Italy: Electoral alliance between governing coalition and far right
01 January 2006
For the election scheduled for 9 and 10 April 2006, in which they are trailing in polls, the parties from the outgoing government coalition headed by Silvio Berlusconi will be running alongside a number of far-right groups: the Alternativa Sociale (AS) coalition, the Movimento Sociale - Fiamma Tricolore (MS-FT), the Nuovo MSI Destra Nazionale (MSI-DN) and the Movimento Idea Sociale Lista Rauti.
AS is a group of previously existing parties that came together under Alessandra Mussolini's leadership after her departure in November 2003 from Alleanza Nazionale (AN), the party of Gianfranco Fini, the minister for foreign affairs and vice-president in the Berlusconi government. The rift took place when AN leader Fini disavowed the party's fascist past in a trip to Israel (see Statewatch vol. 13 no. 6). The AS coalition has brought together neo-fascist groups like Roberto Fiore's Forza Nuova and Adriano Tilgher's Fronte Sociale Nazionale and will be running alongside Mussolini and the parties of the Casa delle libertà (CdL) in an attempt to confound predictions of a defeat for the right. Both Fiore and Tilgher have been investigated for unlawful far-right activity in the past (Fiore was in exile in England when he was sought by Italian judicial authorities on charges of terrorism for which he was acquitted, Tilgher was jailed in the 1980s after being found guilty of "reconstituting the Fascist party").
The AS coalition won a seat for Alessandra Mussolini in the European Parliament in the 2004 European elections, as did the MS-FT, whose leader Luca Romagnoli became an MEP, running separately from AS. Romagnoli took over from Pino Rauti in 2003 as leader of the MS-FT, leading to the latter's acrimonious departure after the two had expelled each other from the party. Rauti went on to found the Movimento Idea Sociale Lista Rauti. In the run-up to the 2004 European elections, an international coalition of far-right groups from around Europe, the European National Front, put up electoral posters featuring the names of partner groups in different countries, which included Forza Nuova from Italy, La Falange from Spain, and the National Sozialistische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) from Germany.
The CdL's electoral ticket will also include the MSI-DN, a party which is led by Gaetano Saya, who was caught running a self-styled parallel anti-terrorist unit in July 2005 (the DSSA, see Statewatch vol. 15 no 3&4) which carried out surveillance operations targeting Muslims and had access to law enforcement databases due to the involvement of officers in the network. Saya was also charged in November 2004 for "divulging information based on ideas of racial superiority" from his party's website.
This move to include as wide a spectrum of parties as possible from the fragmented Italian right into the CdL, is strongly opposed by AN (the party from whose internal disputes and splits many of the other parties were born) and was personally promoted by Silvio Berlusconi. IT is apparent to observers that intolerant views are increasingly being voiced by institutional figures and members of government coalition parties from the 'mainstream' right (see Statewatch vol. 15 no 6). The Lega Nord MP Mario Borghezio has repeatedly intervened at meetings organised by neo-fascist groups, most notably Forza Nuova. Moreover, the mainstream right's alliance with the far right is not unprecedented, as electoral alliances between the CdL (then Polo delle Libertà) and the MS-FT (led by Pino Rauti at the time) were struck up at the local level for the regional elections in 2000, general elections in 2001 and in Sicily in 2002 (see Statewatch Vol. 10 no 2 & Vol. 12 no 1).
The Islamophobic discourse arising from the institutions (see Statewatch Vol. 15 no 6) worsened in response to the crisis opened by the publishing of cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in Denmark. Roberto Calderoli of the Northern League, then minister for institutional refor