NOT ALL FASCISTS ARE FASCIST PIGS

Nicholas Farrell goes drinking with babes

who give Roman salutes and blokes who nurse conspiracy theories

Predappio SHE was just your average blonde bomb- shell until she stood to attention, raised her right arm and did a Roman salute. 'A noi" she said — the fascist equivalent of the Nazi `Sieg hell!' — clicking together the heels of her calf-length, black leather boots.

We were in a bar in the Apennine vil- lage where the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini, was born and is buried. The fas- cist Bethlehem is a very beautiful place not a bit like Hell.

No one batted an eyelid. For a start, the Juventus-Rome football game was on the radio, but Roman salutes are two a penny around here, anyway. You get used to them. Well, you don't, actually. How could you, given the past?

Her name was Barbara and she was wearing a miniskirt which flounced menac- ingly when she brought her heels together. She was drunk. 'You see, Nicola, we Ital- ians are all fascists in our hearts, it's just we can't say so,' she said. Was it the drink talking or was this in vino veritas? A joke maybe? I do not know. A bit of everything prob- ably, drink mostly. But I know a lot of fas- cists. Rather, I know a lot of Italians who call themselves fascists, dead sober. They tend to be great fun, as a matter of fact. Like you and me. They are not at all like the image you no doubt have of your aver- age fascist. It is difficult to define this fas- cism of theirs, just as it is difficult to define the politics of Herr Haider. He has apolo- gised for his remarks about the past. But with fascism the past is always present.

It is against the law to be a fascist in Italy, or to promote fascism. Barbara was guilty of a crime. So, too, is anyone who waves a flag depicting the Celtic Cross the modern fascist emblem — though The Hobbit, a favourite fascist book, is not on the proscribed list, as far as I know.

Fascism is banned. But not post-fascism. The post-fascist party — the Alleanza Nazionale (AN) is the third biggest of Italy's 58 political parties I think that what fascism means these days is strong, clean government, tough on crime, immigration, unions, welfare — just like Haider, or Tony, even.

Naturally, nobody — or almost nobody — is in favour of the abolition of parlia- mentary democracy and the installation of a dictatorship, let alone another Holo- caust. 'Vote for me and I'll gas the Jews and you'll never vote again' is not a slogan that wins widespread support, even among the diehards. Fascism gains ground where democracy is corrupt and inefficient; where democracy is not democratic — as is the case in Italy and Austria.

It is the past that is the problem. The admiration of these fascists for the founder of fascism, Mussolini, cannot be undermined. To them, the Duce did no wrong, only good. Anything bad was not his fault but someone else's. No doubt the 27 per cent of Austrians who voted for Haider. have a similar view of Hitler.

The football was still going strong in the bar. Bored with me as her only witness, Barbara left. 'I want to dance,' she said, stumbling out into the night. 'Dance. Dance. Dance.'

Half-time arrived. So I got talking with the men. No doubt about it, Haider's suc- cess just across the Brenner Pass has rekindled fires in fascist hearts in Predap- plo — both young and old, but especially young. I am surprised at how many young Italians I come across who say that they are fascists and how many old ones who say that they are communists.

Nor has the Haider resignation as party leader done anything to douse the flames. Come on, I said to the men, the game's up now. `Calmi! Ragazzi, calmi!' said Vittorio, a 70-year-old retired farm hand. With his bald head, Vittorio looks like the Duce and actually saw him once. He is the font of wisdom on such things. 'Calmi! It's merely a clever tactical manoeuvre. CALme What is fascism really? I asked. 'Do you have many Jews in London, Nicola?' asked Francesco, aged 54, by way of a reply. Francesco used to fight communists in the streets but now sells clothes, whose prove- nance is unsure, from the back of his car. Well, of course we do, I replied. 'Yes, but are they in positions of power?' So what if they are? I asked. Francesco produced a piece of official paper which revealed the staggering total of VAT he owes, plus the fines, on the Parma ham export business he once owned — 10,641,798,910 lire — £3.5 million give or take a few thousand quid. Presumably, for Francesco, the VAT man is a Jew, like everyone else who wants money from him; someone it's OK to rob, unlike an old lady, on the grounds that the VAT money would only be spent on parasites or else end up in the VAT man's pocket. I wondered why Francesco wasn't in jail but asked instead if he and his friends thought Haider was a fascist, a Nazi or what? 'He's the biggest democrat in Europe,' said Vittorio. Why? I asked. 'He does not fear communism like all the oth- ers. Ask yourself why we in Italy have a post-communist government supported by the communists and no one in Europe says a word against it?' Well? I asked. 'It means `Would you tell my wife we went to the Jeffrey Archer play together?'

that if a government is supported by com- munists that's OK, but if a government is supported by the Right it's not OK.'

In one of those remarks for which he has apologised, Haider once said he admired Hitler for giving the Germans full employment; did they agree with him? Yes. 'Before Hitler there were four million unemployed. He gave everyone a job and, not just that, he guaranteed that if the company didn't pay the wages, the govern- ment did,' said Vittorio.

What did they like most about Haider? `His views on immigration. He wants to establish who they are, if they have work, and if the person who has given them work has also provided them with a house,' said Francesco, 'Those who come to work, fine. Those who come to rob and push drugs, out.'

To Francesco and Vittorio, Haider is merely a 'democrat of the Right'. Certain- ly, he is not anti-Semitic. 'If he was, it would be better,' said Francesco. Why? `The Jews have ruined the world. They lend you money at extortionate interest.' That's the banks isn't it? 'Who runs the banks?' Vittorio said that Hitler, too, was a democrat. 'He represented the wishes of the German people.' Haider has not exactly 'come out' and accused Churchill of being a war criminal up there with Hitler, but when asked for his views on the matter he replied by talk- ing about the British bombing of Dresden in the same breath as the Holocaust. Unlike Haider, Francesco and Vittorio do not beat about the bush. 'Of course, Churchill was a war criminal. He dropped bombs on Dresden killing women and chil- dren when the war was over.' The war wasn't over, I said. 'What about Hiroshima and Nagasaki then? How can you say that wasn't a war crime?' Francesco retorted.

Another bombshell, this one with jet- black hair, Eleonora, a 19-year-old graph- ic-design student, came into the bar. She, too, is a fascist. 'The Left, they are all thieves, all of them,' she explained. 'You try getting a job on a council if you are not a member of their party.' The Left even controlled art, she said. 'At school I am allowed to draw the Devil but the law says I cannot draw the fascio unless it is ironical or critical.' (The fascio is the bundle of sticks with axe head — the traditional emblem of fascism.) To test her credentials, I asked Eleonora to do a Roman salute. She was more than happy to oblige, though her salute was more furtive than Barbara's. She, however, was sober.

Italy, like Austria, is in the front line of immigration from the East. Sixty-two per cent of Italians say immigrants are a prob- lem for law and order, according to an opinion poll last week; 41.6 per cent say they are a threat to jobs and 27.3 per cent that they are a danger to Italy's culture and identity. The leader of the post-fascist party, the AN, has said Mussolini was the greatest statesman of the 20th century. He, unlike Haider, has not withdrawn that remark.

Meanwhile, to rapturous applause, a priest told an AN meeting in Rome at the weekend: 'Soon Muslims will make up 10 to 15 per cent of the population of Italy and threaten the purity of our values. Once they came to plunder our cities, today they have only one thing in mind: to marry Catholic women and convert them to Islam. We must stifle this germ.'

Back to football.