Silvio Berlusconi, 1936–2023    Photo: European People’s Party 

Silvio Berlusconi helped rehabilitate fascism by falsifying the historical truth and lying about the crimes committed in the name of fascism. He did this by using a mixture of ignorance and persuasion, laced with seductive doses of panache and bonhomie amid plenty of televisual entertainment. Over the years, he made it possible for fascism to be considered a benign force and even a fashionable political design. This was his major political and cultural achievement.

The shift he brought about in the public’s perception of fascism and make it acceptable has led to the post-fascist government Italy has today. These grateful followers gave Berlusconi a state funeral, complete with live TV coverage and a national day of mourning. Helicopters flew over the fleet of cars accompanying his body for cremation, with cameras filming from all angles, provoking an epic surge of empathy on his passing. Thousands of people lined the route, eager to be part of the spectacle. It has been described as instant beatification.

Berlusconi signalled his intent to normalise fascism from the outset of his political career in 1994 when he became Prime Minister. As his allies in government he chose Gianfranco Fini, former secretary of the Italian fascist party Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), and Umberto Bossi of the Northern League, who was in the habit of treating people outside his beloved Northern Italy as an inferior race.

It seemed unlikely that this aberration would be tolerated by Italy’s strong left-wing body of opinion and its anti-fascist tradition for long. But Berlusconi knew better. In a highly significant move, he added to his team the dictator’s granddaughter Alessandra Mussolini, a former actress, glamour model and singer. He knew this political marriage would send a powerful message.

There were other significant and symbolic messages: among those employed at Berlusconi’s house was Vittorio Mangano, a Mafioso killer linked to the criminal organisation the Cosa Nostra. And there was little surprise when it became known that Berlusconi had been a member of the P2, the Masonic Lodge led by Licio Gelli that was part of the Gladio/Stay Behind organisation.

Berlusconi’s rehabilitation of fascism occurred, albeit tacitly, every time he appeared on television, which was not an infrequent occurrence, given he owned some of the channels. He was also an excellent communicator with the man and woman in the street: he never presented the issues with the complexity they deserved, but as perfectively solvable minor problems.

Over the years, Berlusconi served as prime minister three times: 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He managed to draw consensus not only from the electorate that had supported the defunct Christian Democratic Party that had dominated Italy since the Second World War, but also from Italians sympathetic to fascism, who had hitherto felt too scared to be seen to be openly associated with the MSI or other far-right movements.

Mussolini’s ‘good things’

Berlusconi started pointing to the ‘positive’ aspects of fascism as early as 1994: addressing his comments to the foreign press, he sidestepped any criticism from the Italian newspapers. Commenting on Fini’s description of Mussolini as ‘the greatest statesman of the country’, Berlusconi told The Washington Post that his ally was only ‘trying to be true to his party’s past’, adding: ‘Mussolini did some good things, and that’s something that history says is correct.’

In 2003, referring to the house arrest and incarceration of thousands of opponents to Mussolini’s regime on penal islands off the Italian coast, he told The Spectator magazine: ‘Mussolini sent people on holiday.’ In the same interview, he went as far as to say that ‘Mussolini never killed anyone’, as if to absolve the dictator of the killings perpetrated in the name of fascism.

Berlusconi never ceased to deliberately mislead, disinform and lie, saying, for example, that in Italy racial laws were introduced under pressure from the Germans, ignoring the fact that, from its inception, Italy’s fascism extolled the razza italiana.

The methods employed by Berlusconi have since been replicated globally to gain power, adapting his strategy to local expectations. Those who have drawn lessons from Berlusconi include Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Donald Trump in the USA, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Boris Johnson in the UK. They may not be in the ranks of those calling for his beatification, but they certainly owe him a great deal as imitators.

Convicted Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio (left), pictured with David Sumrall, founder of far-right media outlet StopHate, who is active in defending the 6 January rioters

As Proud Boys face jail terms for their part in the 6 January riots, the ongoing realignment of forces on the Republican right continues. Leonard Zeskind reports

On 4 May 2023, two years and four months after a far-right revolt inside the Capitol Building, a DC jury handed down four guilty of seditious conspiracy verdicts for leaders of the ‘western chauvinist’ Proud Boys.

Enrique Tarrio, of Afro-Cuban background from Miami, was the chairman but not the founder of the group, Ethan Nordean, from Washington State, Joe Biggs, an organiser from central Florida, and Zachary Rehl, a leader of the group in Philadelphia, were all found guilty of three charges: seditious conspiracy, conspiring to obstruct a congressional session, and of actually obstructing it. Dominic Pezzola, a former Marine Corporal from upstate New York, was found not guilty of seditious conspiracy, but guilty of obstructing Congress. They will be handed sentences in August.

Prosecutors showed that the usual Proud Boys organisational deference to police was changed to open hostility after December 2020. ‘If police block electors from entering a building to cast a vote for Trump, we the people will treat your thin blue line like we do antifa,’ said defendant Biggs. He continued: ‘Get in our way and get walked over.’

The prosecution also had many members of the Proud Boys as witnesses. One of them, said: ‘I believed from my experience that violence was celebrated.’

Defence lawyers argued that there was no organisational plan for 6 January, and that the violence and chaos emerged ‘spontaneously’ out of the ‘herd mentality’ of the crowd. But the prosecution loaded up the witness stand with hundreds of internal communications among Proud Boys members pointing to a violent showdown. ‘These defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power,’ one prosecutor said.

The Proud Boys positive relationship with many Republicans is one of the key factors that separated them from established white nationalist outfits, such as the League of the South or the Stormfront website. As far back as October 2018, the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York City invited Proud Boys’ founder Gavin McInnes to speak. A fight ensued and nine Proud Boys and three protestors were charged. The club issued a statement, defending the Proud Boys.

The latest court decision may change some Republican attitudes to the host of fighting clubs and paramilitary windbags on its perimeter. Already, a host of conservative candidates and blocs of money have emerged to challenge Trump in the Republican primaries. In a head-to-head race with the ageing President Biden, Trump is a sure loser. These winds of minute change may blow the leaderless Proud Boys further to the margins.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, there were 119 active Proud Boys chapters in 46 states at the time of the trial. The national organisation had already shuttered its doors, with a decision to have these chapters adhere to state level leaderships. As has been noted previously, this has opened the doors to more clearly anti-Semitic and white supremacist language in some states.

The moment now belongs to the gay-baiting, male chauvinist politics that lie at the heart of the Proud Boys. Other white supremacists such as Patriot Front and the conservative We the People have joined in the chorus, however. They will grow through public activity against gay people, trans people and women, while the Proud Boys are at home nursing their wounds from the trial. But race-based politics and anti Semitism are likely to push back into the open before the end of the summer.

This could be a time of significant transformation on the far right. The notion of white dispossession, championed since the 1970s by white supremacists, is now openly espoused by Republican candidates such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The recent Supreme Court decision against affirmative action is likely to push racist views into the public eye.

Make America Great Again nationalists remain at a fever pitch, and large sections are as likely as not to ultimately bolt to the Republican Party after 2024, if candidates such as Chris Christie take the lead. As a result, the Proud Boys are unlikely to remain static in the months ahead, and may fragment further.

Leonard Zeskind is the founder of the Institute for Research and Education of Human Rights

Downhearted  Nick Griffin (left) and Peter Rushton (right)

Images credit: Griffin (Searchlight) Rushton (Heritage and Destiny website)

Two of the far right’s most influential figures have been perusing the movement’s recent local election disaster in May and have come to radically different – although similarly scathing – conclusions. Mark Scholl considers their deliberations

The first figure in question is self-styled nazi ‘intellectual’ Peter Rushton, deputy editor of Heritage and Destiny, whose ability to construct grammatically complete sentences sets him apart from most of his comrades. The other is former British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin, now holed up in Wales making a very decent living from marketing religious nuttery online. Both are very extreme even within their own circles, and both are given to Holocaust denial and anti Semitic conspiracies.

But first a recap: in May, far-right parties across the country managed a handful of utterly derisory votes in local council elections. Even their best results were pathetic: for example, Ashlea Simon in Walken North and Julian Leppert in Waltham Forest Paternoster Ward both failed miserably. The former had stood for Britain First and the latter for the British Democratic Party (BDP).

Simon’s vote was down, despite a campaign dating back many months to which her party had devoted considerable time and resources. And Leppert, who won a seat for For Britain in 2020 but was this time contesting it for Andrew Brons’s BDP, was turfed out.

One of the elephants in the far right recreation room is addressed by Rushton, who has launched an unprecedented and vitriolic attack on, well, just about everyone in the movement. In a furious article entitled ‘Time for nationalists to decide – are we serious?’, published on the Heritage and Destiny website, he fires off in all directions. The results, he says, reflect, ‘… years of decline, years of factional division, years of vanity, years of crank obsessions, years of tolerating substandard conduct within our ranks’.

Why, he moans, have so many activists been drawn into futile single-issue campaigning. ‘Why are many nationalists in 2023 happier to protest about drag queens, or go on marches to promote conspiracy theories about Covid, while seeming to lose interest in serious racial nationalism – especially the essential hard slog of election campaigning? … questions need to be asked as to why so many nationalists are happier on social media than on doorsteps. This applies to civic nationalists in Reform UK, UKIP and its splinters, even more than to racial nationalists.

‘Part of the problem is defeatism, engendered by a style of politics that overemphasises conspiracies and the presumed power of our enemies.’

‘Un-British’ crankery

For once, he has a point. Rather than going out canvassing and arguing politics on the doorstep over and over again, it is much more fun attending big rallies in Trafalgar Square to hear unhinged speakers such as Kate Shemirani demand that doctors and nurses face the death penalty. Much easier to promote anti-globalist fear-mongering via a New Age ‘anti-system’ ideology than leaflet housing estates. Much simpler to direct people to conspiracists such as David Icke online.

Rushton’s problem is that in 2023, as we are finding out, there are many avenues for such conspiracy-based expression. Rushton knows that his Heritage and Destiny operation now has serious competition, which is threatening to wipe him out. One of the issues that he identifies is that potential recruits want easy answers to difficult problems – this from a man who has stood on platforms with the most extreme dregs of Europe’s far right: Michele Renouf, Manfred Roeder and Isabel Peralta.

He believes that there are too many cranks within the far right and, again, he is right. In fact, it is stuffed with them. But he wants his cranks to stick to strictly ‘racial nationalist’ crankery.

Responding to the election results, Rushton concludes: ‘Tragically what we are left with in 2023 is a movement … abandoning serious ideology to pursue crank fads (often imported online from the USA) that are of no relevance to the racial nationalist cause, but also have no substantial appeal to the British electorate.’ He then adds: ‘Three good examples are a trio of intellectually flimsy, un-British, indeed anti-British and anti-European political cults: Trumpism, anti-vaxxism, and Putinism.

‘But once any or all of these cults infect a nationalist party or movement, they become a toxic threat to our cause. The vast majority of British voters will never believe that CoViD vaccinations were a mass poisoning plot; they will never take Donald Trump seriously; and they will never support Putin’s semi -Asiatic hordes.’

So, let’s have purely British crankery from now on, please.

Rushton often cites the success of parties in Europe, but in Europe their mainstreaming – that is, the extent to which the far right’s clothes have been forced upon or stolen by popular, established and ostensibly more respectable conservative parties – has been a highly effective strategy. Hence there has been huge progress for parties from Finland to Italy. Several now have serious political power and influence.

Indeed, one of its most successful exponents, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a ‘former’ fascist activist, combines anti-immigrant rhetoric with a National Conservative ideology funded by big business.

Yesterday’s men

This success must drive Griffin and Rushton crazy because they are now threatened with being surplus to requirements, yesterday’s men whose political ideology and tactics are increasingly irrelevant, squeezed between rightward moving conservative parties and deranged conspiracy cults.

Seasoned observers will not perhaps be surprised that Griffin should survey the election wreckage and also draw negative conclusions. For him, the results show that ‘… there is no electoral road … The idea that any existing party will be in a position even to match the electoral capabilities of the old BNP in under ten years from now is ridiculous’.

But he has not reached this conclusion solely because electoral realities have hit home. Oh, no. He, along with Jim Dowson, a former BNP fundraiser now with Britain First, and Jayda Fransen, formerly of the EDL now with the British Freedom Party, are promoting a ‘religious battle against Islam’. This is a pseudo-Knights Templar operation that combines mysticism with old-style religious bigotry to lure supporters – and their money – from across Europe.

One thing we do know about Dowson is that he is a highly successful fundraiser, and this operation is a real moneyspinner. Some of these religious extremists who, interestingly, come from both Protestant and Catholic backgrounds, have gained traction in Hungary and Spain. Dowson, of course, previously raised money for many far-right groups both in the UK and Europe, as well as for anti-Muslim border patrols in Eastern Europe.

But none of his filthy lucre will be going into elections, that’s for sure. They’re history, says Griffin. Indeed, why go out on the stump when you can sit back and watch the money come rolling in? And, when it is rolling in, why throw it all down the pan? Griffin’s justification is that the tactics he used to win council seats for the BNP back in the day are no longer relevant because of demographic factors, apathy, movement divisions and tactical mistakes.

Griffin now talks up parties such as Reclaim and Reform, both of which are much better funded than any of the microscopic far-right parties that grew out of the BNP ten years ago.

In a video uploaded to Dowson’s purged.tv platform, he says that he believes any votes for anti-immigrant patriotic policies will, in future, go to Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party, with voters unlikely to vote for openly fascist politics when there is a slightly more respectable option. And that, of course, would be a big problem for Paul Golding, Andrew Brons, Mark Collett and the Homeland Party. A cynic might suggest that Griffin’s main motive is resentment at the over £5 million given to Reclaim by businessman Jeremy Hosking.

No complacency

Nevertheless, as Griffin points out, given the massive support offered to both Reclaim and Reform UK on the GB News channel, both should be doing considerably better than they are. Anti-migrant hostility has been whipped up by the media, particularly the Daily Mail and Daily Express newspapers. Migrants are, like the immigrants of earlier decades, being blamed for everything.

But even so, apart from six seats in Derby for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, all was failure. Both Reform UK and Reclaim did appallingly badly in the recent elections, to the extent that many of their people must be wondering why they are carrying on.

The good news is that the British far right is more divided than ever. The paltry votes received in May are further evidence of this. Even so, there is no room for complacency. Searchlight will be keeping a very close eye on the mainstreaming movement, efforts to infiltrate the Conservative Party, the conspiracy fantasists and the formation of violent proto-terrorist anti-system-type groups, all of which can be born of electoral failure and political desperation. Because, while Griffin and Rushton rue their failures, others are preparing to step forward …