Antisemitism unites right and left extremists,
by Karl Pfeifer Searchlight ITALY -February 2004
Karl Pfeifer, an Austrian Journalist who received last November in Vienna the Joseph Samuel Bloch Award for his unresting fight against anti-Semitism kindly submitted the following article for SPME.
The ideology of a transverse anti-capitalist front -uniting both left-wing and right-wing extremists -is hardly new in Italy, Germany or Austria. In Italy after the creation of the fascist puppet Republic of Salo, which lasted only 600 days from September 1943 until April 1945, the embattled Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini tried unsuccessfully to use anticapitalist demagogy to reverse the popular anti-fascist mood.
Since the 1960s, fascists in Italy have attempted time after time to create transversal fronts with misguided leftist elements. So far they have failed miserably. Now in Italy, Germany and Austria we are witnessing the rebirth of this old phenomenon, this time in the shape of an effort by extreme right-wing elements to involve itself with the so-called anti-imperialist camp.
Some ideologues of the anti-imperialist current claim that the fascist forces are only marginal and that one should not be afraid to make common cause with all those, who oppose the intrinsic imperialist and pro-US stance and who came from the far right, embraced „national Bolshevism” in the 1990s and eventually took an explicitly anti-fascist position.
On Saturday 13 December, a “big” demonstration organised in Rome by anti-imperialist groups in “solidarity with the Iraqi resistance” was scheduled to take place but on the day, only 400 people turned up for the planned march, according to the left-wing daily Il Manifesto, despite the fact that over 2,000 people had endorsed the appeal for the demonstration. Because of the small turnout, the march was replaced with a discussion in a school.
The demonstration failed for two key reasons. Firstly, because every left-wing party in Italy condemned this transverse front with the right-wing. And secondly, because the organisers mainly belonged to a self-proclaimed Trotskyite sect intent on attacking other left-wing groups.
An examination of the long list of supporters and sponsors of the 13 December demonstration, however, reveals the extent of the far-right’s efforts to penetrate and get a foothold inside the “Left”.
A significant sponsor of the demonstration outside Italy was none other than Paris-based Serge Thion, a notorious defender of the Holocaust-deniers Paul Rassinier and Robert Faurisson. Thion had his Holocaust denial book “Vérité Historique ou Vérité Politique?” (Historical Truth or Political Truth?) published in 1980 by the supposedly left-wing publishing house La Vieille Taupe (The Old Mole). The same publisher has also published books by the US left-wing linguistics theorist Noam Chomsky.
Thion later enlarged his book and, in 1984, had it published by the extreme right-wing German publisher Verlag der Freunde in Berlin. In April 2001, he was supposed to lecture at the planned Beirut conference of Holocaust deniers but was thwarted when the Lebanese Government banned the event.
Thion, who was fired from his job at the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) in November, is a frequent contributor to nazi websites.
That he can sponsor a demonstration like the one in Rome should be no surprise. Some leftists, because of their antagonism towards Israel and their visceral anti-Zionism, have no shame about associating with Holocaust deniers.
In the same way that nazis have to deny the Holocaust to whitewash Hitler and Nazism, some radical leftists evidently feel they have to deny the Holocaust to undermine the historic justification for the creation and existence of the state of Israel.
Another supporter of this section of the left and a signatory to the appeal for 13 December is Geneva journalist Alberto B. Mariantoni, a staunch Anti-American and a participant in the fascist Movimento Italia Sociale.
Meanwhile, a small galaxy of notorious fascists figure among the Italian supporters and sponsors of the Rome demonstration.
These include:
. • Enrico Galoppini, author of Fascism and Islam which was published in 2001 by the fascist publisher, al“ insegna del Veltro, and advocates an anti-Jewish alliance of Islamic fundamendalists and fascists.
. • Tiberio Graziani, a collaborator of the fascist publisher AR and a translator of fascist writers like Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. He also has had close links with the fascist Claudio Mutti, editor at all“ insegna del Veltro.
. • Miguel Martinez, who has published material in ORION, the journal of the right-wing extremist, Maurizio Murelli. ORION books touts Holocaust denial books, for instance, the infamous Leuchter Report and books by David Irving and Robert Faurisson.
. • Biaggio Cacciola, who has a long past in different fascist groups and who advocates what he calls “left-wing” fascism.
. • Maurizio Neri, who was arrested (1980) during the investigation into the fascist terror bombing of Bologna railway station, then became member of Fronte Nationale and is now the leader of a group called “Communitarists”, most of whose members are fascists and who advocate a transverse front with the left against the USA and Israel.
. • Alberto Ostidich, who advocates in the a turn to the “left” in the fascist journal Italicum and who claims to follow the tradition of Georges Sorel, the Hungarian Arrow Cross and the beginnings of Spanish Falangism. Ostidich“ s main arguments are drawn from Rinascita, another fascist paper: “There is only one enemy, the USA”.
. • Giorgio Vitali, a leading member of the fascist Rinascita Nazionale and, finally,
. • Luigi Tedeschi, the editor of the fascist journal Italicum.
The presence of people like this on a list supporting an ostensibly left-wing demonstration, should be a warning to the left as a whole.