Anti-Semitism Worldwide 1997/8

Undoubtedly, the Alleanza nazionale (AN) has come a long way from its origins in the Movimento sociale italiano to its electoral triumph in March 1994, its incorporation into the Berlusconi government, and its stable showing in the June 1994 elections to the European Parliament. Electoral victories and governmental participation brought a measure of political legitimization unknown to it since the foundation of the movement in 1946. But these do not provide an answer to the basic question: Has the AN abandoned neo-fascism and become a liberal democratic party?

Since the contemporary practical political experience of the AN is too scanty to reveal the nature of its ties with fascism, we will examine the ideological changes it has undergone, as reflected in its political program and the declarations of AN leaders, and the circumstances in which these were generated. In this sense, we would agree with the main expert in Italian neo-fascism Piero Ignazi who, in the last chapter of his book Postfascisti?, claimed that in order to become an integral part of the liberal democratic political world neo-fascism must abandon its ideological combination of organic nationalism and anti-Marxist socialism which constitutes the core of fascist ideology.¹ Only then, can the AN leadership claim that it has abandoned an ideology in which the community -- the nation, embodied in its juridical form the state - is anterior and superior to the individual and constitutes a sine qua non of social and individual life. Here, Ignazi requires the AN rank and file to make an intellectual leap and accept the fact that their traditional enemies, the inheritors of the political tradition of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, were right in proclaiming the individual the prime political subject.²

In order to clarify these issues we will focus on the political theses (tesi politiche) presented at the end of January 1995 to the XVIIth national congress of Movimento sociale italiano-Destra nazionale (MSI-DN -- hereafter MSI) that took place at Fiuggi. Gianfranco Fini and other leaders had planned that this would be the last congress of the MSI and that at it, the last vestiges of fascism would be abandoned so that the AN could be transformed into a political party that fully adhered to the basic principles of Italian democracy.³ They did not present the "democratization" of the MSI as an abrupt turnabout but rather as a political transition, originating in the early fifties, and they accused the Christian Democrats of having blocked any possible right-wing coalition that included the MSI, a step that would have helped to democratize and legitimize the movement.⁴

In Italy and abroad, much has been written about Fini's leadership: of his capacity to clearly define ideals and programs while avoiding populism and the attempt to please everybody, and his introduction of the concept of "social right" -- solving social problems in a national context -- into the democratic arena.⁵ The task of transforming the violent image of outcast fascism into a soft-spoken, democratic AN, would have been impossible without the ability of Gianfranco Fini to project a semblance of political civility and good citizenship. He was actively supported by other individuals and groups within the party. The female section, for example, contributed its share by presenting itself as Catholic without bigotry, feminine but not feminist, anti-abortion but not to extremes, ecology-minded, and willing to fight for their ideals without resorting to violence.⁶

Fini's strategy rested on three elements. The first was a strong declaration of support for the principles of freedom and democracy within the framework of the Polo delle liberta e del buongoverno, the center right-wing coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi that emerged after the 1994 general election. This was not only presented as a tactical move for the purpose of facilitating participation, but as the strategic need of all the anti-communist forces in Italy, in order to rescue the country from its current crisis, while preventing the formation of a left-wing government. The second element was a clear condemnation of racism and anti-Semitism as being characteristic of totalitarianism and foreign to Italian traditions.

The third, and main ideological point, was a change in the basic axioms of the old MSI, including an abandonment of the corporativist view of fascism -- the advancement of ideas of social market economics designed to combine economic efficiency with social solidarity and participation. In this connection, the new party also proposed a scheme to reform the political system, in order to overcome the deficiencies of what it perceived as Italy's formal but weak democracy, dominated by a corrupt partitocrazia (partocracy, or democracy, dominated by the political parties and serving their interests). The scheme was to based on less representation, more direct democracy and delegation of power to a government less dependent on parliament.⁷

The idea behind Fini's proposals was to transform the AN into a moderate right-wing political party similar to the French Gaullist or British Conservative parties. The political logic behind this move was to attract the votes from the Christian Democratic Party to the right wing electoral coalition led by Berlusconi.⁸ Within the context of postwar Italian political culture, this could be achieved only if democracy and liberty were accepted as basic values. Here it would be appropriate to ask whether the AN's acceptance of the democratic system and the value of freedom was the result of an ideological debate or mere rhetoric aimed at obtaining political legitimacy in order to be part of the next governing coalition.

Hard-core fascists in the MSI -- Pino Rauti, Mirko Tremaglia, Teodoro Buontempo and others -- who refuse to abandon the basic, long-held values of fascism, severely criticized the proposed changes. The most interesting criticism came from Marcello Veneziani, editor of Italia settimanale and New Right philosopher, who was quoted by Fini at the congress. Veneziani claimed that the debate around the transformation of neo-fascism into a liberal democratic movement was on a low level and opportunistic. He saw Fini as profiting from favorable circumstances, which enabled him to introduce the radical right into mainstream Italian politics.⁹ Similar criticism was expressed by Ignazi when he declared, prior to the March 1994 Italian national elections, that the AN was "a bluff, a mere set of initials for electoral purposes. No transformation has taken place because there has been no internal debate on the guiding ideas, and they remain those of the fascist tradition."¹⁰

The theses for the XVIIth congress of MSI-DN were prepared mainly under the guidance of Domenico Fisichella, ex-minister of cultural and national heritage in Berlusconi's government, a professor of political science at La Sapienza University in Rome and one of the founders of the AN. Although freedom was seen as a value superior to fascism, answers to social problems were sought in anterior values, such as tradition, the nation and the people, which are recognized by the right and rejected by the left.¹¹ Reliance on these values, however, could elicit the inherent authoritarianism that precludes the minimum measure of pluralism necessary for the existence of liberal democracy.

Thus, in the attempt to resolve the dichotomy between right-wing values and the need for cultural and political legitimization, the ideological path adopted by the AN leadership and approved by the congress rests on two components. Politically, the AN is loyal to Silvio Berlusconi, the leader who was able to create a broad right-wing coalition that has already proved its capacity to win elections and govern. Berlusconi's role is recognized as central in the first chapter of the AN theses, which is an historical interpretation of the disintegration of the First Italian Republic.¹² Ideologically, the AN leans strongly toward a conservative Roman Catholic view of life, emphasizing the role of intermediate structures of civil society and its traditional pillars -- the family, private property, religion, and of course, the nation -- as well as social solidarity coupled with economic freedom.¹³

A strong condemnation of racism and anti-Semitism became official AN policy following the vote on the theses at the founding congress. In the second chapter, dealing with values and principles, an explicit condemnation of racism as a form of totalitarianism was proposed, based on the view that totalitarianism does not respect the dignity of the "other," the foreigner, the alien. Democracy, according to the AN, cannot exist without respect for the individual or through the use of coercion. Thus, rejecting totalitarianism, the AN maintains, mean rejecting racism. However, if we accept the definition of political fascism given by one of its main researchers, Emilio Gentile, as being totalitarian and placing politics above everything, the AN's rejection of nationalist-integralist principles and coercion, but not of the primacy of politics, places it in a peculiar position.¹⁴

This issue triggered reactions from both poles of the right-wing spectrum. Old-time fascists claimed that the fascist racial laws had to be understood in the context of Italy's alliance with Germany and the hostile attitude of the Jews towards fascism and Italy.¹⁵ Others, while recognizing that the MSI had always had extremist anti-Semitic fringes, contended that the leadership and mainstream members were not anti-Semitic. Since the new AN statute for adoption at Fiuggi would condemn racism, and Fini had already avowed its horrors, even paying homage to its victims at the Fosse Ardeatine, a specific condemnation of anti-Semitism was deemed unnecessary.¹⁶

Moderate AN elements, on the other hand, who found the clauses on racism inadequate, proposed a clearer condemnation of racism and anti-Semitism. The motion was presented -- on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz -- by Vincenzo Palmisano, a journalist of the MSI newspaper Il Secolo d'Italia, Maurizio Gasparri, president of the motions commission of MSI-DN, and Franco Perlasca, an AN representative from Padova and son of Giorgio Perlasca. Perlasca's father, recognized by the State of Israel as one of the Righteous Gentiles of the World, saved hundreds of Jews from the concentration camps in Budapest in 1944.¹⁷ The fact that the proponents of the motion were moderate, respected figures, and the large majority it obtained, reinforced the political legitimacy of the AN in the international sphere, where neo-fascism is associated with racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and a generally hostile attitude towards Israel.

Although the condemnation of racism and anti-Semitism was generally perceived as a positive sign of democratization within the AN, doubts still remained among some observers. Primarily, they saw it as reaffirming the strong revisionist trend in neo-fascism that divides the history of the movement and regime into two periods: the period of "good" fascism until 1938, when many positive steps were taken to strengthen the Italian state, and the period of "bad" fascism when mistakes, such as the alliance with Germany, enactment of the racial laws and entering the war, were made. This is the usual neo-fascist explanation for the racism and anti-Semitism of the past.¹⁸

The acceptance of the motion condemning racism and anti-Semitism revealed internal contradictions in the AN; for instance, in the reverence shown by its supporters for the memory of Giorgio Almirante, the deceased leader of MSI and political mentor of Gianfranco Fini. The political analyst Mario Pirani points out that nobody seems to remember Almirante as the editor of the strongly racist and anti-Semitic publication La Difessa della Razza, as cabinet chief of the Ministry of Popular Culture of the Saló Republic, and his responsibility for the rabid anti-Semitic journalistic campaigns during the persecution of the Jews in Italy, between late 1943 and 1945. Pirani recalls also that all the fascist leaders who opposed the racial laws -- Federzoni, Balbo, De Bono and De Marsico -- were condemned to death in absentia by the same regime which spawned most of the founders of the MSI.¹⁹ Thus, while formally the condemnation of racism and anti-Semitism was incorporated into the new statute of AN, no serious debate on the roots of fascist racism and anti-Semitism had taken place.

According to Fini and other AN leaders, the main ideological changes in the AN indicating its reformed democratic and liberal character and its final departure from fascism may be found in the draft theses submitted to the founding congress of AN and approved by the assembly, in January 1995. It begins with an historical analysis of the circumstances that brought down the power structure of the First Italian Republic. Chapter I examines the lessons of the March 1994 national election; chapter II discusses values and principles; chapter III, the institutional reform and re-foundation of the state; chapter IV, the role of Italy in Europe and in the world; and chapter V, economics and society and the AN as a political party for all Italians. We will concentrate on the first two chapters and refer briefly to chapters III and IV.

There is a clear attempt to present the AN as a new political force closely associated with the birth of a "Second Italian Republic." The AN, they say, was formed on the basis of a new social bloc of productive forces, in reaction to the grip that "a parasitic bourgeoisie" had on the First Republic. This bourgeoisie, institutionally represented by the old political parties, the financial sector and the main syndical movements, distributed power through political clientelism and economic corruption. It had accumulated an enormous public debt and created "polluted markets," which were dependent and inefficient. In protest, this bloc of productive forces manifested itself politically in the March 1994 elections, with the aim of founding a Second Republic that would eliminate the weaknesses of the First Republic.²⁰ The leadership of Silvio Berlusconi, who succeeded in putting together an election coalition that bridged the contradictions between Northern federalism and Southern unitarianism, enabled articulation of the various positive forces striving toward political and economic reform. In the AN's view, before 1994 neither the right -- because of anti-fascism -- nor the left -- because of anti-communism -- had access to power, but that since then a better form of democracy was now functioning. The gap between parliamentary representation and governmental participation had been eliminated through a combination of a mostly majoritarian electoral system and the destruction of the old political center, or tangentopoli (city of bribes).²¹

In the chapter on values and principles the AN dissociates itself from fascism and corporativism and condemns racism. It is on these declarations that it bases its claim to be a new political formation that has adopted liberty as its main value and democracy as the only valid political system. The past association with fascism is ascribed to the period of "ideologies" in which the totalitarianism of the left and of the right were in confrontation:

The political right is not the daughter of fascism. The values of the right preceded fascism, passed through it and survived it. The roots of the right are to be found in Italian history, before, during and after the Ventennio [the twenty years of fascism].²²

The theses claim that a correct reading of Italian political history of the last half century shows that fascist state intervention -- totalitarianism -- was replaced by total "party intervention" in the partitocrazia, generating clientelism and corruption. Thus, for the AN the formal freedom of the First Republic was ineffective. Real freedom, in their view, can be injected into Italian political culture by introducing the ideas of the right. Only when de Maistre's formula of authority and liberty as the foundations of Western democracy is stressed, can the profound anti-democratic undercurrent in his ideas be forgotten. Political realism is exemplified by the "circle of intellectuals" who guide the ways of the right. Distinguished members of this circle mentioned or quoted in the theses include Ernst Junger, and the fathers of modern political sociology, Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca and Robert Michels, all sound enemies of liberal democracy; Giovanni Gentile; Ugo Spirito; the extreme nationalists Giuseppe Prezzolini, Giovanni Papini, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Ardengo Soffici, Gabriele d'Annunzio and Julius Evola; "the great jurist" Alfredo Rocco; Giuseppe Mazzini, Enrico Corradini and Benedetto Croce; and finally, Dante, Machiavelli, Rosmini, Gioberti, don Sturzo, Tilgher, Sennett and Gramsci, all of whom contributed to the intellectual heritage of Italy and therefore, of the AN.²³

The essence of this intellectual baggage is that authority is a primary psychological need essential to social cohesion. In a democratic framework, authority is governed and limited in the same way as liberty, another primary need that has to be restricted in order to prevent social life degenerating into arbitrariness or chaos.

This analysis regards the political relationship between liberty and authority as governed by the constitutional order of each nation. The theses claim that the First Italian Republic favored the oligarchies because of the dichotomy between formal political rights and real participation inherent in the proportional representation system and its partycratic dominance. Thus, a basic reform is needed in order to obtain true representation and to maintain an equilibrium between liberty and authority that allows for social solidarity, on the one hand, and the existence of the people and the nation, on the other. The purpose of this kind of institutional reform is to obtain more efficient forms of direct democracy at every level by encouraging the functioning of intermediate structures of civil society, and to bridge the gap between electors and elected by reducing parliamentary powers, adopting a totally majoritarian electoral system and making frequent use of propositive referendums so that the citizen votes for ideas and not for party machines.²⁴ As the draft program states: "The Alleanza nazionale wants to be considered part of a great, libertarian, pacifist, conservative revolution."²⁵

An institutional reform based on the above-mentioned principles would entail constitutional reform through the election of a 100-member constituent assembly, using the European proportional representation system. The result of its deliberations would be adopted only after approval is obtained by a referendum. This desire to transfer sovereignty back to the people led the AN to propose a separation between elections to a parliament whose main task would be legislation and control over the executive, and elections delegating the governing powers related to sovereignty to the executive. The AN proposes adopting a system of government similar to that of France in which the head of state, the president, is also the head of government. The president would nominate a prime minister responsible to parliament. Therefore, the citizen would decide directly who governed, by electing the government, and who would control and legislate, by electing the parliament. In contrast with the French system, however, the AN proposed rejecting the ballot system in favor of a one-round election, British-style, which would eliminate the need for pre-second round political negotiations and oblige the parties to present clear programs and governmental goals.²⁶ Federalism is rejected on the grounds that a strong presidential system would endow the executive with enough power to decentralize in order to ensure governability and efficiency. The same executive pattern is proposed for the different levels of government.

In addition, the authors propose strengthening the unitarianism of the Italian state but at the same time reducing its size through subsidiarity and decentralization, that is, by delegating functions that could be performed more efficiently at the local, provincial or regional level.

Civil society, according to this ideology, would play a central role by taking over from the state all the functions various voluntary associations - social, economic and cultural - could perform with greater efficiency than state bureaucracies. Voluntary associations would, ideally, be given responsibility for the self-development of various aspects of life, while emphasizing social solidarity and support. These ideas evolve around the central role of the family as the basic social unit, within the framework of Catholic morality . Therefore, the AN proposes anti-abortion policies combined with programs to support families in need and incentives for families that care for elderly and handicapped members.

Although somewhat oddly included in the institutional and state reform chapter, two more points are worth mentioning. The first is what AN ideologues call the right to security, reviving the old themes of law and order. They see security in Italy as menaced by organized crime that controls, besides illegal businesses, prostitution and drug trafficking, both related to illegal immigration. The AN claims that organized crime in Italy is second in economic terms only to IRI (Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale).²⁷ They suggest a strong-arm approach, including strict law enforcement and severe penalties, and a thorough purging of the investigation agencies, the bureaucracy and the courts. The use of all kind of drugs should be punished by law. As for illegal immigrants, those essential to the Italian economy should be assisted in regulating their residence status; all the rest, including illegal immigrants already in jail, should be deported.²⁸

The second point concerns overcoming the political impact of tangentopoli. A political solution through legislative intervention is not favored but four suggestions are offered: 1) punishing all those found guilty by the courts; 2) recovering money taken illegally from the state; 3) rebuilding affected institutions; and, 4) excluding tangentocrats - the technocrats involved in bribe taking - from any future public responsibility in the country's political life.²⁹

In the chapter dealing with Italy's place in the international arena, three points should be noted. The first is the desire to extend Italian citizenship and voting rights to Italian emigrants and their descendants throughout the world, manifesting the importance of the "nation," its culture and its network of links and loyalties.

The attitude toward the European Union (EU) is positive but the AN sees it as a confederation of independent, sovereign states: Europe of the Fatherlands. The AN is against centralizing the EU economically and monetarily, areas where Germany would dominate and Italy would be relegated to a secondary role. On the other hand, the maintenance of cultural identity is stressed, including the Mediterranean character of Italy as a counterbalance to the Mitteleuropa of the Northern League.

In the area of defense, it is proposed that the professional armed forces be combined with the Swiss model of periodic reserve training and readiness, and the importance of military service, professional as well as reservist, in the strengthening of patriotic duty and national feelings, is explained.³⁰

The AN's economic vision is based on an international division of labor in which developed countries such as Italy would transfer labor-intensive industries to less developed countries that generate emigration, specifically, the countries of North Africa. This approach would reduce immigratory pressure on Italy, allow for further economic development and modernization, enlarge the markets for Italian exports and investment and bring with it political influence. At the same time, Italy should import the products of those less developed countries.³¹

Italian economic modernization, according to the theses, would be effected through privatization. The opening of the economy would also assist in the financing of the huge debt and allow the development of an economic plan that would help Mezzogiorno (Southern Italy) close the gap with the more developed North. In addition, economic measures introduced by the first Berlusconi government, such as the austerity plan and changing and simplifying the taxation system without creating further tax burdens, would be continued.

In order to tackle the huge problem of tax evasion -- evaluated at 60 billion dollars per year -- without hampering macro-economic growth, the AN proposes taxing consumption but not personal income. These regressive policies would conform to the neo-liberal side of the social market economy proclaimed as the socio-economic panacea for Italian ills. Popular capitalism in the form of diffused share-holding and an increased role for pension funds in the stock market derive from the old neo-fascist hostility toward finance capitalism together with acceptance of the realities of efficient market economics. Separation between political parties and the syndical organizations should, according to the AN ideologues, provide transparency and soundness in the negotiations for a more balanced distribution of profits.³²

Conclusions

Although the political theses prepared for the foundation of the AN -- the self-proclaimed political party of all Italians and the party that aims at transforming citizens from passive electors into political participants -- rejects fascism and corporativism, the new organization cannot be considered liberal and democratic. First, because of its ideological ancestry which includes those who were the declared enemies of liberal democracy, which they saw as decadence, corruption, political paralysis and the advancing of narrow party interests. Their theories and deeds -- many of them became active fascists in the 1920s, 1930s and in the Saló Republic -- cannot conceivably serve to inspire a political formation that declares itself to be liberal and democratic.

Second, the balance of liberty and authority, as proposed by the AN, generally leads to a limited form of democracy. While a seemingly politically neutral equation, it is generally favored by those interested in strengthening the authority of the state, in order to increase its efficiency in governing. If we add the institutional proposition to reduce the power of parliament over the executive, the authoritarian tendencies become clearer. A presidential system, in order to function, has to be built on the basis of a careful, constitutionally planned system of checks and balances, as in the US. Moreover, preservation of the constitution and existing legality are absolutely fundamental.³³ Presidential systems that lack these characteristics, like those in Latin America, are dominated by the executive and function as delegative and polarized democracies rather than as liberal democracies, or as konkordanzdemokratie, a strategy of representation and agreed problem solving.³⁴

Third, the claim for a more direct democracy, deriving from the majoritarian system and the use of propositive referendums favored by the AN, could easily degenerate into populism. Since political life is determined mainly by elections and referendums, the mass media tend to play a larger role in politics. Sartori's definition of videocracy (government by TV) refers to Berlusconi's control over most of Italy's private TV networks, while his definition of direttismo (direct democracy, as an antithesis to representative or parliamentary democracy) alludes to the way politics is emptied of substance when the power of direct decision making over fundamental issues, which are presented in a superficial way, is placed in the hands of "the people," an undefined entity composed of isolated individuals who are ignorant of the complexities of government. To save democracy, concludes Sartori, representation must be saved.³⁵

Fourth, the rejection of fascism and corporativism is a fine declaration but does not withstand deeper analysis. Fascism is merely given revisionist treatment. It is seen as a deviation from the ideals of the right, compelled by historical need to confront communism, while its philosophical roots remain intact. State corporativism is rejected and the role of the state modeled in accordance with modern political and economic criteria. But corporativism appears in a new guise of Catholic social corporativism through subsidiarity and the central role awarded to intermediate structures of society and voluntarism. Here we could claim that the rejection of totalitarianism leads to a change in the level and form of corporativism. The desire to cleanse syndical activities of politics is, perhaps, another legacy of the anti-parliamentarian vision of fascism.

Finally, the political and socio-economic models proposed by the AN resemble more the limited democracy which Pinochet's followers tried to impose on Chile through the 1980 constitution, and adapted to the realities of developed Western Europe, than the program of a liberal democratic party of the right. If ideology is an important criteria, the AN's theses do not fulfill the requirements of liberal democracy. If ideology is not significant, it becomes clear that the presentation and approval of the theses were merely a political propaganda exercise.

NOTES

1. Piero Ignazi, Postfascisti? (Bologna, 1994), p. 116.

2. Cf. Zeev Sternhall, Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri, The Birth of Fascist Ideology (Princeton, 1994), pp. 249-52.

3. Cf. Raffaello Masci, "An annuncia la resa dei conti col fascismo," La Stampa, 20 Jan.1995; Paolo Motta, "Fini porta a termine la lunga marcia," L'Informazione, 21 Jan.1995; Gianni Festa, "Bruccia la fiamma del Msi, si accende An," Il Mattino, 21 Jan.1995; Letizia Paolozzi, "`Il fascismo? Oggi non esiste.' Parla Fisichella, ispiratore di An," L'Unita, 21 Jan.1995; Federico Guiglia, "Fini si toglie la camicia nera," Il Giornale, 26 Jan. 1995; Ezio Pasero, "Seppelliremo il vechio Msi," Il Messaggero, 21 Jan. 1995 and many other articles in the daily and weekly press.

4. Vincenzo Pacifici, "Alle origini del cambiamento. Una svolta sempre osteggiatta dalla DC," Secolo d'Italia, 29 Jan. 1995.

5. Massimiliano Mazzanti, "Protagonisti della nuova Italia," Il Secolo d'Italia, 29 Jan. 1995.

6. This is a summary of Vittorio Feltri's presentation of the issue in Il Giornale, op. cit.

7. "I Congresso AN. Il documento politico conclusivo. `Come costruire il futuro.' Sfida all'insegna di liberta e democrazia," Secolo d'Italia, 30 Jan. 1995.

8. It should be noted that the formation of multi-party electoral coalitions had become unavoidable due to the transformation of the electoral system into a majoritarian one, in which single parties did not stand a chance to muster enough votes to have their representatives elected.

9. Concita De Gregorio, "Comme sonno rampanti I colonnelli di An," La Repubblica, 31 Jan. 1995.

10. Chiara Valentini, "Movimento sociale? Presente!," L'Espresso, 25 March 1994.

11. Declarations of Adolfo Urso, Fini's number two, during the Fiuggi congress. See Stefano Di Michele, "Fascismo e anti-Semitiso dividono la platea," L'Unita, 27 Jan. 1995.

12. "Pensiamo l'Italia. Il domani c'e gia. Valori, idee e progetti per l'AN. Tesi politiche per il XVII congresso nazionale del MSI-DN," s.p., 1995, p. 5.

13. Mario Sznajder, "Italy's right wing government: legitimacy and criticism," International Affairs, 71 (1) 1995, p. 92.

14. "Pensiamo l'Italia," p. 9. See Emilio Gentile, La via italiana al totalitarismo (Rome, 1995).

15. Interview with Cesco Giulio Baghino, president of the Italian Union of Ex-servicemen of the Saló Republic and honorary president of the MSI. See Aldo De Luca, "Auschwitz? Un orrore, am anche Stalin...," Il Messaggero, 27 Jan. 1995.

16. Di Michele, "Fascismo e anti-Semitismo." Fosse Ardeatine (Ardeatine Cave) is the place where at the end of March 1944, German occupation forces executed and buried 355 Italians, including more than one hundred Jews, who were prisoners in Rome's Regina Coeli prison. This massacre was carried out in retaliation for a partisan action in Rome, in which 32 German soldiers where killed. A monument at the Fosse Ardeatine is one of the sites where Gentile and Jewish victims of Nazism are remembered in Italy.

17. "Congresso MSI-DN: Conferenza stampa contro anti-Semitismo," (1+2), ANSA (Roma), 27 Jan. 1995. On this issue see also "Le leggi razziali: un errore che provoco un orrore," Il Tempo, 28 Jan.1995; "Anti-Semitiso: condanna radicale," Avvenire, 28 Jan. 1995; "An condanna l'anti-Semitiso ma Gasparri zittisce gli antirazzisti," L'Unita, 28 Jan. 1995; "An, dimenticare le leggi razziali" and "Papa, il mito che salvo migliaia di ebrei, " Il Corriere della sera, 27 Jan. 1995; "Abiura solenne dell'anti-Semitiso," La Voce, 28 Jan. 1995, where it is stated that the motion was approved with only five votes against; "No all'antisemtismo," Il Mattino, 28 Jan. 1995; Nicolo Accame, "An condanna le leggi razziali. Approvato l'emendamento contro l'anti-Semitiso," and "Perlasca: a mio padre Alleanza piacerebbe," Il Secolo d'Italia, 28 Jan. 1995.

18. See Alessandra Mussolini's declarations parallel to the debate on the above mentioned motion in, De Luca, "Auschwitz?" There she states clearly: " I said it once and again. I condemn the horrors of the extermination camps and the racial laws wanted [enacted] by my grandfather were a mistake. I am neither an anti-Semite nor a racist and I am tolerant towards all differences, I have even defended the gays..."

19. Mario Pirani, "Plauso a Fini con riserva," La Repubblica, 30 Jan. 1995.

20. "Pensiamo l'Italia," p. 5.

21. Ibid., pp. 6-7 and Sznajder, "Italy's right wing government." pp. 95-6. The term tangentopoli was coined in the wake of of the public disclosure in February 1994 of the extent of political corruption in Milan.

22. "Pensiamo l'Italia," p. 8.

23. Ibid., pp., 8-10.

24. Ibid., pp. 9-10 and 13.

25. Ibid., p. 10.

26. Ibid., pp. 13-14.

27. The IRI was founded by the fascist regime in 1933, in order to assist industry in overcoming the impact of the world economic crisis. With an annual turnover of over 41 billion dollars it remains the largest public holding in Italy today, controlling most public sector industries and companies.

28. "Pensiamo l'Italia," pp. 24-5.

29. Ibid., pp. 25-6.

30. Ibid., pp. 32-4.

31. Ibid., pp. 35-7.

32. Ibid., pp. 41-4.

33. On this point see Angelo Bolaffi, "Il poplo contro I cittadini," Micromega 1 (1995), p. 36.

34. On this issue see, Guillermo O'Donnell, "Delegative Democracy," Journal of Democracy 5 (1994) and Laurence Whitehead, "Alternatives to `Liberal Democracy': A Latin American Perspective," Political Studies (special issue, 1992).

35. Giovanni Sartori, "Una republica di aria frita," Micromega, 1 (1995), pp. 48-50.