracing Mussolini-style order and social spending.
Some Italians go even farther. The road underpasses in Rome and Milan, the country's biggest cities, are regularly spray- painted with swastikas and racist slogans by youth gangs, and the fascist salute is a common sight in Italy's soccer stadiums. Berlusconi, 72, said yesterday he wants to make it a crime to write or draw on city walls and public buildings.
A quarter of 2,000 Italians surveyed annually since 2002 have consistently said there were ``positive'' elements to fascism, according to SWG polling. Two-thirds of respondents say the country should not try to ignore its fascist past, according to the surveys.
The bespectacled Fini, 56, whose popularity was second only to Berlusconi in an October poll, has taken a different path. While he has pushed tougher rules against illegal immigration, he also says he supports legal immigrants' right to vote.
Just Cause, Wrong Cause
``One can't compare those who fought for the just cause of equality and liberty and those who fought for the wrong cause,'' Fini told his party's youth movement in Rome on Sept. 13, five days after La Russa praised the soldiers who fought for the pro- Nazi Italian Social Republic. ``He who believes in democracy is an antifascist.''
While Fini is betting that power post-Berlusconi will be shared between two dominant parties, one right and one left, his rivals are wagering that without a polarizing figure, Italian politics will revert to its previous multi-party confusion. That system helped Italy rack up 62 governments in the past 63 years.
Italy's next general elections are scheduled for 2013, when Berlusconi or his successor will face the leader of the center- left opposition. Berlusconi and Fini have announced the merger of their two parties as part of their goal to create a leading conservative force. Until the April election, there were at least two dozen parties in parliament. Now there are eight.
``Fini is preparing himself for a post-Berlusconi world,'' said Pessato, adding that he has to distance himself from his neo-fascist past to win votes outside his own party.
Bundle of Rods
Mussolini founded the National Fascist Party in 1921, using the Italian word fascio, which means a bundle of rods, to symbolize strength in unity. In a bid to tie himself to the glory of ancient Rome, Mussolini called himself Il Duce, from the Latin word Dux, the title given to the highest civil and military leader of the provinces.
Berlusconi hasn't hesitated to use Italy's fascist history to his benefit, claiming in 1994 when he first ran for office that he would save the country from communist totalitarianism. Alessandra Mussolini, the dictator's granddaughter, is a parliamentary ally.
A day after Fini's ``wrong cause'' statement, she wore a t- shirt in the chamber that read: ``I'm on the wrong side and I'm proud of it.'' She declined to comment for this article.
Berlusconi once was quoted as saying Mussolini ``never killed anyone. He sent them to the border on holiday,'' according to a 2003 interview with the U.K.'s Spectator magazine. Berlusconi later denied making the comment.
Great Statesman?
The year before he renounced fascism in 1995, Fini, then head of the largest self-declared neo-fascist party in Europe, called Mussolini ``the greatest statesman of the 20th century.'' Now president of the lower house of parliament, Fini holds Italy's third-highest political office.
Politicians are promoting a historically false idea of fascism, said historian Emilio Gentile, author of 10 books on the topic.
``Italians haven't ever come to terms with the real nature of fascism,'' Gentile said. ``Hitler always said his maestro was Mussolini.''
Of the 7,800 Italian Jews deported to German concentration camps during World War II, 837 survived, according to the Web site of Rome's Museo Shoah, or Holocaust museum.
Italians don't recognize that the race laws that led to the deportation of Italy's Jews weren't imposed by Hitler, Gentile said, but were ``a free choice, made autonomously and consciously by Mussolini.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ac1P6d0HpJaw&refer=home
Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Gianfranco Fini, head of the National Alliance party, is trying to position himself as Italy's next prime minister by renouncing his past as a neo- fascist leader.
Fini's three main conservative rivals as he seeks to succeed Silvio Berlusconi are taking the opposite tack.
``Fascism created important social programs,'' said former health minister Francesco Storace, in an interview. His new party, The Right, holds its first national convention on Nov. 7.
Berlusconi has refused to name an heir, creating a contest between the country's most popular and ambitious rightists. They also include Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno, who on Sept. 7 said fascism as a philosophy was not an ``absolute evil,'' and Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa, who a day later praised Italian soldiers who fought alongside Nazi Germany between 1943 and 1945. Both are in Fini's party.
``There's still nostalgia among some Italians for fascism,'' said Maurizio Pessato, chief executive officer of polling company SWG Srl in Trieste, Italy. ``And the political class commits the flaw of never putting the past to rest.''
Storace, Alemanno and La Russa are seeking to tap into Italian memories of Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini, who -- though he allied Italy with Adolf Hitler's Germany and deported Italy's Jews to Nazi concentration camps -- also created jobs, introduced a national pension plan, built roads, drained marshes and improved railway punctuality.
Democracy Supporters
All three politicians say they are firm believers in democracy and denounce totalitarianism and racism, while embracing Mussolini-style order and social spending.
Some Italians go even farther. The road underpasses in Rome and Milan, the country's biggest cities, are regularly spray- painted with swastikas and racist slogans by youth gangs, and the fascist salute is a common sight in Italy's soccer stadiums. Berlusconi, 72, said yesterday he wants to make it a crime to write or draw on city walls and public buildings.
A quarter of 2,000 Italians surveyed annually since 2002 have consistently said there were ``positive'' elements to fascism, according to SWG polling. Two-thirds of respondents say the country should not try to ignore its fascist past, according to the surveys.
The bespectacled Fini, 56, whose popularity was second only to Berlusconi in an October poll, has taken a different path. While he has pushed tougher rules against illegal immigration, he also says he supports legal immigrants' right to vote.
Just Cause, Wrong Cause
``One can't compare those who fought for the just cause of equality and liberty and those who fought for the wrong cause,'' Fini told his party's youth movement in Rome on Sept. 13, five days after La Russa praised the soldiers who fought for the pro- Nazi Italian Social Republic. ``He who believes in democracy is an antifascist.''
While Fini is betting that power post-Berlusconi will be shared between two dominant parties, one right and one left, his rivals are wagering that without a polarizing figure, Italian politics will revert to its previous multi-party confusion. That system helped Italy rack up 62 governments in the past 63 years.
Italy's next general elections are scheduled for 2013, when Berlusconi or his successor will face the leader of the center- left opposition. Berlusconi and Fini have announced the merger of their two parties as part of their goal to create a leading conservative force. Until the April election, there were at least two dozen parties in parliament. Now there are eight.
``Fini is preparing himself for a post-Berlusconi world,'' said Pessato, adding that he has to distance himself from his neo-fascist past to win votes outside his own party.
Bundle of Rods
Mussolini founded the National Fascist Party in 1921, using the Italian word fascio, which means a bundle of rods, to symbolize strength in unity. In a bid to tie himself to the glory of ancient Rome, Mussolini called himself Il Duce, from the Latin word Dux, the title given to the highest civil and military leader of the provinces.
Berlusconi hasn't hesitated to use Italy's fascist history to his benefit, claiming in 1994 when he first ran for office that he would save the country from communist totalitarianism. Alessandra Mussolini, the dictator's granddaughter, is a parliamentary ally.
A day after Fini's ``wrong cause'' statement, she wore a t- shirt in the chamber that read: ``I'm on the wrong side and I'm proud of it.'' She declined to comment for this article.
Berlusconi once was quoted as saying Mussolini ``never killed anyone. He sent them to the border on holiday,'' according to a 2003 interview with the U.K.'s Spectator magazine. Berlusconi later denied making the comment.
Great Statesman?
The year before he renounced fascism in 1995, Fini, then head of the largest self-declared neo-fascist party in Europe, called Mussolini ``the greatest statesman of the 20th century.'' Now president of the lower house of parliament, Fini holds Italy's third-highest political office.
Politicians are promoting a historically false idea of fascism, said historian Emilio Gentile, author of 10 books on the topic.
``Italians haven't ever come to terms with the real nature of fascism,'' Gentile said. ``Hitler always said his maestro was Mussolini.''
Of the 7,800 Italian Jews deported to German concentration camps during World War II, 837 survived, according to the Web site of Rome's Museo Shoah, or Holocaust museum.
Italians don't recognize that the race laws that led to the deportation of Italy's Jews weren't imposed by Hitler, Gentile said, but were ``a free choice, made autonomously and consciously by Mussolini.''