The both-hands system

“The Honorable Domenico Gramazio, member of the “Alleanza Nazionale” (National Alliance) politburo, when in May 1996 the “Lega Nord” (North league) decided to institute the Green Shirts, commented as follows: Bossi does not know that the Green Shirts belong to the Italian right-wing history and tradition. They appeared for the first time in 1953 at the marshal Rodolfo Graziani funeral. In fact it was together with the Green Shirts themselves that back in 1956, the secretary of the youths of the “Movimento Sociale Italiano” at that time, Giulio Caradonna, organized the famous attack at the Botteghe Oscure (Communist Party central office) at which Vittorio Sbardella, Marco Gionfrida, Romolo Baldoni and many other MSI activist all participated wearing green shirts. Gramazio, although mistaken in the exact date, recalled a fact truly occurred. The assault at the PCi headquarters took place in 1955 the night of March 9th, in fact, when a hundred neo-fascists with green shirts, three-coloured (red, green and white, the ones of the Italian flag) bracelets and black ties, got off from two buses and tried to break into the office. The door was immediately closed down. The fascists then changed target and they rail against a next to the office bookstore “Rinascita” with molotov, stones and sticks. Was then that Mario Gionfrida, named “er gatto” (the cat) and never a name was so inapt, lost his hand attempting of throwing a bomb. He will lately show up again with a wood prothesis.”

Saverio Ferrari

During the last episode of our radio program we have had the chance of stressing once more the support to the only candidate who was for us worth voting for: nobody. Once upon a time in Italy, as well as in Europe, in order to give a strong sign of intolerance against the world of politics, people used to divert their votes to minor parties and often radical ones. Today the discontent it is clearly shown by the extremely high persistent abstention.
Having said that, the “official” results of the election matter actually a lot to us. In Italy we have to record a sharp rise of the xenophobic paradigm of the “Lega Nord”, representing only one of the neo-fascist parties which in Europe use regionalism to hide a clear racist and extremely rightest policy.
We are in fact not surprised, although it is a quite alarming situation, that in an emptiness of serious political alternatives and in a stage of economical crisis, such populist groups are easily able to excite the electorate stabbing at every time different scapegoat (blacks, Gypsies, muslims, illegal immigrants, and so forth) blaming them for the faults of a capitalistic society crushing on itself, diverting the people from the real exploiter and generating an actual war among poors without ever stopping to serve their own owners.
But what is underneath such an astonishing electoral result? There are years of attempt to draw as normals racist, xenophobic, misogynist and homophobic behaviours. Attempts going from the recent distribution of anti-immigrants soap in a market to the fantastic idea of a White Christmas in Brescia during last Christmas, to the Borghezio’s statements that years back was calling loudly for the use of the garrote against homosexuals. They are grotesque proposals which are not funny anymore once, not only they are taken seriously and sometimes even put into practice, but they are also legitimated by the institutions and the propaganda we are subjected to on a daily basis. This is what we mean by normalisation of xenophobia, which, we would like to stress clearly, is pursued from sides, left and right without distinctions (we can in fact take the example of the PD’s, Democratic Party, manifests which tersely asked the Gypsies living in Ponticelli [a Napolitan neighborhood] to go).
The news in tv turn, then, into rituals of fear. In Italy after all we have heard and read thousands of times how the workers are nowadays giving their votes to the Lega Nord, representing it the only party capable of keeping their jobs away from the immigrant working force. Clearly two issues have not been taken into consideration at all. The first is that nobody has never said the opposite, and the second is that often the vote of workers in small companies, is controlled by the owner with crisis or redundancy blackmail.
The rise to power of the extreme right, anyway, is not just an italian case, but is something we can find in all over Europe. In the last years we have been watching at the rise and spread of parties which, even if not formally, in the aesthetics, symbolism and word are close to the fascism as well. And it’s clear how this political organizations are carrying on reactionary positions which grant the survival and the spreading of neofascists. Campaigns against minarets in Switzerland, xenofoby in Holland, are just examples of that. As some comrades Solidaridad 3A said in an interview, “the biggest problem is not about the four nazis, but about the spanish political and judicial system which defend and bolster them”.
Starting from Germany, where the NPD looks at filonazist positions in the way of a return to a “german” Germany, it’s possible to draw the line of an extreme right wing from Berlin to Moskow, through Zurich, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Budapest.
Working on a national sentiment taken out from a far hystory, they carry on violent and aggressive ideas, looking at themselves as the only “saviours” of a motherland on foreigner hands. It’s too much easy to point the finger at the high percentage of muslim and tuskish people who live in Germany, Switzerland and Holland and to promise that everything will go better with the elimination of minarets and symbolism at all so far. And why not complainting about Rom in Hungary, thinking at the bautiful but not too far years in which they should be sent to the lager. And maybe it’s for this reason too that the NPD in Germany has lots of land where working with the new “soldiers” in a clear Hitlerian style, teaching them in the nazi and racist ideology.
In the Last Dutch administrative elections the Pvv, the neonazist and anti-islam parties, got two commons, one of which not far from Amsterdam. And yes, it asked for the ban of the Coran.
In the UK, a not so latent sentiment of hate for the race against indian and pakistan immigrants, in the last period showed a growing violent behavior anti-islam thanks to the British National Party. On the right of this xenofobic fight there is the more and more influent English Defence League, the last of the son of more spread neofascist organizations. And even here, last summer the BNP reach a great success which gave it the perspective of a coalition government.
And in France? Even here the enemy is the Arabian, the Muslim, and the Judish and the Gipsy too. Le Pen made an hard work. The National Front is something well known now, racist epysodes are nowadays normal in all the france, and the mass information is always ready to celebrate the strategy of the fear used in the actions in the Banlieue against the intolerable life conditions.
While in the Iberic peninsula the xenofoby take again old fears linked to the franchist dictature. In Cataluna the high percentage of muslim immigrants gave to the Plataforma per Catalunya the chance to act a xenofobic campain which follows the line of the Lega Nord: local identity – hate for the “differents”. In the small city of Vic, where the PSOE, CIU and ERC have the power, the proposal of Osep Anglada, leader of Plataforma per Catalunya was seriously taken in consideration: “illegal” immigrants, are banned from the comunal lists, and by consequences from the health assistance and primary education as well. The law was stopped by the national government for being not constitutional, but the simple fact that the proposal was consider, shows how big is the national semtiment for the motherland.
In Hungary the extreme right wing party Jobbik, thanks to the anti-rom campaign too, has been growing in the last months, against the Fidesz party which is leading more and more to the right. On the 11th of april the elections showed how big is the success of the right, with about the 56% of share, while the Jobbik had the 15%, an unexpected results.
But maybe the worste case of rising of neofascist and neonazist organizations is that of Russia. The death of the URSS, which led to the enrichment of the few and the rapidly fall into poverty of lots of others, made easier the life and the spread of racist and hating ideology. “Militar” groups in all over the country beat up and often kill antifascists, judish, gipsy: this is the Russia of fascists party in the Duma, but of the party of Putin which protect these epysodes too. It’s not just a case that after Ivan’s death in Moscow, comrades made actions under the seat of Putin’s party.
Nothing more to say. Russia, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Switzerland, Holland. The consciousness of their role of servitudes of the power, the consciousness of our role against them. As Borghezio said some years ago in Provence, “we have to work on the regionalism of our movement. It’s a good way for not being considered as the same old nostalgic fascists, but as a new regionalistic, catholic force…but anyway, we are always the same”