Rome’s mayor: Fascism wasn’t so bad after all

Bill Weinberg

Thank goodness Rome’s Jews have got the cogliones to protest this! From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Sept. 8:

Roman Jews criticize mayor over Fascist remarks
Jewish leaders criticized Rome’s right-wing mayor for declaring that Italy’s Fascist-era anti-Semitic laws, not Fascism itself, constituted “absolute evil.”

Mayor Gianni Alemanno’s remark came in an interview published Sunday in Corriere della Sera newspaper while he was on a visit to Israel.

“Fascism was a more complex phenomenon,” Alemanno, who got his political start in the neo-Fascist movement, said. “Many people joined up in good faith and I don’t feel like labeling them with that definition. The racial laws desired under fascism, that spurred its political and cultural end, were absolute evil.”

Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini ruled Italy for two decades. Historians have estimated that thousands of Italian Jews were members of the Fascist party before the strict anti-Semitic racial laws were imposed in
1938.

Renzo Gattegna, head of the umbrella Union of Italian Jewish Communities, said the racial laws “were issued by the fascist regime, so it seems to me difficult to separate the two things.”

Rome’s Jewish community president Riccardo Pacifici said, “We are awaiting a strong, public clarification.” He added, “I hope Alemanno was misinterpreted.”

We sure are glad Alemanno is blowing it with the Jews, and that the Jews are astute enough not to take his pro-Israel, anti-Arab bait. Because, as we noted a few years back, there has been growing support for the xenophobe right among Europe’s Jews. Meanwhile, in light of the above the following news clip becomes even more ominous. From BBC, July 30:

Italian troops to patrol cities
Thousands of troops will be deployed in Italian cities from next Monday to help police fight crime, the Italian government has announced.

About 2,000 troops will guard “sensitive” sites such as train stations and embassies. Another 1,000 will go on street patrols with police.

The six-month deployment includes Rome, Naples, Milan and Turin. Some troops will guard migrant holding centres. It is said to be the biggest such deployment in Italy since World War II…

Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa said that after six months the government would “make an evaluation to see whether it has worked and should be extended to other cities”.

“This is not a militarisation of cities but a clear response to the perceived demand for greater security,” he said on Tuesday.

Don’t you just love that “this is not a militarization” line? File under words-mean-whatever-we-say-they-mean. Meanwhile, sending army troops to “guard migrant holding centers” bodes poorly for Europe’s new immigration policy…

See our last posts on the politics of anti-Semitism, Italy’s fascist resurgence and the legacy of World War II.

  1. Alternating Notions of Fascism
    There have been alternative notions of Fascism and notions regarding those complicit with “fascists” since before World War II. Veterans of the Lincoln Brigade’s efforts during the Spanish Civil War were denied entry into the United States Armed Forces, having their files marked in huge red letters “Pre-Mature Anti-Fascist.” That is clearly and indication that the fascists weren’t all that bad at first. Also, a clear indication of the whitewashing of fascism is the manner in which German and Italian armed forces were provided with historic immunity with regard to the atrocities committed. It was regarded as only the SS and other Special Forces and governmental organizations, which were demonized. The deliberate rehabilitation of Field Marshal Irwin Rommel, whose Catholic belief prevented him from Joining the Nazi Party and pledging devotion to der Feurer.
    The rationale for making Rommel a hero, was of course to allow the defeated West Germans a measure of military pride which would prove useful during the Cold War.
    Of almost ludicrous anecdotal note is the incident during the New York Senatorial Campaign between Alfonse Dā€™Amato, and Robert Abrams. When Abrams, a Jew, referred to Dā€™Amato, an Italian American, as a fascist, D’Amato wept crocodile tears invoking the horrors that “his” people suffered at the hands of the fascists, never noting that the root term for fascist is “fascisti” (Italian), and one of it’s earliest philosopher-proponents Giovanni Gentile was Italian and its symbol is traditionally roman.
    There are many gains to be made by being an anti-fascist at times. As documented Norman Finkelstein, in “The Holocaust Industry,” former Senator Alfonse D’Amato billed $6,000.00 per hour in his heroic efforts to press Swiss financial institutions into compensating depositors who perished in the Holocaust. Forensic accountants of all ideologies characterize the actions as pure extortion, and since that time no funds have been paid to the survivors of holocaust victims.

    1. “There have been alternative
      “There have been alternative notions of Fascism and notions regarding those complicit with “fascists” since before World War II. Veterans of the Lincoln Brigade’s efforts during the Spanish Civil War were denied entry into the United States Armed Forces, having their files marked in huge red letters “Pre-Mature Anti-Fascist.”

      This is total b.s. It never happened. The “premature anti-fascist” meme was crafted by the vets themselves. If anything, they were premature pro-fascists. Remember, the CPUSA considered liberals “social fascists” and a greater threat to the American working-class than Hitler.

      More here:
      (This article was originally published in the “New Criterion” but it requires a sub so I’m providing the link from Front Page Mag which is not nearly as professional a publication IMHO. Regardless, the article is exactly the same.)

      “Despite all these confident assertions, “premature antifascism” is a myth. Not only is there no evidence that the United States armed forces ever used the phrase ā€œpremature antifascistsā€ to describe those Americans who fought in Spain, there are indications that it was Communists and the veterans themselves who first employed the term. Moreover, many of the veterans were also ā€œinterim profascistsā€ who in obedience to Soviet instructions dropped their anti-Nazism in September 1939 and opposed resistance to Fascist aggression while Germany conquered most of Western and Central Europe. Only when the Nazis turned against the USSR in June 1941 did the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade rediscover their antifascism.”

      http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=80D1D48A-4AAE-4254-ADCC-FDC6A7911294

      1. Get lost, freeper
        You are the one who is full of total BS. The Abe Lincoln vets were indeed (initially) denied the right to military service, and even if these New Criterion revisionists are correct (you seem to be deciding arbitrarily that they areā€”I presume you didn’t check the research yourself), so what? The Lincoln vets were still blacklisted, surveilled and demonized for having been, in point of fact, prematurely anti-fascist.

        Yes, most of them capitulated during the year and a half of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. But they were fighting the fascists in Spain at a time when the Western democracies were maintaining a shameful and bogus “neutrality” and Gulf Oil was selling fuel to Franco. And, once Uncle Sam let them, they fought again heroically in World War II. What have you ever fought for, aside from trolling anonymously on blogs?

        But then, using a pomo jargon word like “meme” gives your prattle an air of importance. Like “narrative,” that is one of that vile school’s magic words by which documented history is reduced to mere subjective interpretation. Too bad you blow your pseudo-scholarly creds by using quotation marks incorrectly, an error which any reasonably advanced high school kid would’ve caught. Better luck next time, freeper.

        1. Freeper? Hardly, dude. Just
          Freeper? Hardly, dude. Just someone interested in history who is aware of the sordid history of the ALB. Including their murder of anarchists.