Index - Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five |
| Racism and fascism in Europe today |
Although the opinion polls suggest a sharp drop in public support for Australia's far right One Nation Party in recent weeks, Pauline Hanson has embarked on an ambitious recruiting drive, setting up branches around the country in regions which have been the heartland of the Labor Party. This series of articles by JOHN TULLY has drawn attention to the ominous rise of the racist far right in Europe. In country after country, disillusionment with the 'official' parties has translated into electoral successes for the likes of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in France. This final article looks at the growth of Fini's National Alliance in Italy.
Internationally the far right message has been the same. 'Immigrants are taking your jobs'. The argument is worthless in itself; migrants bring with them skills and capital and create the demand for more products. Morever, migrants with black and brown skins are the real targets. Yet people who are suffering as a result of the endless crisis of capitalism might well grasp at straws - particularly so given that the old workers' parties have deserted their traditional supporters and embraced economic rationalism.
The classical fascism of the 1920s and '30s was essentially a mass movement of the middle classes: the small shopkeepers and artisans, little business people and small independent farmers - social layers squeezed by big capital but lining up behind demagogic fascist parties and hurled against the workers' movement. So it was with Mussolini's Blackshirts and Hitler's Storm-troopers in their shit-brown breeches.
Today, the middle classes are much smaller and are an insufficient reservoir for the far right. In France and Belgium, in Australia and in Italy, the far right parties have made a conscious decision to target the working class and the unemployed.
There has been much debate on whether these formations are fascist or not, but clearly they act as 'umbrella organisations' or fronts, embracing overt fascists and others of the racist right. They might also in the longer term act as half-way houses for out-and-out fascist and Nazi parties.
The electoral successes of the French National Front and the Belgian Vlaams Blok (see June and July editions of Militant) have been mirrored in Italy. As is widely known, the 'neo-fascists' of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), now renamed the National Alliance (AN after its Italian initials) were part of the reactionary coalition government of the business tycoon Signor Berlusconi. Again, as is the case with the French National Front, there is a debate about the character of the MSI/ AN: is it fascist, or is it now neo-fascist, post-fascist, or what?
The debate has not been helped by the fuzzy definitions of bourgeois journalists and some would-be Marxists. The term was widely used to describe not only the MSI, but also its coalition partners; Berlusconi's Forza Italia and the regionalist Northern League. Although Berlusconi has funded fascist newspapers in the past, he is more correctly described, like the Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, as a free market Thatcherite than as a fascist.
The MSI/AN quite definitely has its roots in Mussolini's blackshirts. Although the party is desperately trying to make itself respectable, it draws its continuity and inspiration from Salo, the short-lived 'Italian Social Republic' of diehard Blackshirts set up under Nazi protection on the shores of Lake Garda in 1944. The flame symbol on the party's banners represents this link and it seems premature to take party boss Fini at his word when he says he is a 'post-fascist'. Again, as with the National Front in France, AN is best described as an umbrella grouping which includes different shadings of the 'statist' far right from the 'respectable' proprietor to the lumpen boot boy.
The AN is the largest party in Italy south of Rome, and is very nearly the largest party in the capital itself. Another striking success was the electoral victory of Alessandra Mussolini, Il Duce's great granddaughter, in Naples. The AN is also strong in Bolzano (Bozen) and Trieste, two northern regions of potential ethnic conflict. The party is stridently nationalist and still lays claim to large swathes of Slovenian and Croatian territory in Istria, behind Trieste, and would bitterly resist any attempt by the majority German-speaking population of the Bolzano region to return to Austria. Trieste could well be the point at which the ethnic conflicts of the Balkans spill over into Western Europe. The Italian far right still regards cities such as Pula/Pola, Rieka/Fiume and even Split/Spoleto in Dalmatia as rightfully Italian and see Albania as within their 'sphere of influence'.
Unlike Berlusconi's 'party' which was a creation of money and media, the AN is a genuine mass organisation with a network of branches rooted in the communities. As with the National Front in France, the AN is pitching to the white working class and marginalised layers, more so in fact because the Black and Asian population of Italy is nowhere near as large or visible as in France.
Moreover, the racism and bigotry of the right wing extremists feeds off the intolerance of the more 'respectable' mainstream parties and media. (Just as the Hansonites are encouraged by the 'soft' racism of state and federal Coalition governments here in Australia.) It is unfortunately true that a 'racist, prefascist culture' exists in Europe: whether it be in the form of violent skinhead sub-culture; reactionary campaigns against so-called 'political correctness'; anti-feminist, anti-gay and barely disguised racist tabloids such as the London Sun or the German Bild Zeitung; Berlusconi's TV chain; or the anti-immigrant policies of most governments. It includes the relentless drive to outlaw and marginalise dissent and to roll back democratic and trade union rights. We cannot underestimate the role of 'official' and 'mainstream' racism in providing respectability for the hard right. For example the bourgeois media has long lampooned socialist councils who provide 'ethnic' meals for pensioners and school children as 'the loony left'. National Front councils in France go one step further and refuse to provide pork-free meals for Muslim and Jewish children.
Nor can we assume that the big bourgeoisie will always be content with the Thatcherite policies that have served them well. For the moment, parliamentary democracy suits the needs of the ruling class. At present, profit rates are high. There is a permanent 'reserve army of labour' and the working class is on the defensive. Yet, as argued earlier in this series, this will not always be the case and the tendency of the rate of profit to decline will re-assert itself. It is in such situations that the bourgeoisie might choose to avail itself of openly authoritarian or even fascist solutions. And the far right is waiting in the wings -- not, as their spokespeople argue, for the will of the people, but for the nod of the ruling class. This is true for all countries of the world, Australia included.
In the meantime, the extreme right is flexing its muscles and moving onto the traditional 'turf' of the Left. As Guido Calderoni, a writer for the Italian communist paper Il Manifesto has warned, 'Today, the far right gives identity but also a means of participating in a certain manner in community life. We must be there also and I think we can reunify the Left around this project to take the initiative from the far right. Otherwise the Left will disappear and there is no guarantee that some of its forces will not go over to the right.'
Whilst this assessment might exaggerate the danger, we cannot ignore its kernel of truth. Today, with the Social Democrats discredited in many countries because of their support for neo-liberalism and austerity, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is a very real vacuum which the extreme right is anxious to fill. The best, andindeed the only antidote to them, is to rebuild the labour movement on the basis of struggle, solidarity and socialism.
Italy was well-represented in the Euro-marches Against Unemployment which converged on Amsterdam from all corners of the continent during the 'summit' of European leaders in July. One of the themes of the marches was solidarity with the victims of racism, who are scapegoated by the right for the intractable problem of unemployment.
The same tasks confront the Left here in Australia in the face of Hanson's 'hard' racism and the 'milder' version of the Howard government.