Reflections of a stormy petrel

The past does not die very fast. For decades now, the heirs and sympathizers of Benito Mussolini have been trying to popularize a version of their Leader that cleared him of all the issues that have made Fascism, not only discredited, but odious. This Mussolini of the Mussolinis was not particularly racist; he did not really hate Jews, was nervous about Hitler's influence, and did not relish violence for its own sake. This is not overwhelmingly important; the majority of Italians loathe the memory of Mussolini and regard Fascism as a blight. But there has long been a significant and slowly increasing minority that was willing, either to accept this nonsense at face value, or at least to allow itself to believe that there were areas of doubt and debate about the real moral legacy of the Leader.

What is disgusting about this is that, all the time, a set of documents existed that would have blown all this disingenuous and oily propaganda sky-high: the papers and diaries of Claretta Petacci, Mussolini's main lover (but never the only one - apart from his wife, Mussolini was always predatory and bragged of conquests even in the Italian royal family). And yet, until the last few months, these papers have been inaccessible to anyone, because of a grotesquely long lawsuit between the Petacci heirs and the State national archives (which held them). This lawsuit has only ended recently, due, it would seem, to the desire of the one surviving nephew of Petacci to see his aunt properly treated by historians.

Why on Earth he should imagine that these writings will burnish Petacci's image is a mystery of the human soul. The confidences that Petacci registers on a diary apparently started purely for the purpose - her diaries proper begin in 1937, when her position as favourite sex object is assured - paint an image so repulsive that it reflects very badly on her, given her continued willingness to give herself to him more or less in public. (Their affair was notorious all over Italy.) The gross and lustful compliments he pays to her are bad enough, but Mussolini was already known to be sex-mad, and even his defenders do not try to pretend otherwise. But the vicious racism, the way he relished the idea of violence against minorities ("I have thrown 70,000 Arabs into camps, why shouldn't I throw 50,000 Jews?" - this while he was selling his image in the Middle East as a champion of Islam), the crudity of his mind, the pleasure he took in Hitler's flattery at the time of Munich, his vicious and even rather petulant rage at the Pope's defence of Jews, Africans and mixed marriages, all go to prove that everything that we most despise about Fascism had its fountainhead in its leader and founder. And incidentally, this woman, who was the comfort and support of his life for its worst and most debased decade, from the wars in Lybia and Ethiopia to his final reincarnation as a German glove puppet, and who seems to have recorded every most despicable utterance of her lover out of admiration, gives us, for the first time, a good reason for the Partisans to have executed her alongside him that day in 1945. The enraged civilians who desecrated her body alongside his in Milan understood it instinctively, even without need for written evidence. If the person who gives moral aid and sexual comfort to a criminal, year after year, in the full knowledge of his crimes, can be seen as an accomplice, then she was his accomplice; in a sense, his closest.

I hate Fascism in general and Nick Griffin in particular. Griffin is the head of the British Fascist party, the BNP, and as clever a villain as any in politics. I repeatedly said that he is the cleverest party leader in Britain - unfortunately. He has been ruthlessly positioning his party - whose core is made of unrepenentant thugs and Jew-bashers - on the right position of the culture wars, taking in a vast number of disgruntled and disenfranchised conservatives-with-a-small-c who post in conservative websites asking, if I cannot vote for the BNP, who can I vote for? Well, recent footage shows the bastard in the company of friends, making the point very clearly that he is using social conservatism as a cover to get the rubes in and win votes. Then, he said, he would start to get people around to think more and more his way. And he did not mean conservatively.

This is a fairly sickening situation to anyone who follows politics closely enough. In spite of all that is known about his past and his associates (he said he had been reading Mein Kampf since he was 13), every election, national, local or European, showed the party - originally little more than a fringe association of psychopaths who regularly got a few dozen votes per seat - becoming a more credible electoral force. They now have councillors all over England and two Members in the European Parliament. And the trouble is that every time the establishment tried to show their moral unworthiness and political fraudulency, it blew right back in their faces. To put it very simply, the whole societal leadership of the United Kingdom has no moral credibility left with anybody. Anybody. If the leadership of the Labour or Tory Parties, the press, or the churches, stand up and denounce the BNP, the majority of the public pays no mind, and a minority is actually motivated to search them out.

This time, though, they may have gone too far. Griffin may be a smart thug, but he is still a thug after all; and he has an unfortunate (for him) belief in the theory of the Big Lie. The Armed Forces are the one institution in Britain that have been gaining rather than losing respect, thanks mainly to their sacrifice in Afghanistan. Obviously, the BNP has been trying to capitalize on their reputation present and past; they even had the nerve to invoke Churchill and the Battle of Britain, obviously thinking that their public would not pay attention to the enormous absurdity of a bunch of Fascists claiming Churchill of all people for their own. But the armed forces have reacted. A group of present and past chiefs of staff, distinguished officers, and medal holders, have signed a declaration against the BNP. Griffin, who was on a hiding to nothing trying to argue against the military, has then compounded his error by telling a demonstrable lie live on screen (that wounded servicemen in Birmingham's Selly Oak hospital were forced to pay to watch TV programs). This was inevitably refuted within minutes. One hopes that Griffin has for once met something that he cannot subvert to his own odious cause.

As my friends know, I do not call everyone who disagrees with me a Fascist. On the other hand, I do believe that Fascism does exist, that it is mortally dangerous (witness the butchery of helpless Christians by Indian Fascists in Orissa recently), and that it must be fought wherever it is met.

I used to regard Chuck Norris as a folkloric, colourful, not very relevant American phenomenon. However, today he endorsed the Ron Paul cult as the forebear of a coming American conservative revolution. Ron Paul, if you remember, is the extremist, isolationist, America-first, supposed constitutional purist, who has long since been outed as a white supremacist and friend of fringe militias and conspiracy theorists. As we say in Italy, tell me who you walk with and I will tell you who you are.

It just goes on and on.... I point out that I have described the historical and doctrinal falsehood of Goldberg's theory; that I have made it clear that Fascism contradicts the ideological bases of Socialism; that it was actually invented by the enemies of Socialism to try and steal the thunder of their enemies, while completely denying everything that Socialism was about; and still someone charges me with not answering Goldberg at all! Great God in Heaven, what more do I have to do? Either I have suddenly been struck with an utter incapacity to articulate - or, well, someone does not hear because she does not want to hear.

Either way, I have had enough. A few weeks back, I was given a link to a very negative review of CS Lewis' theology. Among other charges, the author said that Lewis did not take the Eucharist seriously. At which point, I found myself asking, what more did Lewis have to say to show that he did? The Eucharist is the highest thing we will meet in our lives; it is beyond our understanding; it is supernatural; it is the presence of God. All of these are statements to be found in Lewis' writings. But evidently, if you are determined not to see any Eucharistic belief in Lewis, you will not see. And if you are resolute to see no doctrinal or historical refutation of Goldberg's thesis in my articles, you will not see it.

What with the increasing propaganda for Enoch Powell;
The presence of a few outright Fascists in my country's governing coalition;
The American columnist I spoke of and condemned a couple of years ago;
The current civil war within the anti-jihadist movement between the racists and the rest of us;
The Ron Paul candidacy, proving that from five to ten per cent of registered Republicans would turn out to vote for a proven racist, conspiracy theorist and liar;
And now THIS (http://thenewsdispatch.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=12532);
It seems that perhaps we have more need to be vigilant against racism and Fascism than I was hoping.

EDITED IN:
Since these newspaper articles tend to be removed from the Web after a while, or moved to a different archive, I will place a copy of the text (from The Michigan City News-Dispatch) behind this cut:
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