Judeofascism For Dummies:
Italy's political scars reopened by Di Canio's 'Fascist salute'
By John Phillips in Rome
10 January 2005
Fans of Italy's Lazio football club yesterday threatened to stage mass protests if Paolo Di Canio, the team's striker, is disciplined for celebrating a win over Roma with a Fascist salute.
National football federation officials opened an inquiry after Di Canio, 35, gave the straight-armed, flat-handed gesture, known since the rule of the Second World War dictator Benito Mussolini as a "Roman salute" at the end of Thursday evening's derby game in which Lazio beat Roma 3-1.
The forward, who earned a reputation for his erratic temperament while playing for West Ham, denied there was political significance in the sinister greeting captured on photographs published around Italy.
"I am a professional footballer and my celebrations had nothing to do with political behaviour of any kind," he told Gazzetta dello Sport.
Lazio fans known as "Ultras" long have been notorious for their neo-Fascist tendencies and famous supporters include Daniela Fini, the wife of the Italian Foreign Minister, Gianfranco Fini [*], who heads the "post-Fascist" National Alliance party founded by former members of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a grouping led by former blackshirts from Mussolini's totalitarian regime.
A spokesman for the most uncompromising Ultras, the so-called Irriducibili, Fabrizio Toffolo, claimed that left-wing players such as Cristiano Lucarelli, a Livorno striker, made clenched-fist salutes during matches with impunity.
"If Di Canio is disciplined, there will be 30,000 of us demonstrating outside the football league offices," he told Il Messaggero. Encouraging Fascism is a crime under Italian law.
A club statement also rallied behind the striker, saying the controversy showed that Roma supporters are bad losers.
"The result on the field was well deserved and celebrations by players and fans were absolutely legitimate," a Lazio statement said.
Di Canio has the word dux, the latin term from which Mussolini styled himself Duce (leader), tattooed on his arm. In an autobiography, he said he was fascinated by the dictator, whom he called "basically a very principled, ethical individual". Alessandra Mussolini, the dictator's granddaughter who recently left the National Alliance to start a new far-right party, said she approved of the salute. "How nice that Roman salute was, it delighted me so much. I shall write him a thank- you note." Among those to disagree, however, was Andrea Della Valle, president of first division club Fiorentina, who Lazio defeated yesterday. "Every city would like to have a player with talent like his, but Di Canio went too far; I would not have accepted such an attitude. He should be careful, there are youngsters who will follow his example."
news.independent.co.uk
[*] Mussolini's heir on Israel trip as Italian party alters image
Sophie Arie in Rome
Monday November 24, 2003
The Guardian
Gianfranco Fini, leader of the Alleanza Nazionale and Italy's deputy prime minister, began an official visit to Israel yesterday in an attempt to remake his party's neo-fascist image and fashion himself as a respectable conservative leader.
Mr Fini, who founded the AN out of the ashes of Benito Mussolini's Movimento Socialista Italiana (MSI) in 1994, has turned the party line around in the past 10 years.
In 1994 he called Mussolini the greatest politician of the 20th century. Eight years later he retracted the comment, condemning him for racial laws that led to the deportation of 6,000 Italian Jews to Nazi death camps.
He has now become one of Europe's most vociferous supporters of Israel. Despite EU concern at Israel's "security fence" in the West Bank, and the Pope's comment that "the Holy Land doesn't need walls, but bridges", Mr Fini has supported the barrier as a necessary means of self-defence.
In a recent poll, Italy emerged as the only EU member state where the majority of citizens do not consider Israel a threat to world peace.
Its centre-right government pledged at meetings in Rome with the Israeli leader, Ariel Sharon, last week to tackle rising anti-Israeli sentiment in Europe. This hostility, Mr Fini said, was the result of a "sparse knowledge of history" and dislike for the Israeli leader.
Mr Sharon described Italy as "the closest friend we have in Europe". "Fini is a good and friendly leader," he told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. "I know of the criticism aimed at him, but I think it's a good thing he's coming to Israel ... It is time to look to the future, not to the past."
During his four-day visit, Mr Fini will meet Israeli government and opposition leaders and visit a Holocaust memorial.
Critics claim that the visit is part of Mr Fini's domestic political strategy to turn the AN into a respectable alternative to Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party.
Israeli state radio commented that Mr Fini was convinced that the road to the Italian premiership "passes through Jerusalem".
Suave and level-headed, Mr Fini - who cringed visibly when the Italian prime minister compared a German MEP to a Nazi concentration camp guard this summer - has softened his party's stance on other key issues in recent months, most notably calling for immigrants to be given the vote.
Earlier this year, he suggested that he might withdraw from the coalition government to concentrate on his party.
But the AN remains closely linked to Italy's fascist past. Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Benito, is a party deputy in Naples and a firm defender of her grandfather, who she believes is unfairly represented in history books.
In an attempt to purge the AN of its pro-fascist ranks, Mr Fini last week called for the expulsion of a party deputy, Antonio Serena. Mr Serena had distributed a video to MPs in praise of a convicted Nazi war criminal, Erich Priebke, who took part in the murder of 335 civilians in Rome in 1944.
The interior minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, warned this week that Italy, which has been a stalwart supporter of the US-led intervention in Iraq, faces a growing threat of terrorist attacks. Jewish targets in the country are on increased alert.
guardian.co.uk |
