All of them should take a genetic test. They will possible discover that they are closer related to the immigrants than they ever imagined, especially for Southern Italy.
5
Italian or German fascists are no different from American fascists. We have a president who is the leader of the pack. It will only get worse. Enjoy, those of you who know nothing about history and government.
5
Unfortunately, European leaders headed by Merkel turned out to be too liberal. And hence we see the rise of the right. It is always like that: the pendulum swings too far and it has to come back to the middle. Unfortunately, it only means because of the rise of far-right, at some stage the pendulum will swing too far to the right with disastrous consequences usually associated with right-wing politics. But that's why we need practical moderate politicians unlike Merkel and her kind.
4
Too much worry over a country where it has recurring problems. What I say to Europe is spend some money for a change and quit using policies of austerity. That has never ever worked in the histoy of man kind.
1
CasaPound is certainly extreme but this fails to acknowledge that the post-war evolution of Italy has not been like Germany's. There has always been a significant minority who, if they did not admire Mussolini, at least did not condemn him in any convincing way. As in most of Europe mass migration has given added impetus to these opinions. The liberal establishment is keeping its head firmly in the sand.
Sounds pretty much like the USA now.
1
I'm not sure what scares me more. The rise of fascism (especially in Europe) or the total failure of mainstream politicians to even recognize that there is a growing problem. It's baffling that these politicians think "business as usual" will have a good result.
Back in the 1930s, ordinary people saw the Nazis as a collection of strange people who wore funny uniforms and participated in unusual military style rituals. Nobody saw any reason to take them seriously. No one saw any reason to intervene or to adopt new political strategies.
Are our mainstream politicians of today going to learn any lessons from the mistakes of yesterday? Until that happens, I will remain scared.
5
What we are witnessing is the rejection of mass immigration by the people in Western countries. Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the rise of the AfD in Germany, the recent elections in Austria and the Czech Republic, and now elections in Italy are all reactions to mass immigration. Citizens are tired of endless immigration of people from vastly different cultures that show little interest in assimilating and adapting to their host countries. Elected officials need to recognize the legitimate concerns of their constituents instead of calling them bigots or xenophobes. Europe in particular will continue to see the rise of far right parties until the EU and establishment parties take a harder stance on immigration.
28
I was going to write a comment to this effect, but there's no need. Jim B is exactly right.
2
Capitalism has issues. Severe issues. Primarily its the gap between rich and poor. But its also the alienation of the individual. What does this engender? In the absence of the Church, in the throws of secularism, after the Holocaust and Hiroshima, Fascism creeps in like a ghost.
Fascism is a confluence of Oligarchy, Corporations, and ultimately the military. It hides itself within Democracy, but is unleashed when class differences become too vast and the Oligarchy becomes too powerful.
Jews (and I am a Jew) are far more than a religion. I am not in any way religious. Yet worldwide the philosophy of Judaism describes no true God (at least none that can be pictured). The question - the idea of simply questioning -is at the root of the definition of the Jewish people.
So the Jews will forever be at the heart of the "other". The center of the culture seems to understand that all human beings are the "other". And that alienation is the center of our meaning.
Hence Freud, hence Marx and Engels.
Fascism is alive again because of the fluidity of economic systems and the reluctance of the Oligarchies to open and bend and share wealth. The mechanisms to hold back the all enveloping corruption of wealth and power are compromised at best. Trump in America exemplifies this as well as any Fascism emerging in Italy or Europe at large.
6
Well put Mr. Kesler. Capitalism became its own religion and it is failing. At the same time, major religious institutions (the Catholic Church, Islam, Fundamentalist Christianity...) are also failing. The relations between women and men are failing. The earth is dying. There is a great hole in heart of humankind. It will be filled with all kinds of strange things until we realize there is only one solution to this mess - we have to come together in our humanity. We must see the divine with each other and all things. That is the only healing balm.
1
CasaPound is a distinct entity from Forza Nuova, largely because they address actual, tangible issues dear at heart to the lower rungs of Italian society. Distribution of government housing (an obtuse concept from the start) has been handed out prioritizing recent immigrants for nearly a decade. At a ground level, this creates indignation and resentment among those living in squalor, who then turn to occupy empty, or condemned buildings (the Casa part of CasaPound). People, in turn, support them, because they deliver good old fashioned pane et circenses, to those that an increasingly hamstrung government has, by any objective measure, left behind (this article doesn't mention the schools and food banks defunded along with the Ostia council). CasaPound, much like the Mafia, thrives in a power vacuum, which, for any following Italian politics, is exactly what presently exists, systemically, in the country.
At its heart, the movement is a symptom of government, revolting against government. The Italian political system has managed to become both oversized and utterly powerless. Weimar Germany, Romanov Russia, Louis XVI's France and the Second Spanish Republic all shared these characteristics. CasaPound is far too small nowadays to pose an actual threat to Italy's stability. Yet, in a decade or two, if immigration continues to rise and the incomes of the lower class continue to stagnate, it doesn't take much imagination to imagine very bleak scenarios indeed.
19
Yes, Casapound is extreme. But it and the various other outsider parties wouldn't have been able to mobilize support without a lot of help of Europe centrist parties in the past 10-20 years. Consider, the drive by the EU bureaucracy to erase national sentiment (thus far quite unsuccessful); the encouragement by the EU of relentless globalization, resulting as it has everywhere in developed countries, in rising unemployment among working people and a divide between the well connected and everyone else; an almost 10 year economic slump and the EU's failure to provide jobs to unemployed workers; and the pathetic response of center left & right governments to a very real surge in illegal, undocumented migration and the resulting deterioration of living conditions in many European cities. These are real problems happening in real time that demand political responses. The mainstream parties have thus far left the response to these things to outsider parties, who unsurprisingly are beginning to reap electoral rewards.
14
"CasaPound’s leaders shrug off Mussolini’s racial laws and alliance with Hitler with a nobody’s-perfect nonchalance."
One of the problems with this article is that it seems not understand what fascism is about. I do not want to minimize the evil or the effect on Italian Jews of the racial laws, but the first was passed in 1938; Mussolini had been in power since 1922. During that time his regime had destroyed the parties of the left, imprisoning and killing its activists. It had violently suppressed the Italian workers movement. It had invaded Ethiopia and engaged in horrendous war crimes. It attempted to militarize society to prepare for more wars of conquest.
The crimes of Italian fascism, and the dangers that contemporary fascist movements pose, would be as significant even if the racial laws had never been passed (as a sop to Hitler--anti-Semitism had played no role in the ideology or practice of Italian fascism). That, I think, is the lesson for Europe--and the United States--today.
13
The wheels are coming off.
This is just one of many signals that the decline of the West is accelerating at an alarming rate. And the elites have inexplicably and inexcusably become complacent, as reflected in Andrew Ross Sorkin's summary of the DealBook conference last week, where "confidence" and optimism were found in abundance.
2008 was an alarm that we ignored. The response to 2008 was a colossal failure that exacerbated the problem and poured fuel on the already raging fire of inequality. The election of Trump, and the rise of the right across Europe, most recently manifested in Poland last week, got people's attention for about five minutes. And then they went back to counting their money.
We are heading towards a cataclysm. The next alarm bell will be one that cannot be ignored.
Sorkin wrote: "The question is whether all the enthusiastic talk from chief executives is reflective of a truly robust economy or whether we are missing something."
They are missing one of the biggest "somethings" in history.
2
The wheels are coming off.
This is just one of many signals that the decline of the West is accelerating at an alarming rate.
And the elites have inexplicably and inexcusably become complacent, as reflected in Andrew Ross Sorkin's summary of the DealBook conference last week, where "confidence" and optimism were found in abundance.
2008 was an alarm that we ignored. The response to 2008 was a colossal failure that exacerbated the problem and poured fuel on the already raging fire of inequality. The election of Trump, and the rise of the right across Europe, most recently manifested in Poland last week, got people's attention for about five minutes. And then they went back to counting their money.
We are heading towards a cataclysm. The next alarm bell will be one that cannot be ignored.
Sorkin wrote: "The question is whether all the enthusiastic talk from chief executives is reflective of a truly robust economy or whether we are missing something."
They are missing one of the biggest "somethings" in history.
11
The wheels are coming off?
Italy has had over 60 governments since WWII. It's a hotbed of political patronage, unbridled corruption, draconian laws that no one follows... So, I'm not sure the wheels ever were on in the first place. Unfortunately, when mainstream systems fail to function, fringe elements, scam artists, and the like fill the gap. This has been happening from time immemorial in Italy. I fail to see anything signaling the decline of the West (which, let's face it, at the end of the day just means the USA anyway and our satellite states); rather, at least as far as Italy is concerned, it just looks like business as usual...
7
@GC
Italy's neighbors have been stable in the past, so we could just roll our eyes at the buffoon Berlusconi and say, "ah those crazy Italians are at it again...whatev..."
Those days are over. The entire neighborhood of Europe is now becoming unstable. Italy is the third largest economy in Europe. France is the second. Both are in deep trouble. In fact, Europe itself is in serious trouble.
Mainstream systems are failing to function all across the West. It's been in all the papers.
Brexit. LePen. Macron. AfD in Germany. Wilders. Kurz in Austria. Poland. Orban in Hungary. Greece. Italy. Trump. Bernie Sanders. Occupy Wall Street. The Tea Party. Eric Cantor. Boehner. The ongoing exodus from Congress.
If those aren't signals, I don't know what are. And it's about to get much worse, as the Age of Automation goes exponential, and accelerates the destabilization of societies across the West.
The USA is in decline. On our current trajectory we will be "Brazil with nukes" within a decade or two. We have no satellites anymore; to imply that we do is absurd. It's not 1950 anymore; it's the 21st century now. Actually it's the 21st century equivalent of the 1930's.
Trump would not be President if it was "business as usual". The Euro zone would not be in the process of imploding if it was "business as usual". And the stunning rise of China, and the massive and historic shift in power from the West to the East over the past twenty years, is emphatically not "business as usual".
9
TB your remarks are what one calls a sober analysis. Thanks.
The victims movement has spread. This is what happens when people don’t adapt to their environment and try and move the goalposts.
2
Its what happens when we glorify a cult of victimhood. People make up lies, create hoaxes to reap the social and financial benefits of being a "victim".
2
I'm visiting Paris right now. On my first day here, last Saturday, I attempted to withdraw cash from an ATM in broad daylight in the center of the Marais. As I finished entering my PIN, two young men - maybe 15 years old - rushed the machine and attempted to request 1,000 euro to grab and run. I was able with all force to stop the theft. But they were relentless. They were accompanied by what looked like their mother as a lookout. After the ordeal, bystanders just shook their heads and repeated "migrants". I'm told this is the new normal in Paris.
This is the craziness that will indeed bring fascist governments to power. People are getting really fed up.
26
Is it fascism to demand that your country keep illegal migrants out? Is it fascism to demand that illegal migrants that HAVE broken the law be deported--with alacrity--from the country? When a government cares more about its citizens than it does about illegal migrants who disobey the law to walk into the country, why should people NOT want something else. The French government has lost control of its borders and lost the nerve to start deporting the hundreds of illegal migrants--with no intention of living in France--that are already in France. French people should be fed up. Only two years ago illegal muslim migrants helped slaughter 154 French citizens in Paris. To be fair, they might well have been gypsys, if a mom was a lookout. Keep them away from you on the subway. Enjoy Paris.
16
So I take it they were not disaffected, white, native French boys?
3
In every country, there is an irreducible number of persons who for a variety of reasons, from economic conditions to mental attitudes, are attracted to extreme ideologies. They are usually a tiny percentage of the population and they make irrelevant political noise until they begin to get disruptive or violent. They are like an infection that won't go away but which can and must be contained. The real trouble starts when it begins to spread because of economic or political crises. The role of government is precisely to prevent the growth of their influence through our passivity. We also must realize that however oppressive and harmful was an authoritarian government, a significant part of the population derived benefits from it. So these people will always feel nostalgic for their good old days.
7
Frank, Italy post WWI was teeming with people attracted to extreme ideologies whether Socialist or Fascist or merely tactical allies with either. I don't think we are dealing with minority or fringe opinions anymore regarding immigration and migrants and don't see a solution that will satisfy "these people" short of zero sum politics. As you know "these people" whom you say benefit from extremism can do so only at the expense of "those people" and vice versa. There is no rising tide lifting all boats today like there sometimes was back in the "good old days" of "these people" when few thought about "those people."