On the 25 April, the quiet, picturesque town of Predappio in Emilia Romagna, the birthplace and burial place of Benito Mussolini, will become a gathering point for Europe’s radical far-right.
Among the better-known attendees will be Nick Griffin, the former leader of Britain’s now-defunct British National Party (BNP).
The meeting is rather optimistically titled ‘The end of anti-fascism’.
Griffin, who led the BNP for over a decade, remains a fixture on the far-right circuit, appearing at events from Rome to Madrid in recent months.
However, his journey from disgraced British politician to speaker in Mussolini’s hometown is inextricably linked to one man: Roberto Fiore, the leader of Italy’s neo-fascist Forza Nuova party.
Fled manhunt
It is a relationship forged in the early 1980s, when the 21-year-old Fiore fled to London, escaping a massive manhunt in the aftermath of one of Europe’s worst post-war terrorist atrocities.
At the time, a young Nick Griffin was a rising activist in the far-right National Front. He quickly fell under the influence of the charismatic Italian fugitive.
Political mentor
Fiore became a political mentor to Griffin, converting him to the radical “Third Position” ideology, a political doctrine that rejects both capitalism and communism, often in favour of a revolutionary brand of fascism.
The two men became close, sharing a flat in Victoria, London as they plotted their next moves. This relationship was not merely ideological; it was a partnership that would prove highly profitable.
To understand the depth of the controversy surrounding Fiore, we must revisit August 2, 1980.
A bomb planted in a waiting room at the Bologna Central Station exploded, killing 85 people and injuring over 200 in what became known as the Bologna massacre.
Neo-fascist bombing
The blast, which became the deadliest event in Italy’s “Years of Lead,” was eventually proven to be a neo-fascist bombing carried out by the terrorist group Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR).
Fiore, a convicted criminal for his links to the NAR and the “Terza posizione” terrorist cell, fled to the UK to escape the ensuing crackdown.
While he was later acquitted of the massacre itself, he was convicted in absentia of subversive association and ‘banda armata’ (belonging to an armed group) and sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison.
London fugitive
For nearly two decades, he was a fugitive in London, protected from extradition by his cooperation with British intelligence (MI6) – to whom he provided intelligence about the Lebanese Falangists who sheltered him when he first left Italy – and obstructionism by the Home Office.
While in exile, Fiore and his NAR comrades, especially Massimo Morsello, did not simply hide.
With Griffin’s help, they built a business empire.
It began as a humble tour guide agency, but ended up making millions from accommodation and employment agencies like Easy London that primarily catered to foreign workers.
Griffin’s father acted as accountant for a language school controlled by Fiore.
Housing scam
An Early Day Motion in the UK Parliament accused the group of running a “Rachmanite housing scam” and noted that the Conservative government of the time had acted “disgracefully” by failing to deport them to face justice for the Bologna murders.
After spending nearly 20 years in London, Fiore was able to return to Italy in 1999 when his sentence was “timed out” under Italian law. He immediately set about using the wealth he had acumulated to build the small political party he had long led, Forza Nuova.
For his part, Griffin continued to invite his old friend to BNP events, introducing him to members from the main stage as late as 2009.
Formal alliance
Today, the pair have formalized their alliance.
While Fiore leads Forza Nuova, a party that openly advocates for revoking laws that ban the recreation of the fascist party, Nick Griffin serves as his deputy in the Alliance for Peace and Freedom (APF), a European coalition of extremist parties ranging from one-man bands to “parties” that are vanishingly tiny even within a European nazi context, though one or two such as the ex-NPD (now Heimat) are relics of what were once substantial parties.
A great deal of this far-right roadshow is a combination of propaganda fronts for Putin (and at one time the Syrian dictator Assad), with grossly exaggerated “networks” that needed to have a certain number of affiliates to qualify for EU funding.
Pro-Putin
The APF, under Fiore’s presidency, has recently hosted events across Europe promoting pro-Putin narratives and a “new Christian order,” at which Griffin has been a guest speaker.
In Rome, attendees have been seen performing the banned fascist salute, a gesture that has prompted Italian left-wing parties to demand the government ban such gatherings.
The 85 dead of Bologna have no monument in Predappio.
But the founder of the movement that killed them does, and this weekend, its standard-bearers will be there to honour him.
