dinsdag 28 juni 2011

The "Master" of Finnish Fascism: Jussi Halla-aho

Jussi Halla-aho is probably the most important and influential Nazi politician and "intellectual" active in Finland today. He got elected into the Finnish parliament in April 2011. Halla-aho's party, the True Finns, received a historical victory in these elections, rising from a small marginal party to the third largest party in Finland.

We have to remind all readers that approximately 80% of Finnish voters did not vote for the True Finns, many Finnish people were and still are deeply shocked and angry about the victory of such a small-minded, xenophobic and bigoted party.

Jussi Halla-aho is a member of Suomen Sisu, an organization that can be called "Nazi-minded", though this is an understatement. Suomen Sisu means something like the "Finnish Fighting Spirit" in English. The name aptly underlines both the nationalism and the violence of the Suomen Sisu ideology.

One of the most important ideological leaders of Suomen Sisu is Esa Taberman, who has been advocating a Nazi revolution and the killing of hundreds of thousands of Finns who are opponents of the Nazi ideology. According to Esa Taberman the immigrants and other minority groups will be killed only after the Finnish non-Nazis have been eliminated.

Jussi Halla-aho has a doctorate in linguistics. His speciality is Old Church Slavonic. He chose to avoid military conscription and chose civil service instead, a choice slightly unusual for a fascist, but he has said that he now regrets that he didn't go into the army.

Currently Halla-aho's hobbies include shooting and he has fantazised in his blog about shooting homosexuals in the head. Halla-aho has not yet shot anybody, but in Finland threats made by owners of firearms are usually taken very seriously after several shooting incidents in the past few years.

Halla-aho has explained that he joined the Suomen Sisu approximately ten years ago after talking with them on their web discussion board. It is well known that the Suomen Sisu board at that time was full of violent and fanatical Nazi propaganda, which makes it hard to believe that anybody could actually "convert" to the Nazi ideology after visiting that discussion board. There are stories about Halla-aho already expressing strong Nazi sentiments as a young high school student.

After converting to the Nazi ideology, Halla-aho started a blog called Scripta. His aim was to rebrand racism as something more modern and moderate. He tried to repackage racism as something called "criticism of immigration", but unfortunately hatred of minority groups always shone through the new packaging he had wrapped his Nazi product into.

The most surprising thing about the Scripta blog is how popular it has been. The fanboys of Halla-aho's rebranded Nazi blog formed a discussion forum called Homma (which would be something like "The Job" in English, apparently the name is a Nazi inside joke based on something the previous generation of Nazi leaders had said or done). The Nazi trolls of Homma actually call Halla-aho their "Master" without any sense of irony, highlighting their need to submit to the will of a strong leader.

Homma has become a big joke as well as a major irritation among the Finnish internet users, since the Nazi trolls crowding on Homma are routinely trolling all discussion boards and threatening people they see as their enemies, such as researchers of immigration issues, journalists writing anything even slightly critical about Halla-aho and just random web users who have expressed an opinion the Homma trolls do not like. In Finnish internet jargon the Homma trolls are called the Hompanzees, a combination of the words Homma and Chimpanzee, highlighting their ability to mindlessly ape the rhetoric of their Master. Hompanzees also get whipped up into a great ape-like rage every time somebody says something even slightly negative about their Master!

The experience of becoming a Hompanzee is like a religious transformation to most of the Halla-aho's fanboys. They have to accept everything Halla-aho has said, after which they start to troll every internet discussion board with the same propagandistic arguments every other Hompanzee is using. Halla-aho is the Messiah, Scripta is the Holy Book, Homma is the Church and the Hompanzees are the faithful believers. Like any true cult leader, Halla-aho also has his tin foil hat side, he believes that Europe will actually experience an apocalyptic collapse due to immigration and that a leftist conspiracy is controlling all of Europe. Some of the most intelligent converts of Halla-aho's religion have already denounced their faith, an experience that has to be quite painful, since the remaining cultists are naturally attacking the former believers with great zeal.

What about the ideology of Halla-aho? It has been shown to be quite flimsy. Mostly he seems to have found his ideas from foreign far right propaganda blogs, the feeling is that he actually doesn't read so many real books, even the ones that are written directly as responses to Halla-aho's own arguments. He seems to be intellectually quite lazy although he is a master propagandist. The ideas expressed by Halla-aho include these eternal gems of the human spirit:

  • Halla-aho thinks that people from Somalia are genetically disposed to steal.
  • Halla-aho says that prophet Muhammad is a pedophile.
  • Halla-aho would like to shoot a homosexual in the head.
  • Halla-aho thinks that humans have no value as such beyond their utility to the society.
  • Halla-aho thinks that the police should shoot demonstrators in the head.
  • Halla-aho would like some Finnish female politicians to be raped.
  • Halla-aho has openly admitted that his goal is incitement against immigrants.
  • Halla-aho thinks that the Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated.
  • Halla-aho has said that the Finnish Ombudsman for Minorities is like Nazi psychopath Oskar Dirlewanger.
  • Halla-aho thinks that the Treaty of Versailles was a legitimate reason for Nazi Germany to start the Second World War.
  • Halla-aho thinks that the Nuremberg war crimes trial was a farce.
  • Halla-aho says that he is ready to commit any atrocity for the sake of his children.
  • Halla-aho believes that an apocalyptic collapse is coming due to immigration.
  • Halla-aho thinks that a leftist conspiracy is controlling Finland.
  • Halla-aho believes that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than the original Finns.
  • Halla-aho has the idea that the minorities are actually oppressing the majority.
  • Halla-aho has called the people from Somalia "human scum from the Horn of Africa".
  • Halla-aho has said that the leader of his party is a "hyysääjäneekerinkullinlutkuttaja". This is something like "an immigrant lover who is always sucking a black dick" in English.
  • Halla-aho has also expressed many pro-gun opinions seemingly directly copied from the National Rifle Association of the USA.
  • Halla-aho has expressed his complete ignorance of the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction by claiming the nuclear weapons on the Western side of the Cold War were purely defensive.
  • Halla-aho has claimed that all terrorists in Europe are Muslims.
  • Halla-aho has said that children in developing countries are better off working in a shoe factory rather than doing nothing.
  • Halla-aho has claimed that African societies will always descend into anarchy without armed white rulers.
It seems like it is very easy to become a leading Nazi intellectual in Finland! Hopefully this highlights the generic lack of thinking on the far right instead of in Finland in general. Naturally all the actual "facts" in Halla-aho's propagandistic writings are proven to be wrong. He never responds to any counter-arguments, the only responses are him making some ad hominem arguments about his opponent or inciting his Hompanzee minions to terrorize and threaten his opponent online. He also claims that he has been misrepresented and that his quotes have been taken out of context every time a journalist asks him if he is serious about what he says in his writings. Sometimes he just denies he has written anything like that, his weirdest writings tend to disappear mysteriously from the internet.

Halla-aho also likes to present himself as a free speech advocate. This means that he himself has to be able to express racist opinions and incitement against minorities, but anybody who dares to critizise Halla-aho or his ideas usually gets threatened by the Hompanzees and sued by Halla-aho himself. The Hompanzee definition of free speech is that they can say anything while everybody else has to shut up.

It really seems like the thinking of Halla-aho is somehow a bit problematic. There are very strange leaps of faith that lead Halla-aho into the realm of insanity. He seems to think that Finland will become an apocalyptic multicultural immigrant hell like the United States of America, unless we completely abandon the system of Western liberalism and human rights and close the borders of our society. Therefore Halla-aho's ideal societies are the closed ones without immigration and human rights, like the Democratic People's Republic North Korea.

Halla-aho somehow wants to defend the Western civilization by destroying the liberal backbone of the Western civilization. Halla-aho doesn't care or understand that there would be no Western civilization remaining without liberal democracy and human rights. Never mind that the most successful and powerful examples of the Western civilization are the countries that are the most liberal, have the most immigration and the most open societies, Halla-aho just wants a closed totalitarian society.

Even with his university degree Halla-aho is strongly against science, since he is always ready to present propaganda as scientific truth. And his fanboys believe him. Somebody should sell them snake oil, they would make very good and loyal customers. It really seems like the whole Halla-ahoist movement is a fringe cult based on some very strange articles of faith, since it is just too easy to see their ideas are very weird and not based on reality at all. Halla-aho is actually trying to destroy the Western civilization.

But the farce gets even worse. For some reason many Finnish voters decided to vote for Halla-aho, when he was a candidate for the True Finns in the April 2011 parliamentary elections. He was the second most popular candidate in the Helsinki voting district, which indicates that there is something extremely badly rotten and smelly in the state of Finland.

Now Halla-aho is the leader of the hardcore Nazi faction within the parliamentary group of the otherwise "merely extremely xenophobic" True Finns party. Other known members of Suomen Sisu in the True Finns parliamentary group include Juho Eerola, James Hirvisaari and Olli Immonen. Juho Eerola has openly expressed his admiration of Benito Mussolini, James Hirvisaari is currently accused of incitement against minority groups and Olli Immonen wants to legalize incitement against minority groups. But racism in True Finns is not in any way limited to the Suomen Sisu members, it has always been the most important part of the party's ideology.

Even more disgusting is the fact that now Halla-aho is the chairman of the administrative council of the Finnish parliament. This makes him the leader of the committee supervising issues such as immigration. So today the Master of the Nazis is the one in charge of the immigration laws!

These are indeed dark days for Finland. The country will never be the same it was before the elections of April 2011, indeed it may now be spiralling to the deepest depths of fascism.

The Battle of Pemberton: ARA vs NSM


The National Socialist Movement (NSM), a group that tries to dance around the fact that they are Nazis while sporting swastikas on their uniforms and sieg heiling, had been planning to host their annual conference along with a rally, redneck horse shoe and band spectacle for several months.
The dates were set for April 15th and 16th in Trenton, New Jersey. Of course we can assume they expected some unhappy spectators at the rally but what they didn't predict was an all out battle that left 4 of their "SS security" force in the hospital with multiple staples. The NSM went through quite a bit of trouble keeping their event and sleeping locations private. This was nothing but a waste of time for the NSM considering the turncoats within their organization leaked the information to anti-fascists weeks in advance.
The 15th came around and a phone jam was put on both the hotel, where 50 or 60 of them stayed for the weekend(the Comfort Inn off 209 in Bordentown, NJ) and their conference location (the 449 club at 6 Pemberton Ave in Pemberton). Just as the conference was about to begin 30 of us took the streets about 2 blocks away and marched in black bloc to the conference location. Within that time several people living and passing through the neighborhood began to stare from the cars and porches as we let them know Nazis were meeting in their town. One person, upon notification, parked his car and joined the bloc immediately, eager to confront the boneheads. By the time we arrived to demonstrate a few nazis from the NSM gathered outside of the conference space but within a few seconds about 30 or 40 of their fully SS uniformed security were out with chairs, thinking they were about to kick some antifa tail. After some exchanged words the NSM walked off the property to engage us. They wanted a brawl...and we defended ourselves successfully.
After a brutal rumble of evenly matched numbers the NSM quickly scurried back to the property with bashed skulls, bruised faces and damaged property, sending 4 boneheads to the hospital (2 of which may still remain there). At this point the cops had shown up and we managed to retreat with one comrade minorly injured and two arrested. It can be assumed that if the conference was not shut down completely, the talking they were doing had nothing to do with rank promotions and five year plans, as it was supposed to. This was the part of the purpose of our demonstration; we are not trying to change their minds or tell them they have been bad little nazi sub-humans. We want to disempower them, leave them in fear and most importantly crush what they are trying to build. Not only did we win the physical battle by a mile, but given the goal at hand, they were completely defeated. The conference was now minimized to a retreating space where the NSM would pout and discuss their defeat. According to some sources not only did some members of the NSM check into a different hotel, spending more money and fearing more attacks, but even the cops were laughing at how bad the nazis were beat and were quoted saying "ARA isn't playing this weekend", but then again, are we ever?
The next day, April 16th, it was time for the downtown rally in Trenton followed by the backyard concert on Jason Heickes' property. Before the NSM showed for their hour long spectacle in which they gained no supporters whatsoever, not only were ARA, the new Black Panthers and other radical groups ready to confront the Nazis but the community itself filled the streets with rage looking to clean house. The NSM was protected by several hundreds of cops, as you can expect, and because of this there really was no physical stand off aside from a few rocks hurled at their busses as they exited the city. This was a second victory for us since they gained absolutely nothing and no one out of the formality while we showed our numbers and that we were more then prepared for another round. After the Nazis left, one of our other enemies in the three way struggle, the cops, moved aggressively to force us out of the city, but not before a few folks smashed some Bank of America windows. These actions show that the rage against the fascists is not based out of a will to preserve the status quo or protect capitalism but rather a will to reclaim what is ours and to smash racism, fascism and all oppression and apparati of control. Since one of the band members from Zyklon b had his head split wide open in the melee and because it was raining we assume the outdoor concert on Heickes' property was at the very least not what they expected bringing. Yet another victory for our side.

Jock Palfreeman

The story of Jock Plafreeman

by Anarchist Solidarity

It’s been three and a half years now since Jock Palfreeman has been imprisoned after saving the lives of two young Roma boys in Bulgaria!

In short Jock ran to the aid of the two boys when he was witness to a vicious and racist attack inflicted on them by around sixteen drunken football hooligans. Jock held them at bay for long enough for the two Roma boys to run away but the group turned on him. Jock was set upon and literally had to fight to save his own life. During the fight one of the group, Andrei Monov, was accidentally killed. Jock was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment and the equivelent of a £250,000 fine! (for the full story please go to www.freejock.com).

Support for Jock has now reached an international level.

Anarchists and Antifascists have started campaigns aound the globe including Australia, UK, Russia, Poland, France, Austria, Greece, and more… Strangely, Bulgaria is not in that list.

Suprised? So were we!

We went to the website of FAB (Bulgarian Anarchist Federation) to see if there was any mention of Jock. To our astonishment we found that not only had the FAB decided not to support Jock, they had decided to go out of thier way to publically condemn him! They claimed that Andrei Monov was thier friend and that Jock was a killer who deserved the maximum prison sentence!

(see the google translation below)

”Federation of Anarchists in Bulgaria condemns any kind of street violence and joined grieving relatives and friends of the slain boy.
Prompt the authorities to fulfill their obligations to conduct a full investigation of the case and the guilty receive fair and appropriate punishment to his grave crime.
Andrei was also a friend and we share the grief of relatives and friends.
Rest in peace, Andrei!”

http://anarchy.bg/novini/novini-ot-bulgaria/496-1-godina-ot-ubijstvoto-na-andrej-monov.html

Not only did this make us rage to the core, it also made us question the FABs idea of Anarchy. Why on earth would people who call themselves Anarchists be in favour of a prison sentence for a man who had taken Antifascist action? And why did they so openly associate themselves with Monov when he had clearly been involved in a savage and outnumbered racist attack on two young Roma boys?

We got in touch with AF (Anarchist Federation UK), FABs sister organisation. We wanted to know if they knew what was going on in regards to the statement on FABs website and also where they stood in regards to supporting Jock.

They emailed us back to say that they would investigate. Infact that was all they said.

Months passed along with more emails from us and all they would say was that they were investigating. Eventually they just stopped replying and we realised that we were wasting our time.

However, a spokesperson for AF did contact a mutual friend and comrade who has also been campaigning for Jock. Firstly they wanted confirmation that AS were a trustworthy and genuine Anarchist group. They were given the confirmation they asked for, but then decided that the word of our comrade was not good enough (an insult to say the least) and rejected the verification.

AF then wrote again to our comrade stating that Jock was a soldier that had been involved in a drunken fight and had killed a friend of the FAB. They claimed that Monov was ”not a Nazi”. They also stated that the only people who claim that Monov was a nazi are the fascists themselves!…

So let us get this straight, (we’ll get to the soldier bit in a minute), Monov, who was out with at least fifteen other (known locally to be fascist) football fans, drunk, and invoved in such a savage racist attack on the two Roma boys, does not qualify as fascist in the opinion of AF or FAB?

The grieving friends of Monov who were at the funeral (alongside members of the Bulgarian government, cheif of police, judges and other ‘important and influental’ people) who are reffered to by the AF and FAB as Bulgarian fascists and the far right are falsely claiming that Monov was their friend?

We don’t get it!!

It beggs the question: What would FAB and AF have to say if it were one of the Roma boys who had been killed that night? Because as far as we can see that is exactly what would have happened if Jock had not run to thier aid.

Would FAB still claim that thier beloved Andrei Monov was thier friend if he had been involved in a savage racist attack resulting in the death of the victim?

We’d like to know! So if any FAB or AF would like to answer our questions feel free. (you’ve got our email address)

Now, the controversial claims about Jock ‘being a soldier’…

Firstly, lets get one thing clear, Jock has never claimed to be an Anarchist, Activist or Antifascist. He was a young lad travelling and making friends.

He decided to join the British Army towards the end of 2007, his visa was coming to an end and he saw it as an opportunity to stay in the UK. He completed four weeks training and then went on leave for christmas. He was on holiday in Bulgaria.

So did we know Jock is a soldier?

Well he’s not! He never completed his training.

Did we know that Jock had joined the British Army in 2007?

Yes we did! And quite frankly we don’t care!! The decisions Jock made before the incident in question do not interest us one bit. As far as we are concerned those decisions are completeley irrelevant to what happened on the night of the 28th December 2007. Jock unfortunately found himself in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and he did the right thing!!

Thats enough for us.

It is abundantly clear that the whole case has been completely manipulated by Monovs father and his high ranking friends, all of the court proceedings to date have been a complete farce, there has been absolutely no sense whatsoever of a fair trial and it is so blindingly obvious that Jock has been completely stitched up!

Jock Palfreeman is an incredibly brave and courageous man who took outstanding Antifascist action and he needs our support.

Which side are you on?

For more info about Jocks case and how you can support him please go to: http://www.abc.net.au/austory/specials/conviction/default.htm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8rLrOW1g1k www.freejock.com www.anarchistsolidarity.wordpress.com

Also you can join the facebook page Freedom For Jock.

Filmpjes!

1. UK:

Skinhead Out! (Channel 4, 1992)

Fighting Talk (AFA; BBC2, 1993)

World in Action- Combat 18 (ITV, 1993)

World of Skinhead (C4, 1995)

Truth Behind the Front (BBC, 1997)

The Lost Race - History of the National Front (BBC, 1999)

Young, Nazi and Proud (Channel 4, 2002)

Naziboy (Russel Brand w/ Mark Collelt) (UK Play, 2002)


Undercover With The BNP (BBC, 2003)

BNP Wives (Sky TV, 2009)

Young, Angry and White (Channel 4, 2009)

Jewish ex-servicemen of Group 43 (The Guardian, 2009)

Hidden London: The Real Battle of Cable Street (2010)

Rise of extremism? (Channel 4, 2010)

When Hate Came to Town (Bradford Documentary on the EDL, 2010)

The Battle for Barking (Channel 4, 2010)

From Cable Street to Brick Lane (Trailer, 2011)

2. International:

Skinheads in 1988 (feat. the original S.H.A.R.P.) (NYC news story)

Ku Klux Klan - A Secret History (History Channel, 1998)

Ross Kemp On Gangs: Orange County (Sky 1, 2006)

Ross Kemp On Gangs: Russia (Sky 1, 2007)

ANTIFA - Chasseurs de skins (2008)

Whatever happened to Arno of White Power band Centurion? (American TV, 2000s)

The Hate Destroyer (Berlin, late 2000s)

Louis and the Nazis (BBC, 2003)

Skinheads USA: Soldiers of the Race War (HBO, 2003)

Baldies to ARA (2003)

Antifascist Attitude (Russian Antifa)(2010)

Talk on History of ARA (2010)

Hardcore is More Than Music (Czech AFA, 2011)

Russian Anti-Racist Skinheads ( Film Trailer, 2011)
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NPD-ers aangepakt

[B] 4 NPD-Funktionäre in 4 Tagen angegriffen

serial mum 26.06.2011 14:58 Themen: Antifa
Antifa schlägt zu. Neonazis schäumen. Polizei tappt offenbar im Dunkeln. Mit dem Landesvorsitzenden Uwe Meenen, dem Kreisverbands-Chef von Neukölln Sebastian Thom und dem Neuköllner BVV-Abgeordneten Jan Sturm bezogen hochrangige Funktionäre der Berliner NPD in den letzten Tagen eine Tracht Prügel. Sie sind zudem auf den vordersten Listenplätzen der NPD bei den kommenden Wahlen im September. Die TäterInnen entkamen in allen Fällen unerkannt.
Die Fakten

Jan Sturm (Mittwoch/ Donnerstag)
In der Nacht von Mittwoch auf Donnerstag wurde Jan Sturm Ziel eines Angriffs. Laut Polizei hatten fünf vermummte und komplett schwarz gekleidete Personen den 46-Jährigen gegen 23 Uhr 15 in der Richardstraße nahe seiner Wohnung zunächst vom Fahrrad gestoßen und anschließend mit Stöcken auf ihn eingeprügelt. Welt-Online wusste zu berichten, dass Sturm hierbei als "Nazi" beleidigt(!) wurde. Sturm erlitt laut der extrem rechten Jungen Freiheit "multiple Platzwunden und zahlreiche schwere Prellungen". Er hatte der Polizei zunächst mitgeteilt, selbst einen Arzt aufsuchen zu wollen. Zeugen beobachteten den Vorfall. Die Polizei nahm Ermittlungen wegen gefährlicher Körperverletzung und Beleidigung auf.

NPD-Wahlhelfer in Friedenau (Freitag)
Ein Wahlhelfer der NPD wurde Freitag Mittag in Friedenau von einem einzelnen Unbekannten angegriffen und seiner Wahlunterlagen beraubt. Der Mann beleidigte den 56-Jährigen laut Polizei gegen 12 Uhr in der Lauterstraße, riss ihm anschließend sein Unterschriftenbrett mit den Unterlagen aus den Händen und flüchtete über die Schmargendorfer Straße in unbekannte Richtung. Der NPDler wurde nicht verletzt.

Sebastian Thom (Samstag)
Am Samstag Vormittag wurde gegen 10 Uhr 30 dann Sebastian Thom im Horst-Caspar-Steig (Gropiusstadt) beim Verteilen von NPD-Wahlflyern niedergeschlagen. Als er am Boden lag, sollen die fünf bis sechs mit Sonnenbrillen und schwarzen Tüchern vermummten Täter - laut Polizei - so lange auf Thom eingeprügelt und getreten haben, bis sich Anwohner beschwerten. Der 24-Jährige erlitt Prellungen und Schürfwunden. Die Täter sollen schließlich einen Beutel mit Wahlpropaganda der NPD mitgenommen haben.

Uwe Meenen (Samstag)
Ebenfalls am Samstag traf es dann den Landeschef der NPD. Uwe Meenen war laut Polizei auf dem Weg zu einer NPD-Veranstaltung im Rathaus Treptow, als ihn fünf vermummte Angreifer darunter eine Frau gegen 12:30 auf der Bösebrücke am S-Bahnhof Bornholmer Straße in Prenzlauer Berg von hinten attackierten und ihm Schläge in den Nacken versetzten. Als er zu Boden ging, sei er getreten worden. Die Täter entwendeten zudem ein Buch [?] und sprühten ihrem Opfer Reizgas in die Augen. Meenen erlitt Prellungen und wurde in einer Klinik ambulant versorgt. Er verpasste daher als Landeschef die Vorstellung des Landeswahlprogramms seiner Partei.

...to be continued?


Reaktionen der Neonazis

Bereits nach der ersten Attacke übertrafen sich verschiedene NPDler mit haarsträubenden Übertreibungen und (versteckten) Drohungen. Jan Sturm selbst sah sich als Opfer eines "Mordanschlags", den er nur knapp überlebt habe. Sein Beleg: die ihm zufolge 8 TäterInnen führten Waffen, wie "Rund- bzw. Kanthölzer" mit sich, als sie ihm den Hinterhalt legten und ihn von seinem "Bergfahrrad" (= Mountainbike) rissen. Sein Parteikollege Stefan Lux stimmte ähnlich schrille Töne an und keifte im Internet von "anarchobolschewistischen Linksextremisten", die für ihren "Mordanschlag" eine "kriminelle oder gar eine terroristische Vereinigung" gebildet hätten. Der NPD-Bundeschef Udo Voigt rief öffentlich zur "Bildung von Schutzmannschaften" auf. Selbst in Neonazi-Internetforen mehrten sich dann aber schnell die Stimmen, die in dem Angriff nur eine "Lektion" für Jan Sturm erkannt haben wollen, bei der selbstverständlich keine Tötungsabsicht vorgelegen habe. Von Jan Sturm ist bekannt, dass er sich in der Vergangenheit oft vor seinen "Kameraden" und teilweise auch vor der Öffentlichkeit damit brüstete, schon mehrfach - angeblich in Notwehr - politische Gegner geschlagen zu haben.

Auch Sebastian Thom sah sich laut einer Darstellung auf einem Neonazi-Infoportal mit "8 linksterroristischen Auftragsmördern des Systems" konfrontiert, wobei er sich "nur leicht verletzt [...] absetzen" konnte. Thom war in den vergangenen Jahren mit einer Vielzahl von Übergriffen aufgefallen. Unter anderem beschoss er 2006 einen Stand der Partei "Die Linke" in Rudow mit Signalmunition. Zudem attakierte er in Rudow erfolglos einen Polizisten, der ihn zu Neujahr in flagranti beim Hakenkreuze-Sprühen erwischt hatte. Für die Taten erhielt er ein mildes Urteil.

Eine sehr bemerkenswerte Reaktion auf den Angriff auf Uwe Meenen findet sich in einem bekannten Neonazi-Internetforum. Ein User veröfentlichte eine Nachricht aus dem internen Verteiler des "NW Berlin". Da sich die "Kette der feigen bolschewistischen Überfälle" weiter fortgesetzt habe und nun auch Meenen betroffen sei, gelte es, den "Terror der Roten" zu brechen. Es folgt der Hinweis: "Linke Lokalitäten sind auf der Berliner Widerstandsseite zu finden", angeschlossen mit der Auforderung: "Bewegt euren Arsch!". Meenen gilt als radikal und als selbst für einen heutigen NPD-Neonazi besonders antisemitisch. Er war vor einiger Zeit aus Bayern nach Berlin gekommen, um die Führung der Berliner NPD zu übernehmen. Unlängst hatte Meenen einen provokanten Wahlkampf für die Wahlen im September angekündigt, der bei Verzicht auf Bürgernähe in erster Linie vorhandene Sympathisant/innen ansprechen solle.


Spekulationen der Presse und über Kreuzberg

Während Spiegel-Online einigermassen an den Fakten orientiert von einer "Serie von Angriffen" schreibt und Neukölln als "gefährliches Pflaster für rechtsextreme Politiker" bezeichnet (und dabei Prenzlauer Berg (Meenen) vergisst), ergehen sich andere Medien bereits in weitergehenden Andeutungen und Spekulationen. So findet es "Endstation Rechts" "auffällig", dass es sich "jeweils um eine Gruppe von fünf bis sechs Personen gehandelt hat, die zudem immer dunkel gekleidet und vermummt auftraten". Es habe sich um "geplante Aktionen" gehandelt, womit offenbar von "Endstation Rechts" eine Serientäter-These in den Raum gestellt werden soll. Charmant klingt das, dürfte aber wahrscheinlich an der Realität vorbeigehen.

Eine Verbindung zum verhinderten Neonazi-Aufmarsch in Kreuzberg am 14.05.11, bei dem ein Dutzend Neonazis auf 4 sitzende Gegendemonstrant/innen eintraten, wird bislang nur vereinzelt von den Neonazis in ihren Internetforen gezogen. In Medienbeiträgen war damals immerhin spekuliert worden, dass die Kreuzberger/innen zur in den Medien "Selbstjustiz" genannten antifaschistischen Selbsthilfe greifen könnten, da das Vertrauen in die Polizei auf einem neuerlichen Tiefpunkt angelangt sei. Die Demo war von Neonazis und Polizei gemeinsam und heimlich vorbereitet worden. Eine Strafverfolgung gegenüber den Neonazis war bzw. ist nicht erkennbar.
Der NPD-Landesvize Sebastian Schmidtke hatte die Demonstration angemeldet. Sebastian Thom übernahm organisatorische Funktionen und auch Jan Sturm war im Lautsprecherwagen vor Ort. Im Nachhinein verhöhnte Sturm die Opfer der Neonazi-Attacken, indem er in einer "Richtigstellung" auf den NPD Webseiten behauptete, die Neonazischläger hätten sich gegenüber den Sitzenden "in einer Notwehrlage" befunden. Und: "die Demonstranten [=Nazis] begannen selbst die Wegstrecke zu räumen", weil die Polizei angeblich "keine Anstalten machte, gegen die ersten Blockierer vorzugehen". Auch Meenen stellte sich im nachhinein öffentlich hinter die Demoanmeldung seines Vize, dem seiner Ansicht nach "nichts vorzuwerfen" sei.

Ob die Verbindung zwischen Kreuzberg und den Aktionen aber tatsächlich zu ziehen ist, ist vorläufig so unklar wie die Frage, ob weitere Aktionen dieser Art in den nächsten Tagen zu erwarten sind.
Eine Botschaft dieser Denkzettel an die Neonazis dürfte hingegen glasklar sein: Wer auch immer denkt, er habe als Nazi eine Perspektive im Parlament oder auf der Strasse, muss mit ernsten Konsequenzen rechnen. Das dürfte auch bei den jüngeren, noch unbedeutenden Neonazis ankommen. So manch einer wird sich fragen: Wer wird der nächste sein? Und das unangeneme aber richtige Gefühl im Bauch, dass es immer und überall passieren kann, schränkt den politischen und persönlichen Spielraum ein und zehrt an den Nerven, demoralisiert und macht das Nazisein unattrakiver. Das ist wohl in jedem Fall ein positiver Effekt.



NPD-Demoversuch in Kreuzberg
http://antifa-berlin.de/fight-back/kreuzberg.html
http://antifa-berlin.de/fight-back/know.htm

Presselinks (unvollständig):
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,770580,00.html
http://endstation-rechts.de/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=6306:uwe-meenen&Itemid=387
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/polizei-justiz/npd-landeschef-von-vermummten-niedergeschlagen/4324324.html
http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/polizeibericht/article1682512/Erneut-NPD-Abgeordnetenhaus-Kandidat-verpruegelt.html

Polizei-Pressemitteilungen:
Uwe Meenen: http://www.berlin.de/polizei/presse-fahndung/archiv/349273/index.html
Sebastian Thom: http://www.berlin.de/polizei/presse-fahndung/archiv/349249/index.html
Jan Sturm: http://www.berlin.de/polizei/presse-fahndung/archiv/348998/index.html
NPD-Wahlhelfer: http://www.berlin.de/polizei/presse-fahndung/archiv/349164/index.html

Casa Pound and the New Radical Right in Italy


tBlocco Studentesco during scuffles in Piazza Navona, Rome, 2008.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that a group of zine-publishing techie squatters into rock music, baiting the state and defending the working class were part of the anarchist left. But, writes the Moyote Project, Italy's Casa Pound movement is symptomatic of the radical right's growing ability to assimilate progressive agendas into a toxic and populist political brew.

In 1973 the Italian neo-fascist group Nuova Destra (New Right) started publishing the DIY fanzine The Voice from the Sewer, as an ironic response to the left-wing slogan that incited (neo)fascists to return to the only place that they possibly could have emerged from. Yet now, more than 25 years on, it appears as if the fragmented, contradictory and unrepentant universe of the Italian radical right has crawled out of the sewer and entered the public sphere with its head held high. Armed with new tactics, a rousing new vocabulary and a rehash of old ideologies - and making use of the latest in graphic design - it has carved out for itself a space which is precariously balanced between the street and the various state institutions and are achieving pernicious success in both arenas. It labels itself the non-conforme right and ‘third millennium fascists'1. Its recent successes and new found abilities in interpreting the moods and swings of our times suggest that its recent, surprising re-emergence cannot be filed away as something symptomatic ,merely, of an appearance of detritus from the past. A closer look at its tactics, ideological baggage and at the role it plays in contemporary Italy is now more than warranted.

Casa Pound

Quote:
Casa Pound screams:

Man needs to be liberated.
The market kills the soul.
The law of profit sweeps away all obstructions that come in its way.
Workers, peoples, communities.
Love, joy, sacrifice and diversity. Destroyed.

- Casa Pound, ‘Who We Are'2

One of the most important and innovative configurations within the radical right galaxy is undoubtedly represented by the movement known by the name of Casa Pound (CP). Our choice to concentrate on this particular epiphenomenon stems from the fact that Casa Pound and its peculiar characteristics represent an important turning point in the Italian neo-fascist historical landscape. More fundamentally, an analysis of this particular social movement can act as a magnifying glass that will allow us to focus on the development of the radical right, the birth of a ‘plural right' and the political and social circumstances that favoured their contemporary rise in Italy.

Casa Pound was born in 2003 from the occupation of a state-owned building in the central and multicultural neighbourhood of Esquilino in Rome, by a group linked to the radical right milieu in the capital. The occupation was termed an OSA occupation (A Scopo Abitativo, ‘for living purposes'), in that a number of families were housed in the building. Besides being a residential squat, Casa Pound also became the base for the activities of the growing movement, and its symbolic locus. More occupations followed, some of them were OSAs and some were born as ONCs (Occupazioni Non Conformi - ‘occupations that do not conform'). The latter ones were conceived as social spaces that were to be open to the public, as spaces for the dissemination of culture, community and sports activities. This, we could observe, mimicked the function and style of left-wing social centres. Their main purpose has always been the creation of a sense of community, the strengthening of collective social ties and the forging of diverse connections within their specific localities. Casa Pound members were in effect reclaiming the normally left-wing activity of squatting and on their web site they announced: ‘the reactionary stereotype that defines the occupation of empty buildings as an exclusive practice of the left is forever shattered.'3

And thus, after establishing itself and taking root in the capital, CP developed as a national organisation and then proceeded to branch out into numerous cities in the country. It opened spaces (both occupied and not) and established for itself a growing platform for political manoeuvring. It now possesses significant political weight in Northern Italy throughout parts of that region which have been characterised by a strong right-wing tradition such as Verona and Milan. Nonetheless its presence in the South is also becoming very significant (Catania and Naples are just two cities where the CP's presence is substantial).

However, the first occupations in Rome have remained the most significant ones in terms of their duration and rootedness. One important characteristic of the ONCs is that they have emerged from a desire for a space of collective sociality and cultural production, rather than from an explicitly political and ideological drive. The musical scene that developed around the band ZetaZeroAlfa (ZZA) was absolutely central in this process, acting as a catalyst for the emergence of the movement. ZZA's lead singer and frontman is Casa Pound's charismatic leader, Gianluca Iannone. He has long been a major figure in the radical right political scene in Rome and is known to be close to names involved in the ‘black terrorism' season of the '70s. This musical scene has helped Casa Pound widen and strengthen its social base; it provides the important link between the subcultural dimension of a youth experience that finds its raison d'être in a generically rebellious and anti-conformist identity, and the experiences of a more ideologically defined political militancy.

The ‘metapolitical', or pre-political dimension connected to musical expression, to culture and to the development of a collective imagination, is key to CP's ability to fascinate and attract the attention of a growing number of young people. The ONCs host gigs, collective dinners, book presentations, cultural events; they organise mountain excursions and talks about ethnic minorities whose struggles garner popular support (Palestine has been one such example, but the Karen people have also been given attention). In Centri Sociali di Destra, Di Tullio says that,

The occupations of the radical right represent a new synthesis between metapolitical drives and a different approach to non-party politics; ones that are less unrealistically projected towards ideologies and closer to the everyday lived realities of the vast majority of people4.

Despite playing an absolutely key role in the constitution of new right-wing social formations, an appreciation for the metapolitical is nonetheless strongly supported by a political and ideological dimension that - behind the innovative communication strategies and the language used - is in direct relation to themes and issues typical of the anti-bourgeois and state-critical Social Right, the roots of which may be found in Mussolini's first theorisations and then re-emerging more explicitly in the experience of the Italian Social Republic of Salò (RSI, 1943-1945), as will be seen in more detail below.

The political issues that Casa Pound engages with through its educational events and political actions cohere around a few strong themes. These include the right to ownership of housing, struggles against the rising cost of living and the defence of the traditional family (which is understood as the basic unit of the nation). They have included the dissemination of revisionist theories, the critique of usury derived from the work of Ezra Pound and the study of historical and intellectual figures linked to or associated with the Social Right (such as Julius Evola, Alessandro Pavolini, and J.R.R. Tolkien)5. The range of intellectual influences also includes the recuperation of figures traditionally associated with left-wing culture with the most obvious example of this tendency being the appropriation of the work of Che Guevara. All of this is set against an ideological backdrop which is rife with anti-capitalist and anti-statist tendencies, which include the refusal of neoliberal worldviews and the defence of workers' rights (although understood to be limited to a nationalist frame of reference).

The main campaign on which CP has concentrated its efforts concerns the issue of the right to housing and the proposal for a ‘social mortgage'. Through direct actions coordinated at a national level, CP has tried to bring into existence a housing policy that would guarantee all ‘white' Italian workers the right to own a property. They have proposed a bill - which the coalition in power is in part considering implementing - that would guarantee access to a ‘social mortgage' for the purchase at cost price of a property managed by a public institution. The actions that have accompanied this campaign, which were of a symbolic and spectacular nature, have ranged from the hanging of mannequins to represent the Italian families strangled by mortgages, to an invasion of the Italian Big Brother set, which is seen as ‘an insult to all those Italians who are victims of the housing crisis'. CP's decision to use occupation as a tool has to be read in conjunction with this struggle for the ‘social mortgage', as an ideological stance and active political response to the difficulty of accessing affordable housing for a large section of the population. There has been a clear choice to concentrate on issues that have the potential to engage the poorest non-migrant sections of society and that have the potential to cary the most potent social charge. These choices represent a continuity in ideals with the tradition of the historical Social Right, but if they are seen in conjunction with the parallel attempt at obtaining political legitimacy, they should also be interpreted as symptoms of a fundamental break with the dynamics that the radical right has been part of since the post-war years. It is necessary to look at this historical conjuncture in a more detailed way so that we can appreciate the nature of the shifts now taking place in Italy.

Post-Fascism 1946-1995: Guaranteeing Order or Waiting for the Wind of Revolution?

The period we will take into consideration in order to summarise the history of neo-fascism - 1946-1995 - has been chosen because it represents the date of birth and of death of the main radical right-wing, Italian political party: the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI - Italian Social Movement). At the end of the Second World War, Italy, still lacerated by the bloody wounds of the fascist barbarity and the Nazi invasion, witnessed the formation of this collective political subject that positioned itself in radical continuity with the ideals of the defeated fascism. The MSI recuperated a so called ‘social version' of fascists, which had been incarnated in the Italian Social Republic of Salò. One of the main ideological reference points of this political strand was this republic's Verona Charter of 1943, which in its 18 points called for an absolutist fascist state to be founded on a corporatist model of labour relations where workers would have a stake in the profits of production, creating a cross class unity and a dissolution of class conflict. It championed land redistribution and a highly regulated version of private property relations permeated through and through by various anti-capitalist tendencies - whilst guaranteeing the individual's right to ownership of a private home.

The main objective of the MSI in the immediate post-war years was to offer a comprehensive ideological worldview and a refuge for all the defeated fascists who did not want to leave the ideals of the dictatorship behind. The party thus naturally became the central hub of the Italian far right, and local party offices opened their doors to different groups of camerati, despite the fact that in their midst a myriad of neo-fascist currents and groups developed. Some of these groups were extremely distant from and even in direct contradiction with official party lines. The post-war Italian landscape relegated fascists to a marginal and isolated position - although this was true more on a social than on a political level. And it was this fact that pushed so many right-wingers into embracing previously denigrated forms of what had once been thought to be specifically ‘radical forms' of political activism, as well as to engage in their own conspiratorial plots for coups and ‘revolutionary plans'.

It has to be pointed out that the internal and international dynamics of Italian political life of the post-war years were extremely complex: Italy was a member of NATO and occupied a strategic position on what might be described as a kind of European political chess board, and it was also home to the strongest and most organised Communist Party (PCI) in the western world. Many, and in particular the USA, had observed the internal Italian social and political situation with growing apprehension given the then international political uncertainty. In this condition of strong social tension and definite class polarisation, neo-fascism can be seen to have taken on a central and ambiguous role. The various groups (some of them armed and terrorist) were ferociously anti-communist and were to became the bloody executors of a strategy of tension that aimed to create chaos precisely in order to guarantee order. The intent was to provoke an anti-communist and authoritarian political strategy by carrying out acts of destabilisation (which were orchestrated in such a way that their political adversaries would be held responsible for them)6. Although these politics of dissimulation and deception were quite forcefully put into play, they were not lauded by some sectors of the radical neo-fascist scene who did not wish to be forced to go along with their prescribed role of being agents for both the Italian state apparatus, its intelligence service and their respective conspiratorial policies.

Although these groups did essentially agree with the strong anti-communist ideology of the Italian State and intelligence service, they also manifested their own anti-American worldview, embracing anti-imperialism and opposing themselves to the prevailing image of American society as paradigmatically individualistic and composed of a vast array of alienated subjects. This was theorised by Julius Evola, who became known as the neo-fascist ‘black baron'.

These currents started developing a practice of actions that would work against the system and not for its ultimate defence. One of the main formations that emerged was Terza Posizione (TP - Third Position), a name that refers to the incompatibility of their ideological worldview with both communism and capitalism, and was summarised in their slogan ‘neither red front, nor reaction'. TP configured itself as a ‘subversive' group holding to national-socialist and anti-bourgeois positions.

Terza Posizione's practices were influenced by the cultural and political climate of the time, and by a certain contradictory fascination with left-wing movements. This fascination had manifested itself since 1968 - with the presence, for example, of Nazi-Maoist and Guevaraist groups within the Law Faculty in Rome. The expulsion of the trade unionist Luciano Lama from the capital's Sapienza University had been admired by the neo-fascists who, while continuing with their attacks on ‘comrades' for the territorial conquest of the streets, had on more than one occasion pushed for an ‘overcoming of the differences' in an attempt to create a bipartisan convergence of the different-sided political factions against the real enemy: the State7.

One important aspect of all this is that - especially between the '60s and '80s - neo-fascist militancy was characterised by a strongly minoritarian and ghettoised social and political position, with groups entrenched in the MSI offices. One of the novel elements of groups like Terza Posizione was their determined attempt to leave the ghetto behind and become involved in the realm of social struggles. A seminal experience in this sense was TP's struggle in the working class and communist neighbourhood of Palamarola in Rome to support the regularisation of extra-legal housing erected by local residents8.

These centrifugal tendencies within MSI that have gravitated towards a ‘social and anti-statist neo-fascism', have clashed for years with much more pragmatic currents within the party - the ones that have envisaged institutional politics as the route to be taken towards a reconquest of the ‘unpresentability' of neo-fascist understanding and action. The statist current was the one that eventually lead the party to its dissolution in Fiuggi in 1995, and that became responsible for a new ‘post-fascism' that is incarnated in the ‘respectable' and ‘democratic' party Allenaza Nazionale (AN - National Alliance). The initial motivating desires and the radical tendencies of the previous social fascism are not erased in their recent emergence though. On the contrary, from that moment on, they have had to find other forms of expression. It is in the cultural and political climate of the last ten years that these tendencies have found fertile soil for their own rapid proliferation and for their frightening and often successful attempts to establish a national consensus that is germane to their very interests.

From the Right to the ‘Plural Right'

These more radical inclinations and tendencies have found a space to grow in the processes that led to the affirmation of a cultural hegemony of the right in Italy. Since the profound crisis of institutional politics - which erupted with the corruption inquests in the early '90s commonly known as Tangentopoli (literally, ‘Bribesville') - the right in Italy has experienced not only an overwhelming electoral success, but it is also said to have become culturally hegemonic in new ways. The ability to intercept and interpret the changing political, social and economic dynamics at play in the country and the imposition of an ubiquitous racist, identitarian and reactionary order of discourse as a way of explaining these dynamics, has been the foundation on which this hegemony has been built.

The capacity to understand the new subjectivities that have emerged out of the restructuring of the system of production over the last 20 years, and the construction of the category of the ‘illegal migrant', have been instrumental in this process. The fears that have grown among the working class as a result of widening social inequality and rising generalised insecurity have been given a voice. At the same time, the right has been able to harness the support of the new categories of workers that have emerged, specifically those that have been described as ‘second generation autonomous workers', an expression that refers to the growing class of precarious and flexible workers specific to the post-Fordist productive landscape9.

At the same time, the institutional right has undergone a process that led to its redefinition as a ‘plural right' - a synthesis was created that allowed different political cultures, which were at times openly at odds with each other, to coexist within the same coalition. According to Caldiron - one of the major analysts of the right in Italy - this process has taken place on two separate levels, one political and one cultural. On a political level this synthesis is incarnated in the figure of Berlusconi who has acted as a catalyst for the successful mediation between divergent tendencies within the right. Berlusconi's populist ability has been to bring into politics the particular and peculiar power of television to create dreams and lifestyles. On a cultural level the right can be said to have acted as an ‘entrepreneur of fear'. It has done so by determining all public debate and inscribing it within the categories of territory, identity and community. This is articulated and produced as a state of emergency, whilst the anxious refrain of the ‘migrant invasion' is constantly reiterated.

It is in this recomposition of the right that phenomena such as Casa Pound find space and legitimacy, albeit in an ambiguous fashion. In the cultural and political milieu defined as the ‘plural right' the traditional role of neo-fascist militant youth groups has mutated. They tend to adopt a strategy of entrismo, that is, they are given the possibility of gaining a certain degree of legitimacy and of influencing institutional matters whilst preserving their outsider status. In practice - and this is true especially at the local level - the relationships between the radical right and the right-wing parties in power are becoming closer. Representatives from groups of the radical right appear in the electoral lists of the ruling party, Popolo della Libertà (PdL - People's Freedom), the party that embodies the spirit of the ‘plural right'. Each side is, at times and in fractured ways, instrumental to the other: the radical right gains legitimacy and space for movement in the relation to other political parties - PdL but also Lega Nord (Northern League), the federalist party that seeks independence for the North of Italy. The ruling parties find Casa Pound's extreme stances useful to push the level of the political debate even further around social control, whilst at the same time widening their electoral and non-electoral reach. Nonetheless the relationship is and remains an ambiguous one, with no stable and univocal connections.

A paradigmatic case that exemplifies this complex relationship can be found in the recent revolt of Rosarno (Calabria), an event that dominated news headlines in January 2010. After the umpteenth episode of violence suffered at the hands of the local population, the migrant workers employed in Rosarno's orange harvest demonstrated and rioted against the inhumane treatment they are subjected to on a daily basis. The casus belli for the riot was the shooting and wounding of two migrant workers. The riot was followed by episodes reminiscent of a pogrom, with local Italian residents relentlessly attacking the migrant workers. The reaction to the events has been a generic condemnation of all ‘violence', where the shots fired at the migrants and the riots were made equivalent. The ‘social contradictions' that emerged from the events were minimised and reduced to public order and security issues. The ultimate responsibility for these contradictions was attributed to the migrants, who were once again criminalised and depicted as a new dangerous class.

In the days after the revolt, a Casa Pound delegation visited Rosarno to show its solidarity with the local Italian residents who had been accused of racism by the foreign press. The communiqué circulated by CP on this occasion expressed solidarity with the ‘indigenous' residents on the basis of their assumed ‘Italian-ness', whilst at the same time it asked for state intervention to punish the exploiters of the cheap and mostly foreign labour force. In the heated climate of those tense days, few other right-wing groups could have shifted the focus of the debate towards identitary positions, bordering on ‘blood and soil', in such an unabashed fashion, whilst at the same time managing to express their presumed proximity to the workers through the denunciation of the exploiters. The Government's response was to intervene with a heavy police presence, repression and mass deportations, whilst Berlusconi's official declarations presented the issues in a heavily racist frame in which illegal migration and criminality were equated.

One of the most controversial aspects of Casa Pound's ideology that emerges is their supposed ‘anti-capitalist' sentiment, based on a critique of workers' exploitation and of the commodification of all life, whilst at the same time proposing a corporatist model based on the collaboration between workers and bosses in the name of the supreme good of the nation. What remains to be considered is to what extent CP's actions can influence governmental decisions, and, more importantly, to what extent they are forging an attitude that is ‘rebellious' and that can be integrated in the novel and rampant common sense of the plural right.

Metapolitical Activism: Being ‘Third Millennium Fascists'

Quote:
Extraordinary action, when necessary.

Force the media to momentarily forget about the gossip, forget about the useless soporific chatter of the parliamentary class.

- Casa Pound, ‘Political Activity'10

One of Casa Pound's major accomplishments has been the ability to recompose the fragmented universe of the radical right. In the contemporary political and cultural context, where racist notions are largely tolerated and the identification with the nation to the exclusion of foreigners is endemic, CP has sought legitimacy at different levels, both on the ‘street' and in the world of media and politics, by putting itself forward as a credible interlocutor on social issues. Casa Pound members define themselves as ‘third millennium fascists', thereby underlining an ideal continuity with the past, and at the same time signalling their capacity to interpret and intervene in the present.

One of the challenges that Casa Pound has taken on has been to become an attractive collective subject for a universe of young right-wing activists involved in other groups or tired of the moderation of the mainstream party, Allenanza Nazionale. But it has also become a convergence point for many ‘street and stadium gangs' who are close to Nazi/skin groups and to right-wing football supporters11. Casa Pound has grown in numbers thanks to its attempts to project a radical image coupled with the attempt to gain political legitimacy. After much effort Casa Pound has gained a considerable following among high school students, particularly in Rome and Verona. This has led to the emergence of the Casa Pound student branch, Blocco Studentesco (BS - Student Block), an important reservoir of activists and supporters. The establishment of student groups in high schools has been an unachieved aim of the extreme right since the student movements of '68 and '77; so this success is notable.

The episode known as ‘the Piazza Navona clashes' is a clear example of how the strategy of searching for a parallel legitimisation is implemented. In October 2008, members of Blocco Studentesco attempted to place themselves at the head of a massive student demonstration in Piazza Navona, Rome. The slogan used on the day was ‘neither red nor black, only free thought', a slogan which contains an ideological legacy from Terza Posizione. A scuffle ensued, and the student demonstrators made an attempt at pushing the fascists out of the square. The reaction of the Blocco was organised and prompt. Armed with batons covered in Italian flags, they proceeded to defend themselves and attacked their adversaries. Subsequently Blocco Studentesco tried, with moderate success, to pass themselves off as the victim of barbaric anti-fascist aggression in the media's narrative of the events. What emerges is, on one side, the desire to project an image of the militants as courageous street warriors - an important symbolic message for both the militants and for their opponents. At the same time the events were clearly orchestrated in such a way that the media and the political world would condemn the ‘aggression' against Blocco Studentesco on the grounds of the student demonstrators' supposed ‘anti-fascist bias'. As the attempt to discredit anti-fascist history and action has been a long term project on the part of the entire right-wing spectrum, the Piazza Navona events also helped further this effort.

These events are also significant as they reveal the attention that CP pays to the media and the ability it has to use mainstream media mechanisms to its own advantage. Nonetheless it is in the sphere of self-produced media that more innovative approaches emerge. The political legitimation game and the effort to expand the consensus is thus not played out on the street alone. The investment into creating a cultural universe that could potentially have a profound impact is very strong. One online radio and one online TV station (Radio Bandiera Nera and Tortuga TV), two magazines, one regularly updated website and a myriad of satellite websites, are an impressive numbers of outlets for a movement such as CP, and they certainly reveal how important communication is considered to be. They also reveal a desire to project an image of a movement that is very much alive, that intervenes in contemporary events, that is active, and that comments and debates, as it did during the Rosarno crisis.

From a stylistic point of view, their media present a solid homogeneity and a carefully designed graphic aspect - capital letters strictly in Verdana font are coupled with intense but limited colours, red/black/white. The language used is vivid and engaging, and it is mainly based on slogans, incitements and abstract concepts rather than on articulated ideological positions, and at times it manifests an unexpectedly ironic streak. As mentioned above, music is absolutely central and helps in the creation of a common identity on which much of CP's appeal is based. One of their ideological pillars remains the cult of the fight, of physical confrontation and of the discipline of the body which, in conjunction with a rebellious approach and anti-conformism, attract younger activists. Many of the milieu's activities focus on the creation of a shared cultural and moral universe in which activists can invest the totality of their lives. The sense of the creation of a community is absolutely central. It is a community that recognises itself in a common identity, one based on a shared lifestyle, on an ethical model, in a national culture. In this sense CP is actively trying to create communitarian responses to drives and needs, both material and immaterial, that do not find answers elsewhere, such as the need for housing, social life, security and a collective identity.

We envisage that in the near future Casa Pound will develop from a movement to a more organised structure and will attempt to take part in electoral democracy as an independent entity. How this experiment will turn out is not of central importance nor does it concern us too deeply - what is of greater interest and what will leave a longer lasting legacy will have more to do with CP's creation of a permanent sense of fear and alarm, and its skill at providing solutions based on identitarian politics.

Moyote Project are Franco Berteni, Denis Giordano and Caterina Sartori. They spend their time between the deepest North Italian provinces, London and Paris. They manage to survive precariously by typing, researching, filming, sending pensioners to the tropics, serving drinks and answering the phone in no particular order.

  • 1. ‘Destra non conforme' is the term that the new radical right uses to define itself, in an attempt to distance itself from party politics and traditional neo-fascist ways of organising. Literally the term means ‘right that refuses to conform'. Since it does not translate well, we will use the term ‘radical right' throughout the article.
  • 2. See http://casapounditalia. org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=35&Itemid=60 libcom admin: link broken to hostile website.
  • 3. Ibid.
  • 4. D. Di Tullio, Centri Sociali di Destra. Occupazioni e Culture Non Conformi, Rome: Castelvecchi, 2006, p.34.
  • 5. Tolkien has been historically appropriated by the right in Italy and inserted into its ideological pantheon.
  • 6. ‘Strategy of tension' refers to the co-ordinated attempt to destabilise the country through a series of terrorist massacres known as stragismo, the first episode of which was the bomb at Piazza Fontana on 12 December 1969, and continued with numerous bloody episodes, including the bomb at Bologna railway station on 2 August 1980. Despite the fact that the material responsibility of neo-fascists has been proven, these attacks remain largely unpunished and full light has not yet been shed on those who mandated them.
  • 7. The incident of Lama's expulsion occurred in Rome when, on 16 February 1977, the secretary of the trade union CGIL wanted to rally in the occupied university. The student movement and the ‘autonomia' had been critical of CGIL and PCI for some time, and saw the rally as a provocation. After scuffles between the union's security and the movement, Lama was famously chased out of the university by students.
  • 8. See G. Adolfi and R. Fiore, Noi Terza Posizione, Roma: Settimo Sigillo, 2000.
  • 9. See S. Bologna and A. Fumagalli, Lavoro Autonomo di Seconda Genrazione, Rome: Feltrinelli, 1997.
  • 10. http://casapounditalia .org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69&Itemid=90 libcom admin: link to hostile website broken.
  • 11. See V. Marchi, La Sindrome di Andy Capp. C