Silvio Berlusconi Defeated Three Times in Parliament as Grip on Power Grows Weaker
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Silvio Berlusconi's hold on power looked more fragile than ever after his government was defeated in parliament and new claims emerged of starlets being supplied for parties at one of his mansions.

The Italian government was humiliated in parliament when MPs loyal to Gianfranco Fini, the prime minister's main rival, voted with the Opposition on three amendments to a controversial treaty drawn up between Italy and Libya on stemming illegal immigrants.



Mr Fini and his followers defected from the government in July, depriving Mr Berlusconi of a guaranteed parliamentary majority, and tensions between the former allies has plunged Italy into political paralysis.

The defeat came as a weekly magazine published alleged secretly filmed video footage of showgirls being driven to Mr Berlusconi's mansion, Villa San Martino, on the outskirts of Milan, without apparently undergoing any security checks by the police who protect the property. >>> Nick Squires in Rome | Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Berlusconi schmeisst Erzrivalen Fini aus Partei
SCHWEIZER FERNSEHEN: Italiens Ministerpräsident Silvio Berlusconi wirft Gianfranco Fini aus der Partei. Damit läutet dieser einen möglichen Regierungszusammenbruch ein. Einschätzungen von Gianluca Galgani, SF-Korrespondent, in Rom

The March of Mussolini into Italy's Mainstream
NAME: After carrying the dictator's torch for 60 years, the far-right National Alliance is to merge with Silvio Berlusconi's party. So is this the end of fascism in Italy? Quite the reverse. Peter Popham reports

'Il Duce': Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini
The flames are going out all over Italy. Tomorrow, the flame which for more than 60 years has been the symbol of neo-Fascist continuity with Mussolini, will disappear from mainstream politics. The National Alliance, the last important home of that inheritance, is "fusing" with Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party to give the governing bloc a single identity and a single unchallenged leader.

The change has been a long time coming – 15 years and more. Mr Berlusconi broke the great taboo of Italian post-war politics after he won his first general election victory in 1994 and incorporating four members of the National Alliance into his coalition.

Embracing the Fascists and neo-Fascists was taboo for good reason. For one thing, their return after they had led the nation to ruin in the war was banned by the new Constitution, whose Article 139 states, "the re-organisation, under whatever form, of the dissolved Fascist party, is forbidden."

That veto had been honoured in the breach rather than the observance since 1946, when Giorgio Almirante, the leader of the Italian Social Movement, picked up the baton of Mussolini where he had left it at his death and led the new party into parliament. But the neo-Fascists remained in parliamentary limbo, far from power. Berlusconi blew that inhibition away.

Under the wily leadership of Gianfranco Fini the "post-Fascists" have been gaining ground since. Tall, bespectacled, buttoned up, the opposite of Berlusconi in every way, the Alliance's leader impressed the Eurocrats with his democratic credentials when he was brought in to lend a hand at drafting the EU's new Constitution.

He leaned over backwards to break his party's connection to anti-Semitism, paying repeated official visits to Israel where he was photographed in a skull cap at the Wailing Wall. On one visit, in 2003, he went so far as to condemn Mussolini and the race laws passed in 1938 which barred Jews from school and resulted in thousands being deported to the death camps.

"I've certainly changed my ideas about Mussolini," he said at the time. "And to condemn [the race laws] means to take responsibility for them." Statesmanlike: the word stuck to him like lint. Party hardliners such as Alessandra Mussolini, the glamorous granddaughter of Il Duce, were furious and split away to form fascist micro-parties of their own. But Mr Fini's strategy prevailed. Under Mr Berlusconi's patronage, he became foreign minister then deputy prime minister and now speaker of the lower house, a more prestigious job than its British equivalent. As Berlusconi's unquestioned number two in the new "fused" party, he is also his heir-apparent. >>> Peter Popham | Friday, March 20, 2009

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Italy) >>>

Italiens Rechte schart sich hinter Silvio Berlusconi
BASLER ZEITUNG: Die postfaschistische Alleanza Nazionale löst sich auf, um mit Berlusconis Partei Forza Italia zu fusionieren. AN-Chef Fini bringt sich damit als Berlusconis Nachfolger in Stellung.

Zum letzten Mal wird am Wochenende in Rom jene politische Formation zusammentreten, deren Exponenten sich einst als die Erben von Benito Mussolini verstanden hatten. Die Alleanza Nazionale (AN) löst sich auf, um am darauffolgenden Wochenende endgültig mit Silvio Berlusconis Forza Italia zu verschmelzen. Damit wird vollzogen, was Berlusconi bereits vor den Parlamentswahlen im April vergangenen Jahres angekündigt hatte: Unter Zugzwang gesetzt durch die neue Mitte-Links-Partei von Walter Veltroni, sollte auch rechts der Mitte eine neue starke Partei entstehen. >>> Von Kordula Doerfler, Rom, Tages Anzeiger | Freitag, 20. März 2009

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Taschenbuch und Gebundene Ausgabe) – Versandkostenfrei innerhalb der Schweiz >>>

Fascism on the Rise in Italy, Says Peter Popham
THE INDEPENDENT: A young graphic designer called Nicola Tommasoli died in hospital in Verona yesterday afternoon, victim of a neo-fascist mob. After he refused to give a cigarette to a skinhead who approached him, five of them, captured by a surveillance camera, punched and kicked him unconscious. And when it emerged that they belong to a neo-fascist fringe group, Italians began asking themselves: is this the first flick of the whip of the new regime, the first taste of what is to come?

The respectable right was quick to insist that the attack was nothing to do with them. "I would be the first to condemn neo-fascist violence if it really existed," shrugged Ignazio La Russa, a senior figure in the post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale (AN), likely to be appointed a minister this week. "A certain amount of violence has always existed in society," cooed another AN leader, Maurizio Gasparri. "To warn of a possible return to a climate of political violence is the umpteenth example of foolishness..."

But the fact is that Italy, which has been defined as a laboratory for bad ideas, has embarked on an alarming new experiment. On the cusp of what may prove to be the worst slump in living memory, the far right is closer to the heart of power than at any time since the fall of Mussolini.

The key players in the new Italian right wear beautiful suits and pastel ties and take to the heights of institutional power like ducks to water. Gianfranco Fini, leader of AN, the man who once eulogised Mussolini as the greatest Italian of the 20th century, has become the maestro of the volte-face: in his speech to parliament last week on taking office as speaker of the chamber of deputies, he was careful to pledge his loyalty to Liberation Day, the day of liberation from Nazi-Fascism. It was another statesman-like gesture by the distinguished-looking character who has been straight man to Berlusconi's clown for the past seven years, and is positioning himself to take over when the clowning has to stop.

Gianni Alemanno, his party colleague who won a stunning victory a week ago to become the mayor of Rome, is youthful- looking and fizzing with energy and sincerity, and tends to fly off the handle when linked in too obvious a manner to the "F" word. How is he to blame if his supporters raise stiff right arms on the steps of Rome's town hall to celebrate his victory? Like Fini, Alemanno has put 15 years of clear blue water between himself and his neo-fascist past. Like Fini, he reaches out warmly to the nation at large. In his acceptance speech he said: "I will be mayor of all the Romans, especially of those who didn't vote for me..."

To renounce the Fascist past, as Fini and his colleagues have done, means to renounce anti-Semitism and militarism and to make it clear that one is very sad about the abuses that occurred in the Mussolini years. But they hang on to an irreducible, core idea, and it is the same idea that impels clean-living young thugs to beat up people who refuse them cigarettes, or who have long hair, or have dark skin, or speak with southern Italian accents. Italian fascism is once again on the rise: The cry is out with the gypsies, in with the police; restore the city to those who possess it >>> By Peter Popham | May 6, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Italy)