Italy
Prime Minister Lamberto Dini's government of so-called "technocrats"
resigned on 11 January, paving the way for a general election on 21 April,
the first post-war election in Italy in which voters had a choice between
two distinct opposing blocs rather than an array of individual parties.
The election pitted the centre-left alliance, Ulivo (Olive Tree), composed
of fourteen parties, the most important being the Partito Democratico della
Sinistra (PDS, Democratic Party of the Left, the former Italian Communist
Party), against the centre-right Polo della Libertà (Freedom Alliance),
led by the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI, Go
Italy!) party and Gianfranco Fini's right-wing Alleanza Nationale (AN, National
Alliance, see also parties, organizations, movements).
The Olive Tree won an effective majority of 157 seats (out of 315) in Italy's
senate (elected by proportional representation), but in the lower house
of parliament, the chamber of deputies (75 per cent of seats elected by
a first-past-the-post system, 25 per cent by proportional representation),
it won only 246 seats (out of 630), making it dependent on the support of
the hard-line Marxist party the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (PRC,
Communist Refoundation Party), which won 35 seats in the chamber of deputies
and 10 in the senate. The Freedom Alliance won 116 seats in the senate and
169 in the chamber of deputies. Despite its slim majority, Olive Tree's
victory meant that, for the first time in post-war Italy, the left came
to power at the head of the national government, which included nine cabinet
ministers from the PDS, the reformed, now social democratic, Communist Party.
The separatist Lega Nord (LN, Northern League, see also below) originally
part of the Freedom Alliance until its withdrawal led to the collapse of
Berlusconi's government at the end of 1994 fielded its own candidates. The
LN, under the leadership of Umberto Bossi, secured twenty-seven seats (10.4
per cent of the vote) in the senate and fifty-nine seats (10.1 per cent)
in the chamber of deputies.
The right-wing AN barely increased its share of votes, partly due to the
spoiling tactics of Pino Rauti's breakaway hard-line neo-Fascist party,
the Movimento Sociale Italiana-Fiamma Tricolore (see parties, organizations,
movements), which won 2.3 per cent of the vote for the senate, securing
one seat.
The economy was a central problem for the new government, thanks to the
extremely high level of debt and the necessity of cutting public spending.
Social problems such as unemployment and the poor functioning of public
services-education, the national health service and the postal system-continued
to plague Italy.
The results of regional and local elections in June and November did not
indicate a definite political trend either towards the left or the right,
but they did signal a drop in support for the LN in its one-time stronghold
regions of Veneto and Lombardia-apparently as a result of LN leader Umberto
Bossi's increasingly hard-line, separatist rhetoric-as well as a slight
drop in votes cast for the AN from the April general election (14.1 per
cent from 16.4 per cent).
In September, the LN organized a three-day pilgrimage from the source of
the river Po to Venice, culminating in a declaration of independence of
the so-called Repubblica Federale de Padana (RFP, Padanian Federal Republic),
named after the Po river valley. According to the LN, it would include the
regions of northern and central Italy as far south as Tuscany and Umbria.
The LN set up a "provisional government" and established a controversial,
green-shirted volunteer defence corps called the Padana National Guard.
In various towns whose local administrations were controlled by the LN,
streets and squares were renamed, and initiatives were launched to hire
only northerners in public offices and schools.
LN voters shied away from these policies, as well as from some of Bossi's
antics, like his use of Nazi-style cries of "Raus!" (German for
"Out!") to evict television crews from an LN rally earlier in
the year. In the local elections in November, after Bossi's declaration
of secession, LN candidates in a number of key northern cities-including
Mantua, Padania's putative capital-failed to be elected. Prominent LN MP
Irene Pivetti, who served as president of the chamber of deputies in 1994,
left the party as a result of her opposition to Bossi's shrill secessionism
and founded a new party of her own, Italia Federale (Federal Italy).
In 1996 Italy managed to lower its public deficit, allowing the lira to
recover strength, and rejoined the European exchange rate mechanism (ERM).
But the economy grew at a rate of one per cent and, while the inflation
rate dropped to 3.4 per cent from 5.4 per cent in 1995, unemployment rose
to 12 per cent nationwide. (The situation was far more serious in the south,
where the general unemployment rate was 26 per cent, and the rate among
young people under twenty-five was 56 per cent.)
Jews have lived continuously in the Italian peninsula for over 2,000
years. Their treatment has differed according to the areas in which they
have lived. Times of relative tolerance and fruitful growth have alternated
with times of serious anti-Jewish prejudice.
From the middle of the sixteenth century onwards, the attitude of the popes
towards the Jews became more ambiguous. This culminated in 1555 with the
issuance of the Bull Cum nimis absurdum by Pope Paul IV, which marked
the beginning of a harsh policy towards Jews living in the Papal state,
with the closing of the ghettos, the exclusion of Jews from many cities
and villages, and forced baptisms.
Since the unification of Italy in 1861, Jews have had full civil and political
rights.
The Fascist era (1922-45) may be divided into three periods: up to 1938,
the regime was indifferent to the so-called "Jewish problem";
in 1938, anti-Jewish legislation deprived Jews of their rights; and in 1943-5,
the period known as the Salò Republic, the collaboration of the authorities
of Mussolini's Repubblica sociale italiana (Italian Social Republic) with
the Nazi occupation led to the deportation of 8,566 Jews from Italy and
Italian territories in the Aegean basin.
The 1970s saw a return to anti-Jewish prejudice both among the general population
and in the political arena. This was traced to the influence of the far
right and to the effects of anti-Zionism. The most violent anti-Jewish incident
was the attack by international terrorists on the Rome synagogue in October
1982 in which a child was killed and thirty-six people were injured.
The number of immigrants into Italy rose slightly in 1996. According
to the ministry of the interior, the number of foreigners legally resident
in Italy in 1996 was 1,095,622, an increase of 10.5 per cent from the previous
year. Of the total, 86.1 per cent were from non-European Union (EU) countries,
this being 1.7 per cent of the total Italian population; 77.8 per cent came
from developing countries, a rise of 17.5 per cent from the previous year.
Parliament discussed a law presented by the ministry for social solidarity
aimed at curbing and controlling immigration as well as aiding the integration
of immigrants into society.
The question of immigration was a hotly debated topic, both in official
and unofficial circles. The falling birth rate and ageing of the population
caused many to view the introduction of a labour force from other countries
as an increasing economic necessity. Still, the presence of "extra-communitary"
immigrants-extracomunitario is a term meaning immigrants from countries
outside the EU but which in practice is used to denote non-white people
from developing nations-was often viewed mainly as a law-and-order problem,
due to the participation of a small percentage of immigrants in criminal
activities, particularly in the spheres of small-time drug dealing and prostitution.
There was concern, too, at the continuing arrival of illegal immigrants
from Albania, whose transit across the Adriatic to southern Italian shores
was often arranged by criminal organizations.
There were few statistics available gauging racist attitudes in Italy during
1996. However, a number of violent incidents against foreigners were reported,
including several murders, assaults with deadly weapons and arson attacks.
Also, in several cities local citizens' groups organ-ized various types
of demonstrations against the presence of Roma (see below), against illegal
immigration in general and against the activities of both male (transvestite)
and female prostitutes from Third World countries.
A survey carried out in 1996 by the Osservatorio di Milano gathered data
from charity organizations, trade unions and from municipal foreigners'
offices in ten Italian cities about acts of violence carried out against
foreigners. In 365 documented cases of such violence, only 65 were judged
to be fruit of actual racist sentiments (and only 35 of these were found
to involve actual violence); 163 were common cases of crime, sometimes commit-ted
by other immigrants involved in organized crime; 84 were linked to poor
or unstable living conditions; and 53 resulted from difficulties involving
the victim's status as an exile or immigrant. Some 70 per cent of the victims
of the documented episodes of violence were found to be illegal immigrants
without residency permits.
Another opinion survey, conducted by a sociologist at Rome University, sampled
1,200 students in the last two years of high school, in the cities of Rome
and Palermo. The survey was about the image of prison and punishment: 23
per cent answered that they consider intolerance towards immigrants is legitimate.
There have been reports of abuse by the police, a high proportion of which
involve non-EU immigrants (mostly Africans) and Roma, and persons held in
connection with drug-related offences. Amnesty International (AI), the United
Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), the UN Committee Against Torture
and the Council of Europe's European Committee for the Prevention of Torture
reported instances in which police abused detainees. Examples of mistreatment
include kicking, punching, beatings with batons, or deprivation of food.
The UN Committee Against Torture and the UNHRC expressed concern over a
possible trend towards racism. Although complaints of mistreatment were
investigated, some of the investigations were found to lack thoroughness.
Racist attitudes were also manifested by militant football fans who hurled
abuse at black players on opposing teams and used racist insults against
fans from opposing teams in the stadiums. Sometimes these episodes erupted
into violence, which often was incited by groups of skinheads. In April,
two skinheads dressed in the hooded costumes of the Ku Klux Klan hoisted
a black puppet figure bearing the words "Negro go away" against
a member of the Verona football team, a black player from the Netherlands.
The two were arrested on charges of racist violence.
Roma face discrimination, including difficulty in finding places to stay.
The city of Rome opened three camps and was expected to open others. The
Roma population around Rome is between 5,000 and 6,500.
Several groups of fundamentalist Catholics in the Veneto region carried
out leaflet campaigns against Muslim immigration into Italy and against
what they considered to be an excessive openness towards immigrants on the
part of the official Catholic organizations, which they accused of being
communist.
The far-right AN, led by Gianfranco Fini, formed a key part of the Freedom
Alliance centre-right bloc, which went into opposition after the general
election in April (see GENERAL BACKGROUND). Formally established in January
1995, when the neo-Fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI, Italian Social
Movement) dissolved and reconstituted itself as a more respectable right-wing
party, AN still included among its ranks most of the members and leadership
of the MSI. The original MSI was founded in 1946 as the successor to the
dictator Benito Mussolini's then-outlawed Fascist Party. It merged with
another group in 1973 to become the Movimento Sociale Italiano-Destra Nazionale
(MSI-DN, Italian Social Movement-National Right) and remained on the far-right
fringes of mainstream politics until the early 1990s, when corruption scandals
undermined and then destroyed Italy's traditional political parties. Fini
steered the MSI-DN into a more moderate course that eventually led to the
foundation of AN. In the March 1994 general election, AN joined the victorious
Freedom Alliance coalition with Berlusconi's FI and Bossi's LN, and AN/MSI
members were included in Berlusconi's cabinet.
In the April election, most MPs were elected on a first-past-the-post majority
system, but some were elected on a proportional basis. Among this group,
AN received 15.7 per cent of the vote nationwide, with higher local percentages
in central and southern Italy. In one district of the central Lazio region,
AN received 30.9 per cent of the vote.
Without really abandoning the neo-Fascist origins of his party, Fini has
tried for several years to shift AN more to the centre and to imbue it with
the image of mainstream liberal conservatism. In this regard, an ideological
conference and seminar involving various liberal-right intellectuals was
held in June near Viterbo. Fini also continued efforts to organize a trip
to Israel, without success, as a means of demonstrating AN's repudiation
of antisemitism.
The AN political hierarchy officially toed Fini's line, but throwbacks to
the neo-Fascist past, xenophobic traditions and other anti-democratic attitudes
cropped up from time to time-and were not immediately put down by Fini.
These included the naming of streets, squares or parks in honour of personalities
from the Fascist era by AN members elected to municipal authorities. The
AN was also supported by certain more conservative far-right factions outside
the party proper. The tendency for AN leaders to accept all this could be
linked with their attempt to maintain their electorate and prevent hard-line
supporters from abandoning the AN and turning to the more radical right,
in particular the Movimento Sociale Italiano-Fiamma Tricolore (MSI-FT, Italian
Social Movement-Tricolour Flame).
The MSI-FT was formed by a small faction of neo-Fascist hardliners led by
former MSI leader Pino Rauti, who refused to accept the transformation of
the MSI into the AN and instead continued to support an undiluted neo-Fascist
agenda. In the proportional part of the April general election, the party
received 1.7 per cent of the national vote for the chamber of deputies and
2.3 per cent of the vote for the senate, with most of the vote from the
centre and south of the country. One MSI-FT candidate, from Sicily, won
a seat in the senate. Rauti also served as a member of the European Parliament.
On the political level, the party's main interest was its potential for
subtracting votes in central and southern Italy from the AN and thus from
the Freedom Alliance in general.
The MSI-FT also organized demonstrations against Third World immigrants
and against drug trafficking and prostitution by immigrants. Because of
these activities and also because of its loyalty to Fascism, the party served
as a reference point for a number of fringe groups of the radical right,
particularly in the centre and south of the country.
The panorama of non-parliamentary far-right organizations was extremely
fragmented and appeared to be undergoing a process of transformation. Organizations
known in the past have for the most part disappeared or were undergoing
sharp changes. This derived partly from the effects of the 1993 law against
racial, ethnic and religious discrimination, which led to the closing of
the offices of various organizations and in penal actions being taken against
many of their members, and partly from broader political and social changes
that included generational shifts and an increasing political detachment
of young people.
Far-right groups that once operated on a national or regional scale tended
to disintegrate, leaving numerous, tiny micro-groups in their wake. These
mostly acted as cultural associations and clubs whose influence was limited
to a single city or neighbourhood, or school or university. This particularly
became the case in Rome.
The passage to secrecy of those organizations that are prosecuted by law
did not happen, as it was feared, sometimes perhaps due to the loss of charisma
of party leaders, arrested for hooliganism or other "common crimes".
The break-up of the scene has changed the shape of the skinhead movement,
which until 1993 included about 1,000 members in groups based mostly in
the centre and north of Italy. These included: Movimento Politico Occidentale
(Western Political Movement); Base Autonoma; Veneto Fronte Skinheads; and
Azione Skinheads.
In 1996 Movimento Politico Occidentale and Base Autonoma seemed exclusively
to carry out actions commemorating anniversaries of Nazi personalities (bill-posting
or small rallies to honour Erich Priebke-see LEGAL MATTERS). Veneto Fronte
Skinhead and Azione Skinhead, which operate in Veneto and Lombardia, were
more active during the year. As well as arranging White Power music concerts,
members of the 200-strong Veneto Fronte Skinhead, led by Piero Puschiavo,
were also responsible for various acts of violence and racist activities
in streets and soccer stadiums (see also LEGAL MATTERS). One of the group's
members ran as a candidate for the MSI-FT in the April general election.
Individual far-right sympathizers also con-tinued to carry out attacks and
various other acts of violence and intimidation, and far-right groups among
soccer fans were also quite active. Skinheads and, more generally, youth
belonging to the radical right ran fan clubs supporting teams in many cities
(see RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA and CULTURAL AND SPORTING LIFE).
Also, a few better-known far-right groups continued to operate. Among the
best known was the Fronte Nazionale (FN, National Front), led by Franco
Freda, which was founded in 1990 to fight "racial mixing", "cosmo-politanism",
Zionism, influences from the United States and transnational finance. In
1995, Freda and forty-five other FN organizers or members were convicted
of trying to revive the Fascist party and were sentenced to jail terms of
various lengths. Nonetheless, L'Antibancor, the movement's economic and
financial periodical, continued to be published in 1996. Freda remained
head of Edizioni di Ar, the publishing house he founded, which has issued
numerous racist, antisemitic and Holocaust-denying publications (see PUBLICATIONS
AND MEDIA).
Another organization that continued its activities was the Alternativa Nazionale
Popolare (ANP, National Popular Alternative), successor to the Lega Nazionale
Popolare (National Popular League), which was founded in 1991 by neo-Fascist
militants who included members of the MSI-DN. Today the ANP operates mainly
in Rome and southern Italy, particularly in schools. In Rome, also, some
of the members of the ANP work with the MSI-FT.
On a completely different ideological orientation, the small fundamentalist
Catholic group Sodalizio Cattolico, based in Ferrara, was still in operation
(see RELIGION).
There were no overall statistics available for antisemitic manifestations
in Italy in 1996, but about fifty incidents of antisemitic behaviour were
reported in the media and elsewhere.
This represented a continuation of the trend showing a clear drop in reported
antisemitic incidents in recent years. This trend has been particularly
evident in Rome, where the far-right organizations traditionally responsible
for most of the episodes have scaled down their overall activity as well
as their concern with Jews and open expression of antisemitism. At the same
time, however, expressions of antisemitic attitudes among Roman Catholic
fundamentalists increased (see RELIGION).
The types of antisemitic episodes reported were similar to those in previous
years, consisting mainly of rare acts of violence, slogans written on walls,
threatening letters sent both to individual Jews and to Jewish organizations,
antisemitic attitudes expressed in the media, and antisemitic banners and
slogans in sports stadiums.
Among the most serious incidents was the beating of a twelve-year-old boy
on a street in Rome by four skinheads, who shouted antisemitic insults at
him without apparently knowing whether or not he was Jewish.
In March, antisemitic slogans were found on tombs in the Jewish cemetery
in Ascoli; in July, vandals pushed over three tombstones in the Jewish cemetery
in Merano (but it was not clear if antisemitism was a motivation); and in
December, vandals damaged thirteen tombstones, hung a sign saying "Arbeit
Macht Frei" on a tomb, and placed numerous swastikas in the Jewish
section of Rome's Prima Porta cemetery.
Despite tough measures taken by the police and judiciary to prevent violence
and intolerance in sports stadiums-in particular at football matches-militant
fans continued to spout racist insults and raise banners bearing racist
slogans against opposing teams. Sometimes these slogans were of an antisemitic
nature. In February, for example, before a match between the rival Rome
teams Roma and Lazio, groups of fans of each team unfurled banners with
antisemitic content against the other. One banner condemned Lazio as displaying
"the colours of the Jews"-a reference to its blue and white team
colours, similar to the Israeli flag. Other banners referred to teams having
"the stink of Jews". In another incident, before a match in November
between the rival teams Milan and Inter, some Milan fans raised a banner
against Inter supporters accusing them of being "a racist choir for
ten years, with blacks, Jews and mixed-bloods on the team". Also in
November, antisemitic slogans were found scrawled on a sports hall in Varese
before a bastketball match with an Israeli team.
This phenomenon had seemed to be on the wane in recent years, but that appears
to have been only a temporary lull. Using "Jew" as an insult against
fans of opposing teams has apparently now become entrenched.
As in 1995, 1996 saw very few cases of antisemitic prejudice expressed
in the mainstream national or local media. The few examples that did occur
mentioned the presumed power of the "Jewish lobby" or made particular
note of the Jewish identity of persons under judicial investigation.
Nonetheless, antisemitic material continued to be a regular feature in several
small-circulation political journals, most of them linked with far-right
circles or with Catholic fundamentalism (see RELIGION). Three of these publications
stood out: Avanguardia, Orion and L'uomo libero.
Avanguardia (Vanguard), a monthly founded in 1983, is edited by Leonardo
Fonte and is based in Trapani, Sicily (with two regional offices). It has
a monthly print-run of 1,000 copies. Its political line is anti-mondialist,
anti-Masonic, pro-Iran, and closely linked to the national-socialist experience
of the Se-cond World War, in particular to the Fascist Italian Social Republic
of 1943-5. It remains one of the most virulently antisemitic of the fringe
publications, and also promoted Holocaust denial. In the same vein as Avanguardia
, but even more marginal, was the monthly La sentinella d'Italia
(Italian Sentinel), a news-letter of a few pages founded in 1947 and
edited by Antonio Guerin.
Milan-based Orion (circulation 2,000), a monthly that includes political,
cultural and news articles, was founded in 1984 and is distributed mainly
in northern and central Italy but also in the south. Under the directorship
of Alessandra Colla, the magazine is associated with the Synergies européennes
network (see France). It considers itself "national-communist"
and seeks to collaborate with both the radical right and the radical left,
supporting a "red-brown" alliance between ultra-nationalists and
hard-line communists. It champions the safeguarding of cultural, religious
and traditional specificity, opposes mondialism and is also strongly anti-Zionist.
It also supports Holocaust denial. Recent articles expounded on the use
of the "myth" of the Holocaust as a basis for post-war Jewish
identity. It is published by the Società Editrice Barbarossa, which
also publishes books on similar topics.
L'uomo libero (Free Man), founded in 1980, is published by the Milan-based
Edizioni dell'Uomo Libero and edited by Piero Sella. It advocates the struggle
against mondialism and the multi-racial society; it is antisemitic and denies
the Holocaust. While it is meant to come out four times a year, only two
issues were published in 1996, at a time when one of its key contributors,
Sergio Gozzoli, and his son Marzio were defendants in a trial of sixty-three
skinheads charged with incitement to racial hatred (see LEGAL MATTERS).
One of these issues focused on Holocaust denial and included an international
bibliography of 1,200 publications on the topic.
Other far-right publications publishing antisemitic material were Controcorrente
(Countercurrent), distributed mainly in the Campania region, and Heliodromos
, 500 or so copies of which were published every few months by Edizione
Il Cinabro.
About fifty antisemitic books published in earlier years remained in print
and in the catalogues of small publishing houses, mainly linked to the far
right. These include: Edizione Il Cinabro of Catania; Edizioni dell'Uomo
Libero of Milan; the Società Editrice Barba-rossa of Milan; Edizioni
la Sfinge of Parma; Edizioni all'Insegna del Veltro of Parma; and Edizioni
di Ar of Padua (run by Franco Freda-see LEGAL MATTERS). Authors published
by these houses ranged from Nazi-era figures such as Adolf Hitler and Julius
Evola to contemporary writers such as Gianantonio Valli, Piero Sella and
Igor Shafarevich. In 1996 these books had a very limited circulation and
were sold primarily by post and in small bookshops run by far-right extremists.
A small left-wing publisher, Graphos, in Genoa, has also published several
Holocaust-denial works (see HOLOCAUST DENIAL), and the fundamentalist Catholic
La tradizione cattolica (see RELIGION) has put out a number of antisemitic
booklets on topics such as deicide, ritual murder and the influence of Jewish
Masonry on the church.
Also, two Italian Internet web sites existed that involved racism and antisemitism.
One was the site of the small Catholic fundamentalist group Sodalizio Cattolico
(see RELIGION), which, among other things, carried the texts of La tradizione
cattolica booklets. Another site was run by a committee pressing for the
abolition of the 1993 Mancino Law against inciting racial and religious
discrimination. Among other things, the site attributed the law to the "dictates
of the international oligarchy", in particular to the Anti-Defamation
League, as well as to the strong pressure of Italian Jewish authorities
on "the faint-hearted government".
There were few isolated examples of antisemitic material published by mainstream
publishers. These mainly appeared to involve the publication of foreign
fictional works in translation (including at least one mystery) that included
negative antisemitic stereotypes.
A traditionalist movement opposing innovations in the Roman Catholic
church wrought by the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s appeared to
gain strength in 1996, although the tiny fundamentalist groups involved
remained at the fringes of the Catholic church as a whole. These groups
ascribe the ills of modern society to a distancing of the population from
traditional religious principles and the yielding of the church, particularly
under Pope John Paul II, to the materialism of modernity. They demand a
return to "traditional" forms of prayer and also tend to espouse
an antisemitic, pre-Vatican II view of Jews and Judaism, including a resurrection
of myths such as deicide and ritual murder. These groups to one degree or
another reject the authority of Pope John Paul II and oppose current church
policy, particularly the Second Vatican Council's Nostra Aetate declaration
of 1965, which removed the characterization of Jews as "Christ-killers"
and opened the way for Catholic-Jewish dialogue. Current church policy towards
Jews, the traditionalist groups maintain, is the product of Jewish influence
in the church.
The only real religious group with an antisemitic bias is the fundamentalist
Sodalizio Cattolico (SC, Catholic Association), a small group based in Ferrara
that does not recognize the authority of the pope. Little is known about
the SC, but until the end of 1996 it had an Internet web site that linked
to the antisemitic and anti-Zionist Norwegian Internet publication Holy
War ("The Christian Brotherhood Holy War Against the Enemies of
God") (see Norway). Holy War , through a number of providers,
is reproduced in seven languages, including Italian. Among Holy War 's
Italian-language offerings was a seventeen-page article on ritual murder.
The SC web site also put users in contact with the Catholic periodical Sodalitium
(see below).
In November, SC organized a demonstration in the northern town of Trento
by about thirty people from Milan, Ferrara and Turin who handed out flyers
and collected signatures on a petition calling for the restoration of the
cult of Blessed Simonino of Trento. Simonino, a child, was murdered in Trento
in 1475, and the blood libel was raised against local Jews, who were accused
of killing him for ritual purposes. Simonino was revered as a martyr, and
a popular cult grew up surrounding his memory. The Roman Catholic church
banned this cult in 1965.
The journal Sodalitium was published four times a year by the Istituto
Mater Boni Consiglii in Verrua Savoia, near Turin, an institute founded
by a small group that broke away from the Fraternità sacerdotale
di San Pio X (Priestly Brotherhood of Saint Pius X) that now also has a
centre in France and was about to open a centre in Argentina (see France).
The Italian edition of Sodalitium , distribu-ted mainly in the centre-north
of the coun-try, had 3,000 subscribers in 1996 (a circulation approximately
1,000 copies larger than the French edition). Its political line mixes antisemitism
with anti-Zionism and opposition to Israel. It strongly opposed current
church policy towards Jews, and it regularly pub-lished articles on deicide,
on the connections between Freemasonry and Judaism, and on ritual murder
"as practised by the Jews".
La tradizione cattolica (Catholic Tradition), the bulletin of the
Italian branch of the Fraternità sacerdotale di San Pio X, was edited
in Rimini at the Priory of the Madonna di Loreto and espoused similar positions
as Sodalitium. It published articles on moral doctrine as well as
articles against mondialism and Freemasonry. In 1996 it ran articles that
referred to "Jewish masonry in the B'nai B'rith" and to the supposed
international power of the Jewish lobby (see PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA).
Other journals within the sphere of the traditionalist Catholic movement
that published anti-Jewish articles included: the monthly Chiesa viva
(Living Church) in Brescia, edited by Don Luigi Villa; the bi-monthly
Il silenzio di Sparta (Silence of Sparta), edited by Maurizio Blondet
and published by Edizione Il Minotauro of Milan; Ex Novo , founded
in Milan as a quarterly in 1995 and edited by Giulio Ferrari; and Teologica
, edited by Piero Mantero and founded in 1996 in Udine by Edizione Segno.
As in 1995, B'nai B'rith was a major theme in traditionalist and fundamentalist
Catholic journals in 1996. This stemmed in large part from extensive (and
favourable) reviews of the book Misteri e Segreti del B'nai B'rith (Mysteries
and Secrets of B'nai B'rith) by Emmanuel Ratier, which underscored the organization's
"great world power" (see also Belgium).
There was little information about how widespread Islamism, antisemitism
and anti-Israeli attitudes are among the scores of thousands of Muslim immigrants
in Italy.
In 1996, Holocaust-denial theories were to be found above all in books
and periodicals of the far right. Two small publishing houses in particular-Edizioni
di Ar, of Padua, and Edizi-oni la Sfinge, in Parma-have published books
denying the Holocaust, including translations of foreign authors as well
as works by the Italian Holocaust-denier Carlo Mattogno. Edizioni di Ar
published two denial works by Mattogno in 1996, Intervista sull'olocausto
(Interview about the Holocaust) and Dilettanti allo sbaraglio (Dilettantes
to the Slaughter) (see PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA).
In addition to these far-right publishers, the left-wing Graphos in Genoa
has published several Holocaust-denying works by Cesare Saletta and in 1996
published translations of Paul Rassinier's "The Lie of Ulysses",
Pierre Guillaume's "Jean-Claude Pressac, Alleged Demolisher of Holocaust
Revisionism" and Roger Garaudy's Les mythes fondateurs de la politique
israélienne (Founding Myths of Israeli Politics) (see France).
Graphos also published a book by Carlo Mattogno, Ras-sinier, il revisionism
olocaustico e il loro critico Florent Brayard (Rassinier, Holocaust
Revisionism and Their Critic Florent Brayard). Holocaust-denial theories
could also be found in journals such as Avanguardia, L'uomo libero and
Orion (see PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA).
These books and periodicals had a very limited circulation, but Holocaust-denial
theories also made an appearance in the national mainstream media, for the
most part through articles and editorials examining the phenomenon and criticizing
such views. Occasional letters to the editors of mainstream publications,
however, attested to the fact that some members of the public agreed with
these theories.
No national opinion polls were conducted on antisemitism in 1996. One small survey was carried out among a sample of university students in Rome after antisemitic slogans were were found written on walls of a university building. The results released by the end of the year were only partial, referring to a sample of 410 students. Of these, 89 per cent considered the scrawled slogans either simply a prank or the fruit of ignorance. Responding to a question on the Holocaust, only 8 per cent knew that the Jews killed by the Nazis numbered in the "millions", while 52 per cent said they numbered in the "tens of thousands" and 28 per cent said they numbered in the "hundreds of thousands". Responding to questions on their self-perception vis-à-vis race and racism, only 2 per cent considered themselves racists, and 5 per cent said that their racist feelings would depend on circumstances. But 55 per cent of the respondents said they would not give up their seat on a bus to a pregnant "extra-communitary" woman; 37 per cent said they would not give help to an "extra-communitary" person surrounded by a group of skinheads because "they weren't interested"; and 58 per cent said they wouldn't help such a person in that situation because they didn't want to get in trouble themselves. In addition, 20 per cent of the respondents said they would not share an apartment with someone from a different religion.
Numerous trials against skinheads took place in various Italian cities
in 1996. Among the most important was the trial in Milan of sixty-three
skinheads from the Milan branches of Azione Skinhead and Base Autonoma (see
PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS), who were charged with acts of violence
and with instigating racial hatred.
Among the defendants were Maurizio Boccacci, leader of the disbanded Roman
far-right group Movimento Politico Occidentale, and Sergio Gozzoli, a sixty-six-year-old
doctor on the editorial board of L'uomo libero (see PUBLICATIONS
AND MEDIA), who was accused of being one of the ideologists of the skinhead
movement. In a statement during the trial, Gozzoli, whose son Marzio was
also on trial, stated his opposition to "racial mixing" and said
Italy's Fascist-era antisemitic laws had been justified because international
Jewry had wanted the death of Fascism.
Also, in Verona, fifty-six members of the group Veneto Fronte Skinheads,
including their leader, Piero Puschiavo, were indicted for violation of
the law against racial, ethnic and religious discrimination. Their indictment
refers to a series of events that occurred in 1994 that included: distribution
of anti-immigration leaflets; use of Nazi symbols; and the celebration of
the anniversary of Hitler's birthday. Members of the group are expected
to stand trial in 1997.
In May an Italian businessman found guilty of making antisemitic remarks
was ordered to read twelve books about Judaism (including works by Hannah
Arendt, Raul Hillberg, Léon Poliakov and Jean-Paul Sartre), then
return to court to give an account of their content. The complaint against
the defendant had been lodged by a French businessman who had heard the
remarks, which were made around the time of the assassination of the Israeli
prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.
Former SS Captain Erich Priebke went on trial before a military court in
Rome on 8 May for his role in the March 1944 Nazi mass execution of 335
men and boys in the Ardeatine Caves south of Rome. The Nazis ordered the
massacre in reprisal for an Italian partisan attack that killed thirty-three
German soldiers. Seventy-five of the massacre victims were Jews.
Priebke, who had been extradited from Argentina to Italy in November 1995,
admitted killing at least two of the Ardeatine Caves victims. On 1 August,
the military court found him guilty of taking part in the massacre but not
punishable for the crime of multiple murder because of extenuating circumstances
and the statute of limitations. It thus ordered him freed.
This sentence triggered widespread anger, embarrassment and disapproval
in Italy, from top political figures down. Immediately after the sentence,
relatives of victims and their supporters, including many Jews, staged a
noisy demonstration inside and outside the courthouse, during which they
scuffled with police and physically blocked Priebke, his lawyers and the
judges inside. After eight hours, Italy's justice minister ordered Priebke
rearrested, technically to await a decision on a German request for his
extradition.
During the trial, civil plaintiffs had requested that the presiding judge,
Antonio Quistelli, be dismissed because of alleged openly expressed bias
towards Priebke. An appeals court rejected this request during the trial,
but after the trial, in October, the court of cassation ruled to accept
the request, thus annulling the verdict and ordering a retrial.
The Priebke trial received wide coverage in the Italian media and touched
off much debate about the role of the anti-Fascist resistance during the
war.
The media stressed that among the victims of the Ardeatine Caves massacre
were seventy-five Jews, and gave ample space to the recollections of relatives
of the victims and also to former deportees to concentration camps and to
their children, thus broadening the topic to encompass the Holocaust. But
this emphasis also tended to give the impression that the massacre was directed
primarily against Jews.
This element was very evident in the extensive coverage of the emotional
protest immediately after the verdict, whose participants were mostly Jews,
as well as in the declarations of shame by politicians after the sentence.
Before and during the trial, the media gave a high profile to comments on
the case by Jews, including the opinion expressed by the chief rabbi of
Rome, Elio Toaff, that Priebke should be held under house arrest. Toaff's
comment drew protest from within the Jewish com-munity, and this also received
ample media coverage.
After the verdict, voices began to be raised criticizing the legitimacy
of the justice minister having ordered Priebke to be rearrested. The minister
was accused of having little respect for the law and of having yielded to
the pressure of the crowd. Other criticisms were made against the Jews of
Rome who protested, and some commentators went so far as to accuse the minister
of ceding to the pressure of a "Jewish lobby".
The right-wing AN party supported the Priebke trial from the beginning,
but in September, after the verdict, three of its MPs (of their own accord)
presented a formal query to the justice ministry asking whether any measures
had been taken against the demonstrators who had battled with police and
barricaded the courtroom after the verdict.
On 30 November, some 300 people attended a conference in Rome in support
of Priebke. Speakers included Mario Consoli from the far-right periodical
L'uomo libero (see PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA), as well as Massimo Fini
and Piero Buscaroli, two journalists known for their sharp criticism of
Jews. The object of the conference was to show that the trial against Priebke
was an ideological trial, in direct continuation from the Nuremberg war
crimes trials, where, the speakers asserted, victors sat in judgment on
vanquished who were guilty of nothing worse than losing the war. Speakers
addressing the conference expounded on themes such as mondialism, Holocaust
denial and international Jewish lobbies. On 23 December, organizers of the
conference held a mass in Priebke's honour in a central Rome church, celebrated
by a priest who took part in the November conference.
Numerous demonstrations against racism took place in a number of Italian
cities throughout the year, and state, church and local authorities repeatedly
condemned antisemitism.
In March, officials including the prime minister, the president of the senate,
political party leaders and the auxiliary bishop of Rome attended a demonstration
in Rome held to honour the victims of terrorist bombs in Jerusalem. President
Oscar Luigi Scalfaro gave an emotional speech that included the words: "I
am a Jew alongside you. Every time that discrimination touches you or contempt
offends you, I am a Jew alongside you."
At the end of December, following the desecration of the Jewish section
of Rome's Prima Porta cemetery (see MANIFESTATIONS), the interior minister,
the mayor of Rome, the Rome chief of police and other officials atten-ded
a ceremony in the main synagogue. The Vatican's official spokesman also
issued a statement condemning the action. A few days later, during his speech
opening the judicial year, the prosecutor general at the Rome court of appeals
expressed "very great alarm" at the type of racist behaviour exemplified
by the desecration. In a later magazine interview, he also expressed concern
both at episodes of racism and antisemitism and at the weak response to
such incidents on the part of the public. He said it appeared to him that
"a latent and constant antisemitism is continuing".
In the cultural field, a growing number of exhibitions, theatrical productions,
television programmes, culture festivals, newspaper and magazine articles
and book publications brought knowledge of Jewish traditions, history and
contemporary reality to an increasingly broad public.
In 1996 there was a further slight decrease in manifestations of antisemitism
in Italy. The number of reported incidents was the lowest in recent decades.
This was due to a number of reasons, one being the fact that far-right groups,
whose members were generally responsible for "organized" antisemitic
actions in the past, were in a period of ideological and organizational
ferment in the wake of the 1993 Mancino Law against racial and religious
discrimination.
Also, for some years now, a much greater interest in Jews and Jewish themes
has been manifested in the mass media, popular culture and institutions.
On the one hand, this has helped contribute to a wider knowledge of Jewish
culture and history and to a greater sense of understanding and tolerance.
On the other hand, it has led to expressions of antisemitism among some
individuals and groups who attribute this high Jewish profile to the power
wielded by Jews in contemporary cultural, social and economic spheres. Some
of these people go so far as to equate Jews with the overall system. For
them, antisemitism and opposition to Jews are used as an assertion of their
opposition to the system as a whole.
© JPR 1997