Zionists and Fascists Unite
May 6, 2008
Just a few months back Gary Younge had observed that ‘plain old fascism has returned as a mainstream ideology in Europe.’ What is talked about less, however, is the ally it has found in Zionism. This alliance was already in view in Austria, Germany, France and UK. Now it makes a debut in Italy. The following from the London FT. (Recall that the Italian centre-left was already at the service of Zion; Olmert was caught on camera instructing Romano Prodi on what to say during a press conference back in December 2006)
Rome’s election last week of its first rightwing mayor since the time of Benito Mussolini has been celebrated by fascists as a historic victory over the left.
Packs of young, thuggish supporters of Gianni Alemanno greeted the new mayor’s appearance at the Campidoglio city hall with straight-armed “Roman” salutes, shouting abuse at communists and foreign immigrants.
“Before, if you were a fascist you had to pretend to be part of the mainstream to have respectability. Now they are coming out of the closet,” said an aide to defeated centre-left candidate Francesco Rutelli.
Debate over the significance of the National Alliance’s first election victory in a major city has been intense - especially among the capital’s small but important Jewish commun-ity, which is widely thought to have swung in Mr Alemanno’s favour. Rome’s Jewish voters, numbering about 9,000, explain their shift to the right in various ways, most often because they see the National Alliance as firmly pro-Israel.
Michel Bokhobza, whose family fled from Libya to Rome in 1967, says Italy’s centre-right is closer to Israel than the pro-Arab bias of the centre-left.
“Even if his past was very close to fascism, Alemanno belongs to the coalition guided by [Silvio] Berlusconi and [Gianfranco] Fini,” he said, referring to the People of Liberty alliance that swept national elections last month.
Times had changed, he said, since 1993 and the first open elections for Rome. The right’s candidate then was Mr Fini, now leader of the National Alliance, who then was part of its neo-fascist predecessor, the MSI, the direct heirs of Mussolini.
“Fini was then seen as a demon and neo-fascist,” said Sandro Di Castro, president of the Jewish community’s Bene Berith association. The “turning point” came in 1995 when Mr Fini became head of the new National Alliance and started to steer it towards the mainstream. That process was completed in 2003 when, as deputy prime minister in the second Berlusconi government, Mr Fini denounced fascism as an “absolute evil”.
Mr Alemanno’s personal journey is less certain. Leftwing commentators have called the 50-year-old former agriculture minister fascist, neo-fascist and post-fascist
Dominique Sicouri, from Egypt’s Jewish community, said her “heart is with the left” but she still decided to work with Mr Alemanno in building ties with France’s ruling UMP party, for which she acts as spokeswoman in Italy. She sees Mr Alemanno as intelligent, serious and a pragmatic moderniser. His Jewish supporters say that in power he will be better placed to rein in extremism. Italy will take note of foreign concerns after Libya warned against appointing a far-right lawmaker as minister, but it will not accept interference in its internal affairs, the incoming Italian foreign minister said. A Libyan charity chaired by leader Muammer Gaddafi’s son warned of “catastrophic repercussions” to bilateral ties if Roberto Calderoli - known for his anti-Islam rhetoric - became Italy’s reforms minister.
May 9, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Versteh ich nicht!
May 17, 2008 at 5:44 pm
“Rome’s Jewish voters, numbering about 9,000, explain their shift to the right in various ways, most often because they see the National Alliance as firmly pro-Israel.”
Jews did the same thing in Canada recently. Prominent long-time Jewish supporters of the Liberal Party such as Heather Reisman did sudden about-faces and started supporting the Conservative Party, all on the basis of the Conservative Party’s pro-Israel stance (the previously dominant Liberal Party had been more-or-less neutral on Middle Eastern affairs). Is it any wonder that Jews have a reputation for dual allegiance?
May 18, 2008 at 2:48 am
As far as the ‘embourgeoisment’ of ethnic minorities is concerned, the trajectory away from more leftist positions to those of the right correlates strongly with wealth levels and reduction in insecurity. Nothing specific to any community.
May 18, 2008 at 11:54 am
You are right about minorities. For natives however the trend tends to be in the reverse: it is usually economic decline and neoliberal homogenization of ruling parties that engenders a turn to xenophobia and racism.
May 18, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Good point about the implications of downward mobility for the natives.
The Nazis’ ideology was what George Mosse strikingly termed “a scavenger
ideology, which gains its power from its ability to pick out and
utilize ideas and values from other sets of ideas and beliefs in
specific socio-historical contexts.” It has and can attach itself to
Christianity as easily as to paganism, to parts of the Left as easily as
to those of the Right.
Thus, the link between Fascism and anti-Semitism that once existed–and
even then, it didn’t everywhere, e.g. Mussolini only mobilized it after
he’d been in power for more than the entire duration of the Third
Reich–was mostly a marriage of convenience devised by unscrupulous
politicos based on characteristics specific to that era. As the most
easily distinguishable and ghettoised internal minority of the Thirties,
pent-up anger of an immiserated population could easily be turned
against Jews by the Nazis. Had the object of Hitler’s psycho-sexual
obsessions been slightly different, he would have looked for another
scapegoat and utilized different populist means at his disposal to rouse
anger and garner support. Having said that, the presence of a handily
available internal minority is too great a temptation for right wing
populists to pass up and the “design patterns” established in the
interwar period remain a handy template.
May 18, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Fascism became popular amongst “impotent” colonial projects.What may be termed neo-empire builders that were no match for the established British and french.
This makes Fascism a middle class ideology that eventually seeps into lower orders as opposed to a lower order one that seeps into the middle class.This is why fascists are very much concerned with the liquidation of any forces in the lower orders , though can quite easily square itself with the right.
If you look at the range of supporters fascism had prior to 1939 you will have France;Germany;The Catholic Church;Industrial owners; not to mention the middle classes of Italy and spain.In fact the very same zones where it is rising today.
The german model looked to being a “pure” spiritual force of pagan-christendom (hence its anti-semetism being based on a eugenical model), whilst a Italian model was more geared to bigotry and scapegoatism.
The issues the UK;US had with fascism only became hostile once fascism started to muscle in to their spheres of influence to the east as the supporters of the cliveden set would not have minded.
The issue of the cosy relationship of Zionism with fascism is that being an expansionist colonial project itself , it is bound to find unity with other colonial expansionist projects brewing in the west.
May 19, 2008 at 12:54 am
Interesting points about the so-called ‘Contender states’ or ‘unsatisfied powers’. But, it may be too much has been read “backward” into the examples of the two actually existing full-blooded Fascist regimes. That is, what is one to make of, say, the KKK in Southern US, Apartheid in South Africa–the founder of which, interestingly was a man of French Huguenot origin who thought he was saving the Afrikaner community from a past of religious persecution and imperial domination–the Falange in Lebanon, BJP in Modi’s Gujarat, etc. imho, this book which tries to tackle the problem also suffers from topicality of these two lurid examples, and is unable to abstract the essence of the beast and speculate fruitfully on what Protean forms it’s likely to take in the future. Anyways, the “brown plague” didn’t die with Hitler’s death deep underground in a bunker in the Berlin of April, 1945. Umberto Eco, whose writing also suffers from topicality of his own Italian experience, was, nonetheless, on to something when he wrote: