#Fernando Tambroni

[magauda]

L’elezione di Gronchi non era ben vista dagli americani

Il biennio 1955-56 è comunemente considerato come un anno di svolta nel contesto politico internazionale: causò grandi capovolgimenti in ogni scenario inserito nella logica della guerra fredda. In Italia, il progressivo esaurirsi della formula di governo centrista, in concomitanza con la distensione internazionale e poi della rivoluzione ungherese, faceva già prevedere un imminente scivolamento a…

[botallo]

L’elezione di Gronchi non era ben vista dagli americani

Il biennio 1955-56 è comunemente considerato come un anno di svolta nel contesto politico internazionale: causò grandi capovolgimenti in ogni scenario inserito nella logica della guerra fredda. In Italia, il progressivo esaurirsi della formula di governo centrista, in concomitanza con la distensione internazionale e poi della rivoluzione ungherese, faceva già prevedere un imminente scivolamento a…

[sapergo]

L’elezione di Gronchi non era ben vista dagli americani

Il biennio 1955-56 è comunemente considerato come un anno di svolta nel contesto politico internazionale: causò grandi capovolgimenti in ogni scenario inserito nella logica della guerra fredda. In Italia, il progressivo esaurirsi della formula di governo centrista, in concomitanza con la distensione internazionale e poi della rivoluzione ungherese, faceva già prevedere un imminente scivolamento a…

[bagnabraghe]

L’elezione di Gronchi non era ben vista dagli americani

Il biennio 1955-56 è comunemente considerato come un anno di svolta nel contesto politico internazionale: causò grandi capovolgimenti in ogni scenario inserito nella logica della guerra fredda. In Italia, il progressivo esaurirsi della formula di governo centrista, in concomitanza con la distensione internazionale e poi della rivoluzione ungherese, faceva già prevedere un imminente scivolamento a…

[bigarella]

L’elezione di Gronchi non era ben vista dagli americani

Il biennio 1955-56 è comunemente considerato come un anno di svolta nel contesto politico internazionale: causò grandi capovolgimenti in ogni scenario inserito nella logica della guerra fredda. In Italia, il progressivo esaurirsi della formula di governo centrista, in concomitanza con la distensione internazionale e poi della rivoluzione ungherese, faceva già prevedere un imminente scivolamento a…

[mariacallous]

When Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni paid an official visit to the Jewish ghetto in Rome on Dec. 19, 2022, it was a big deal. Meloni, who was appointed in October 2022, is Italy’s first prime minister with a past in a neofascist organization: As a teenager, she was an activist with the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), a now dissolved neofascist movement that was openly apologetic for former dictator Benito Mussolini’s regime. But when she visited the ghetto, Meloni used tough words to condemn one of Mussolini’s greatest crimes: “The racial laws were a disgrace,” she said. Then, she hugged the president of the local Jewish community, Ruth Dureghello, and briefly wept.

Only two weeks later, however, Meloni publicly defended MSI in a press conference. “It was a party of the democratic right,” she claimed, adding that the neofascist movement “ferried millions of Italians defeated by the war towards democracy.”

The two episodes encapsulate Meloni’s savvy but ultimately misleading communications strategy: Rather than distancing herself from her neofascist past, as some people might have expected, she’s trying to distance her neofascist past from fascism itself.

This choice is striking for two reasons. First, when MSI dissolved in 1994, evolving into the more moderate Alleanza Nazionale, Meloni was only 17 years old (she was a party member since 1992), which would make it easy for her to dismiss her past as a youthful mistake. Second, her efforts to cast the MSI in a positive light clash with basic history.

MSI leaders took pride in their disdain for democracy. One of them, Pino Rauti, wrote a book titled “Democracy, Here’s the Enemy!” Presenting MSI as democratic is “a nonsense that can only convince those who don’t know the history of Italy,” said Piero Ignazi, a professor of political science at the University of Bologna. “No one in MSI ever embraced the position that fascism is bad and democracy is good.”

The MSI was born in direct continuity with Mussolini’s regime soon after its fall, founded in a semi-clandestine way in 1946 by veterans of the Italian Social Republic, the political entity that governed Northern Italy between 1943 and 1945, officially led by Mussolini but in practice a German puppet state. Back then, its founders—including Rauti; Giorgio Almirante, set to become MSI’s most prominent leader; and Rodolfo Graziani, a commander in Mussolini’s army—were still in hiding, but they emerged to public life after Italy passed an amnesty for collaborators in 1946.

“The function of MSI was to gather Mussolini’s veterans and keep their political identity alive and functioning in contrast with democracy,” said historian Davide Conti, who wrote a book on the movement.

In the war’s aftermath, the MSI was isolated by other major parties, such as the Christian Democracy party and the Italian Communist Party, both of which had their roots in the anti-fascist resistance. For decades, Italian politics was dominated by the so-called patto costituzionale, an unwritten rule that made neofascists pariahs, barred from any alliance, consultation, or even temporary collaboration. The MSI motto of “non rinnegare, non restaurare” (“neither disown nor reinstate”) summarized its approach to Mussolini’s dictatorship: The group saw the regime as a source of inspiration but did not plan to bring it back any time soon. It also conveniently helped the regime bypass a law, approved in the 1950s, barring the rebuilding of the National Fascist Party.

MSI’s outcast status—and the toxicity it brought to anyone even remotely associated with it—became apparent in 1960, when then-Italian Prime Minister Fernando Tambroni, a staunch conservative hailing from the right-wing branch of the Christian Democracy party, briefly formed a government that relied on MSI’s external support in Parliament—without including them in the coalition. The move was so controversial that Tambroni was forced to dissolve his government within four months, after anti-fascists waged a wave of violent protests during the MSI congress in Genoa. No one else after him tried to accept MSI’s support again.

Cornered by the anti-fascist parties, including the mainstream right, the MSI managed nevertheless to build a consensus in the most reactionary segments of Italian society, especially those individuals worried about the rise of the Italian Communist and Italian Socialist Parties. The late 1960s throughout the 1970s was an especially turbulent time in Italian history, characterized by a wave of social upheaval with protests from unions, students, and feminists that were often repressed harshly by authorities.

These protests were eventually followed by the rise of more radical movements, including politically motivated armed groups, such as the communist Red Brigades. In this context, Italy’s far right, worried by the prospect of a communist revolution, positioned itself as a force of law and order. (Never mind that at the time, neofascist armed groups—such as the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, founded by ex-MSI members—were also wreaking havoc in the country, so they posed as much a threat to the Italian far right’s stability as the Red Brigades did.) Almirante went as far as to praise, in public, the idea of having a Chile-style coup.

Almirante created a militia around the party called “Volontari Nazionali,” whose job was to violently repress the student movement and labor unions that were organizing protests. The Volontari Nazionali’s most famous exploit was the attempted assault on Sapienza University in Rome, as it was being occupied by left-wing students in 1968. They failed.

But Meloni has not distanced herself. She described Almirante as a noble father of the Italian right, a “politician and a patriot of the past esteemed by friends and adversaries.” She saw no contradiction in praising him while disowning Mussolini’s racial laws. But, of course, there is a glaring one: Almirante played a major role in the antisemitic propaganda of Mussolini’s regime. Between 1938 and 1942, he was the chief editor of La Difesa della Razza, a propaganda outlet whose name (“The Defense of the Race”) says it all. Even decades after the fall of the dictatorship, Almirante said he did not trust democracy.

MSI was pretty extremist on its own. But, as if that weren’t enough, some of its members overlapped with right-wing terrorist groups.

“In the ‘60s and ‘70s, explicitly subversive groups gravitated within and around MSI,” Conti said. Rauti—who was Almirante’s rival within the MSI and father of the current undersecretary of defense, Isabella Rauti—was one the founders of Ordine Nuovo, a neofascist group responsible for the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing that killed 17 people in Milan, although Rauti himself was cleared from any direct involvement in a trial. (Almirante has also been accused of protecting a right-wing terrorist but received amnesty before his trial began.)

By the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War and the advent of the Silvio Berlusconi era, MSI had exhausted its role as a neofascist party. Its new leader, Gianfranco Fini, dissolved it and founded, from its ashes, Alleanza Nazionale (AN), a conservative party that embraced democracy. Fini formally renounced fascism in his famous 1995 Fiuggi speech and later went so far as to call it an “absolute evil” in a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel.

In 2009, AN merged with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, taking the name People of Freedom, a big tent conservative party that mimicked the U.S. Republicans. Meloni, who followed Fini in AN and then served as a youth minister with People of Freedom, founded her own party, Brothers of Italy, in 2012 with Guido Crosetto, a member of Berlusconi’s circle who had no association with neofascism.

In other words, most of Meloni’s political career took place within conservative parties that were, to different degrees, distanced from fascism. Which raises the question of why she has chosen to embrace, in her current public image, her past in the MSI, where she spent only two years as a teenage grassroots activist.

There are three possible explanations. First, Meloni’s past as a Fini protégé isn’t marketable. “Fini is considered a traitor because he tried to overcome neo-fascism and transform it into a conservative force, but the rest of the party did not follow him,” Ignazi said. “The right constituency has remained nostalgically attached to neofascism.”

Another rationale for embracing MSI lies in Meloni’s efforts to present herself as coherent—in contrast with political leaders who change their minds frequently. “Clinging to MSI is to give the message that one has stayed true to themselves,” Ignazi added.

The third reason has more to do with revanchism and the idea that a group that perceives itself as unfairly marginalized can finally have its voice heard. This victimhood rhetoric resonates well with MSI’s old fanbase. “Many of the Brothers of Italy come from MSI,” said Marta Lorimer, a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She pointed out that MSI, which emerged out of fascism’s defeat and endured for decades as an outcast, has “developed a self-image of losers of history.” A big part of this identity, according to Lorimer, “was this perception that their ideas were right but were not accepted after the war, so they saw themselves as a counterhegemonic force to the existing one.”

Meloni, she said, is trying to capitalize on this contrarian underdog narrative. “In her autobiography, she explains that she approached the Italian Social Movement precisely because she was ostracized,” Lorimer added.

Rather than trying to polish her image as a mainstream, if not moderate, leader or owning up to her political roots in fascism, Meloni chose the intermediate path and used her brief past in the MSI as an identity flag. The Movimento Sociale Italiano is close enough to be remembered as part of Italy’s recent democratic history, but at the same time, it is far enough away for the movement’s most controversial episodes to have faded from public memory.

[adrianomaini]

Fin dal 1955, la carica di ministro dell'Interno fu ricoperta da Fernando Tambroni: l'impostazione che egli diede all'incarico è già stata esaminata nella

[organisationskoval]

514) Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), Movimento Sociale Italiano - Destra Nazionale (MSI-DN), Italian Social Movement, Italian Social Movement – National Right, Włoski Ruch Społeczny lub Włoski Ruch Socjalny – włoska prawicowa postfaszystowska partia polityczna, działająca w latach 1946–1995, pierwotnie neofaszystowska, stopniowo ewoluująca w kierunku narodowym i konserwatywnym. Włoski Ruch Społeczny powstał 26 grudnia 1946. Większość członków partii w początkowym okresie jej istnienia stanowili radykalni faszyści, zwolennicy Benita Mussoliniego, którzy w końcowym okresie II wojny światowej opowiadali się za tak zwaną Republiką Salò. Jedną z najważniejszych postaci partii w 1946 był Giorgio Pini, podsekretarz stanu w ministerstwie spraw wewnętrznych Republiki Salò. Inną znaczącą postacią był dziennikarz Giorgio Almirante, w czasie II wojny światowej pracujący w organie prasowym włoskich faszystów, były szef kancelarii ministra kultury ludowej w Republice Salò. W pierwszej połowie lat 70. nazwa została zmieniona, partia działała jako Włoski Ruch Społeczny-Narodowa Prawica (wł. Movimento Sociale Italiano-Destra Nazionale). Partia otwarcie odwoływała się do ideologii faszystowskiej. W 1991 sekretarz generalny partii Gianfranco Fini stwierdził, że „wszyscy członkowie partii byli faszystami, dziedzicami faszyzmu, postfaszystami lub faszystami 2000”. Ze względu na odwołanie do faszyzmu ugrupowanie pozostawało izolowane przez lata na włoskiej scenie politycznej. Gdy w 1960 chadecki premier Fernando Tambroni wyraził zgodę na organizację kongresu krajowego MSI w Genui, mieście z tradycjami antyfaszystowskimi, doprowadziło to do demonstracji i zamieszek w różnych miastach, a następnie do dymisji rządu. Od lat 50. do lat 90. MSI uzyskiwał poparcie na poziomie z reguły 5–7%, najlepszy wynik partia uzyskała w 1972, kiedy to poparło ją 8,7% głosujących. Ugrupowanie stopniowo odchodziło od haseł radykalnych, zwłaszcza w końcowym okresie, gdy przywództwo w nim objął Gianfranco Fini. W 1994 porozumiał się z Silviem Berlusconim co do wspólnego startu w wyborach parlamentarnych, tworząc na bazie swojej formacji listę wyborczą MSI-Sojusz Narodowy (29 stycznia 1994). 25 stycznia 1995 Włoski Ruch Społeczny został rozwiązany, a większość jego działaczy zasiliła nową formację pod nazwą Sojusz Narodowy. Radykalne skrzydło partii, na czele którego stał Pino Rauti, utworzyło partię Trójkolorowy Płomień. Sekretarze generalni:

1946–1947: Giacinto Trevisonno

1947–1951: Giorgio Almirante

1951–1954: Augusto De Marsanich

1954–1969: Arturo Michelini

1969–1987: Giorgio Almirante

1987–1990: Gianfranco Fini

1990–1991: Pino Rauti

1991–1995: Gianfranco Fini.

[glianni70]

Accadde oggi - Anni '60 - I morti di Reggio Emilia

Accadde oggi – Anni ’60 – I morti di Reggio Emilia

Accadde oggi – Anni ’60 – 7 Luglio 1960 I morti di Reggio Emilia

5 operai reggiani, tutti iscritti al PCI, vengono uccisi dalle forze dell’ordine durante una manifestazione di piazza. La strage rappresenta l’apice di due settimane di scontri fra dimostranti e polizia che ha avuto dal capo del governo Fernando Tambroni il mandato di contrastare, con ogni mezzo fino al ricorso alle armi, le…

[montecorriere]

La politica nel dopoguerra: le elezioni montecosaresi del '46 e del '51

La politica nel dopoguerra: le elezioni montecosaresi del ’46 e del ’51

Nella scena politica, un grande tessitore era Mariano de Duilio prodigo nel raccogliere voti per il democristiano On. Fernando Tambroni. C’erano anche i sostenitori degli onorevoli Delle Fave, Concetti, De Cocci, Ballesi, Tupini (“Tu-pini, noi peniamo” era riportato in un manifesto della sinistra). Figure di spicco in campo locale erano anche Froldi, la Pucci, l’Avv. Vannucchi. Parteggiava per il…

[paoloxl]

La necessità di rinnovare con costanza la memoria storica del nostra Paese si colloca ben oltre alla discussione sul neofascismo rampante nella difficile situazione dell’Italia di oggi. Per questo motivo è più che mai valida la ricostruzione storica (per eseguita in maniera assolutamente sommaria) di ciò che accadde tra la fine di giugno e il luglio del 1960: cinquantanove anni fa. Era l'Italia del 1960. Ci si trovava in pieno miracolo economico, ma il benessere nascondeva profonde lacerazioni politiche e sociali. Si stava provando, con fatica, a uscire dagli anni'50 e a far nascere il centrosinistra. Un giovane democristiano, Fernando Tambroni esponente della corrente del presidente della Repubblica Gronchi, assumeva la Presidenza del Consiglio sostenuto da una maggioranza comprendente il partito neofascista, l'MSI. Quell'MSI che stava tornando alla ribalta con la sua ideologia e la sua iniziativa: quell'MSI che decise, alla fine del mese di Giugno, di tenere il suo congresso a Genova, Città medaglia d'oro della Resistenza. L'antifascismo, vecchio e nuovo, disse di no. Comparvero sulle piazze i giovani dalle magliette a strisce, i portuali, i partigiani. La Resistenza riuscì a sconfiggere il rigurgito fascista. Ma si trattò di una vittoria amara, a Reggio Emilia e in altre città la polizia sparò sulla folla causando numerose vittime. Questi i fatti, accaduti in quell'intenso e drammatico inizio d'estate di cinquantanove anni fa: è necessario, però, tornarvi sopra per riflettere, partendo da un dato. Non si trattò semplicemente di un moto di piazza, di opposizione alla scelta provocatoria di una forza politica come quella compiuta dall'MSI di convocare il proprio congresso a Genova e di annunciare anche come quell'assise sarebbe stata presieduta da Basile, soltanto quindici anni prima, protagonista nella stessa Città di torture e massacri verso i partigiani e la popolazione. Si trattò, invece, di un punto di vero e proprio snodo della storia sociale e politica d'Italia. Erano ancora vivi e attivi quasi tutti i protagonisti della vicenda che era parsa chiudersi nel 1945, ed è sempre necessario considerare come quei fatti si inserissero dentro una crisi gravissima degli equilibri politici. Una crisi inserita anche in un mutamento profondo dello scenario internazionale, nel quale si muovevano i primi passi del processo di distensione ed era in atto il fenomeno della "decolonizzazione", in particolare, in Africa, con la nascita del movimento dei "non allineati". Prima ancora, però, dovrebbe essere valutato un elemento di fondamentale importanza: si è già accennato all'entrata in scena di quella che fu definita la generazione "dalle magliette a strisce", i giovani che per motivi d'età non avevano fatto la Resistenza, ma ne avevano respirato l'aria entrando in fabbrica o studiando all'Università accanto ai fratelli maggiori; giovani che avevano vissuto il passaggio dall'Italia arretrata degli anni'40-'50 all'Italia del boom, della modernizzazione, del consumismo, delle migrazioni bibliche dal Sud al Nord, di una difficile integrazione sociale e culturale. In questo senso i moti del Luglio'60 non possono essere considerati semplicemente un punto di saldatura tra le generazioni, anzi rappresentavano un momento di conflitto, di richiesta di cambiamento profondo, non limitato agli equilibri politici. In quel Luglio '60, da non considerare - ripetiamo - soltanto per i fatti accaduti in quei giorni, ma nel complesso di una fase di cambiamento della società e della politica, si aprì, ancora, a sinistra, una discussione sulla natura della DC, fino a quel momento perno fondamentale del sistema politico italiano. Molti si chiesero, a quel momento, se dentro la DC covasse il "vero fascismo" italiano: non quello rumoroso e un poco patetico del MSI, ma quello vero; quello che poteva considerarsi il vero referente dei ceti dominanti, capace di portare al blocco sociale di potere l'apporto della piccola e media borghesia. Il partito democristiano appariva, dunque, a una parte della sinistra, soprattutto nei giorni infuocati della repressione, come il partito che avrebbe potuto in qualunque momento rimettere in moto in Italia (ricordiamolo ancora una volta: eravamo a soli quindici anni dalla Liberazione) un meccanismo politico –sociale –repressivo -autoritario tale da dar vita a nuove esperienze di tipo fascista. L'analisi sviluppata dal PCI togliattiano fu diversa. Nonostante le asprezze della polemica quotidiana il PCI aveva assunto come stella polare di tutta la sua strategia l'intesa con le masse cattoliche, da sottrarre al predominio moderato prevalente dal '47 in poi (grazie alla "guerra fredda") al vertice della DC. Ma la prospettiva non era così ingenua: essa comportava il proposito di far emergere le forze presenti all'interno della DC, anche al vertice del partito. In quel Luglio '60 il PCI cercò di operare in quella direzione, e il successo dello sciopero generale, pur macchiato di sangue, si rivelò efficace e significativo anche perché dall'interno della DC si aprì finalmente un varco a quella parte del gruppo dirigente che, sulle rovine dell'esperimento Tambroni, poté riproporre con maggiore efficacia e speranza di esito positivo una soluzione diversa: quella che abbiamo già richiamato delle "convergenze parallele" e, successivamente, del centrosinistra "organico". Oggi, a cinquantanove anni di distanza, possiamo meglio valutare l'esito di quei fatti: le contraddizioni che ne seguirono, il rattrappirsi progressivo della realtà riformatrice (a partire dal "tintinnar di sciabole" dell'estate 1964, fino alla disgraziata stagione del terrorismo, aperta nel 1969 dalle bombe di Piazza della Fontana), l'assunzione, in particolare da parte del PSI, via, via, di una vocazione "governista" sfociata nel decisionismo craxiano, i limiti di puro politicismo insiti nella strategia berlingueriana del “compromesso storico”, nello sviluppo abnorme di quella che già dagli anni’50 Maranini aveva definito come partitocrazia (con il contributo di un complessivo "consociativismo" allargato all'intero arco parlamentare) e, infine, nella "questione morale" che segnò, all'inizio degli anni'90, lo sconquasso definitivo del quadro di governo in coincidenza con la caduta del muro di Berlino (sulla quale furono commessi errori di valutazione enormi) e con l’avvio, con il trattato di Maastricht, della logica monetarista anti-democratica di gestione dell’Unione Europea sul modello reaganian-tachteriano della crescita delle diseguaglianze economiche e sociali fino alla drammatica attualità che stiamo vivendo in un quadro esaltato da un insieme di valori negativi. Forse luglio’60 rappresentò uno degli ultimi passaggi utili per contrastare radicalmente questo processo di involuzione e riproporre alcune radici di fondo della prospettiva resistenziale ma è necessario ammettere, anche in un momento di rievocazione importante come l’attuale, che quel messaggio non fu completamente colto.

Franco Astengo

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Although the fascist regime was defeated at the end of World War II, Italian fascism never really went away. The Italian constitution might have explicitly prohibited the reconstitution of the fascist party, but no sooner than it was introduced the Italian Social Movement (MSI) was founded. This party made explicit reference to the Italian Social Republic, the fascist regime that Mussolini established under Nazi protection in northern Italy after the Allies and the Italian partisans had freed the central and southern part of the country. From 1946 onward, MSI regularly participated in Italian elections, increasing its vote share to the point of becoming the fourth largest party behind the Christian Democrats, the Communists, and the Socialist Party.

In spring 1960, MSI offered external support for the government led by the right-wing Christian Democrat Fernando Tambroni. However, the Tambroni government was dissolved after only four months thanks to a wave of demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of people in many Italian towns and cities. Organized by left-wing opposition parties, these protests were often violently repressed by police. The demonstrations were also notable for the large number of young people who participated, combining an anti-fascist spirit with a broader desire for social change in a country that was characterized by conservatism. In fact, the 1960s marked the beginning of a wave of social struggles that continued across the following decade. The student revolt in 1968 was soon followed by an important cycle of workers’ struggles: the Hot Autumn.

While this strong popular opposition destroyed the MSI’s chances of entering government, fascists could still be useful for sections of the Italian ruling class. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s sectors of the the country’s political and military elites made use of a myriad of subversive fascist groups to pursue “strategy of tension” aimed at containing the wave of social struggles which were emerging in the country. The goal was to create a climate of fear among the population, which would then justify authoritarian measures to reestablish order — including through the suppression of the Left.

Despite the smokescreen which still hangs over the events of these years, it has been established that fascist groups were involved in at least one coup attempt (the so-called Golpe Borghese, named after the former fascist Navy official behind the initiative) and a number of massacres across the 1960s and 1970s. The bomb that killed seventeen people and injured eighty-eight in Milan’s Piazza Fontana in 1969 marked the beginning of a decade that culminated in the August 1980 with the bombing at Bologna railway station, which left eighty-two people dead. Although we still don’t know the names of the instigators, trials have established that fascists carried out both atrocities, as well as a number of other killings and shootings throughout that decade.

The 1980s were a decade of political disillusionment and retreat, marking the end of the social struggles which characterized the two previous decades. From the outside, it appeared that this could also be the end of Italian fascism. The 1990s saw the end of the MSI, which turned into the more “institutionally respectable” Alleanza Nazionale (AN). During a 2003 visit to Israel, Gianfranco Fini — the final secretary of the MSI and the leader of the transition towards the AN — went as far to declare that the Italian fascist regime of Mussolini was part of the “absolute evil,” on account of its 1930s “race laws” against Jews. Italy, it seemed, might finally be about to leave its fascist past behind.

Believing the country was moving beyond political “extremes,” both center-left and center-right parties engaged in an attempt to rewrite history, aimed at creating a fictitious shared memory of the years of the fascist regime and the Italian Resistance. The Italian Social Republic was progressively normalized, with politicians from the left and the right arguing that it was time to try to understand the motives of the defeated fascists, who were increasingly characterized as young people who fought for the wrong cause.

At the same time experience of the Italian resistance against fascism was gradually emptied of its original political significance. This led to a situation where in 2017 the governing party, the centrist Democrats, turned the annual demonstration in commemoration of the Resistance, held every April 25, into a celebration of the European Union. To add further embarrassment, PD militants were photographed holding signs celebrating a series of “European patriots,” among whom they included Coco Chanel, in fact known to be a Nazi collaborator.

But the reality was, against this backdrop of ideological confusion, Italian fascism had not disappeared. Many politicians in “institutional” right-wing parties maintained links with the far-right milieu and a number of neofascist organizations continued operating. In a telling reflection of these often untold links, in 2008 a number of supporters of Rome’s new mayor Gianni Alemanno, a former chairman of the MSI youth organization and a prominent AN member, gave fascist salutes and chanted in homage to Mussolini after Alemanno’s election victory.

Fascists did not stop killing, either. In 2003, two fascist brothers and their father stabbed to death Davide “Dax” Cesare, a militant of a social center in Milan, who they held responsible for an attack on the family’s older brother a week before. In 2006 two young fascists stabbed to death Renato Biagetti, a militant of Rome’s Acrobax social center. In 2008 Nicola Tommasoli, aged twenty-eight, died in Verona after a savage beating by a group of five far-right ultras.

But it is with the recent economic crisis that Italian fascists’ strategies have become more overt. In the context of rising unemployment and poverty, triggered by the EU-backed austerity policies implemented by all Italian governments since the beginning of the crisis, neofascist organizations such as Forza Nuova and the new CasaPound tried to build support by shifting blame onto immigrants. In perfect continuity with the historical experience of fascism, neofascist organizations have politicized the crisis along racial and not class lines, exploiting also the weakness of the Italian left, which has been unable to provide a radical alternative during the recession.

The demand “put Italians first” has not only been a rhetorical device. As the housing situation became explosive during the crisis, with evictions skyrocketing as tenants were unable to pay their rent, fascist groups promoted squatting for Italians only, or attempted (often successfully) to impede migrant families’ rightful access to public housing. Playing on the burgeoning feelings of fear and insecurity, fed by a media campaign over migrant criminality, fascists instigated neighborhood patrols, often under the cover of murky citizens’ associations. Taking advantage of an increasing poverty rate, they have collected food in front of or even inside supermarkets, but for indigenous Italians only.

In this pivot to service provision for the poor, fascist groups well understood that they were stealing the Left’s clothes. As one group said in a recent interview, “We do what the Communist Party stopped doing. In the poorer areas, in the outskirts of the cities, the Communist Party is not there anymore but CasaPound is there now helping.” Helping maybe — but only some, solidifying their base among white Italians suffering from the economic crisis while fomenting animus against their immigrant neighbors.

In shifting the focus away from class politics and driving warfare within the working class, fascists have served the interest of the Italian ruling class. It is therefore unsurprising that they have been gradually normalized within the public debate. CasaPound’s self-defined “fascists of the third millennium” has received increasingly benign media coverage, with interviews of its leaders and a widespread description of its militants as young and passionate activists, in contrast to the apathetic majority of the younger generations.

This reached fresh heights last November, when a fashion magazine published an article describing some of the more visible women within the organization in admiring tones. Last fall, famous journalists participated in the preelection debates held in the CasaPound headquarters in Rome. Moreover, as documented by the Wu Ming collective and the researchers of the Nicoletta Bourbaki group, recent years have seen increasing number of connections at the local level between exponents of the centrist Democratic Party and CasaPound. Local Democratic figures have participated in initiatives hosted by CasaPound, and vice versa, even to the extent that some fascist militants complained publicly on Twitter about such strange connections.” - Carlo Florenzi, “It Never Went Away.” Jacobin, March 4, 2018.

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Cerchiamo di essere razionali. Su questa storia della prova di forza con l’Europa e con i mercati, la logica ci dice che le possibilità sono solo due. La prima è che sia effettivamente plausibile rilanciare la crescita e ripagare tutti i debiti mandando le persone in pensione prima, abbassando le tasse e dando pure un bel sussidio ai disoccupati, e che a scoprire questa formula magica dell’economia politica, capace da sola di far stravincere tutte le successive elezioni a qualsiasi capo di governo della storia occidentale, da Winston Churchill a Fernando Tambroni, sia stata la solitaria e finora incompresa genialità di Luigi Di Maio e Matteo Salvini. La seconda possibilità è che siamo fottuti.

Probabilità | Left Wing

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Storia: il Governo Tambroni ed il CentroSinistra

Storia: il Governo Tambroni ed il CentroSinistra

Per capire meglio le vicende storiche del nostro Paese credo sia opportuno andare a riprendere alcuni eventi politici che hanno caratterizzato la Prima Repubblica. Ho scelto di cominciare con la nascita del Centrosinistra. Questa forma di governo nacque a cavallo tra la fine degli anni ’50 e l’inizio dei ’60.

I protagonisti di quel periodo. Da sinistra Amintore Fanfani, il Presidente della…

[organisationskoval]

304) Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI, Italian Social Movement, Włoski Ruch Społeczny lub Włoski Ruch Socjalny  – włoska prawicowa postfaszystowska partia polityczna, działająca w latach 1946–1995, pierwotnie neofaszystowska, stopniowo ewoluująca w kierunku narodowym i konserwatywnym. Włoski Ruch Społeczny powstał 26 grudnia 1946. Większość członków partii w początkowym okresie jej istnienia stanowili radykalni faszyści, zwolennicy Benita Mussoliniego, którzy w końcowym okresie II wojny światowej opowiadali się za tak zwaną Republiką Salò. Jedną z najważniejszych postaci partii w 1946 był Giorgio Pini, podsekretarz stanu w ministerstwie spraw wewnętrznych Republiki Salò. Inną znaczącą postacią był dziennikarz Giorgio Almirante, w czasie II wojny światowej pracujący w organie prasowym włoskich faszystów, były szef kancelarii ministra kultury ludowej w Republice Salò. W pierwszej połowie lat 70. nazwa została zmieniona, partia działała jako Włoski Ruch Społeczny-Narodowa Prawica (wł. Movimento Sociale Italiano-Destra Nazionale). Partia otwarcie odwoływała się do ideologii faszystowskiej. W 1991 sekretarz generalny partii Gianfranco Fini stwierdził, że „wszyscy członkowie partii byli faszystami, dziedzicami faszyzmu, postfaszystami lub faszystami 2000”. Ze względu na odwołanie do faszyzmu ugrupowanie pozostawało izolowane przez lata na włoskiej scenie politycznej. Gdy w 1960 chadecki premier Fernando Tambroni wyraził zgodę na organizację kongresu krajowego MSI w Genui, mieście z tradycjami antyfaszystowskimi, doprowadziło to do demonstracji i zamieszek w różnych miastach, a następnie do dymisji rządu. Od lat 50. do lat 90. MSI uzyskiwał poparcie na poziomie z reguły 5–7%, najlepszy wynik partia uzyskała w 1972, kiedy to poparło ją 8,7% głosujących. Ugrupowanie stopniowo odchodziło od haseł radykalnych, zwłaszcza w końcowym okresie, gdy przywództwo w nim objął Gianfranco Fini. W 1994 porozumiał się z Silviem Berlusconim co do wspólnego startu w wyborach parlamentarnych, tworząc na bazie swojej formacji listę wyborczą MSI-Sojusz Narodowy (29 stycznia 1994). 25 stycznia 1995 Włoski Ruch Społeczny został rozwiązany, a większość jego działaczy zasiliła nową formację pod nazwą Sojusz Narodowy. Radykalne skrzydło partii, na czele którego stał Pino Rauti, utworzyło partię Trójkolorowy Płomień.

Sekretarze generalni:

1946–1947: Giacinto Trevisonno

1947–1951: Giorgio Almirante

1951–1954: Augusto De Marsanich

1954–1969: Arturo Michelini

1969–1987: Giorgio Almirante

1987–1990: Gianfranco Fini

1990–1991: Pino Rauti

1991–1995: Gianfranco Fini.

[glianni70]

il Governo Tambroni ed il CentroSinistra

il Governo Tambroni ed il CentroSinistra

 il Governo Tambroni ed il CentroSinistra

Per capire meglio le vicende storiche del nostro Paese credo sia opportuno andare a riprendere alcuni eventi politici che hanno caratterizzato la Prima Repubblica. Ho scelto di cominciare con la nascita del Centrosinistra. Questa forma di governo nacque a cavallo tra la fine degli anni ’50 e l’inizio dei ’60.

I protagonisti di quel periodo. Da sinistra…