By Sam Swerling. Paolo Di Canio, the manager of Sunderland AFC, has been castigated for giving the Roman salute when a player for Lazio FC in 2005 and for declaring he was once a “fascist”.
If he had been a communist and given a clenched fist salute no one would have raised an eyebrow.
A bit of historical truth is in order. Fascism died with Benito Mussolini in 1945. As a political doctrine it had some bad features – particularly when Mussolini made the fatal error of aligning himself with Adolf Hitler; but it also had some positive features, notably large-scale public works schemes, the occupational franchise and vertical syndicates. Franklin D. Roosevelt “borrowed” some of the doctrine in America’s ‘New Deal’ in the early 1930s and in 1965 George Brown, Deputy Prime Minister under Labour’s Harold Wilson, brought in the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, modelled very closely on the reconstruction programme in Italy under Mussolini.
Mussolini’s Lateran Treaty with the Vatican in 1929 was, and still is, considered a great diplomatic achievement and it is widely acknowledged that he played a leading part in postponing war by one year through the Munich Agreement of 1938.
Mussolini had numerous mistresses. One of them was the Jewish artist from Milan, Margherita Sarfatti, who was devoted to him and, of course, there were two Jewish founder members of the Grand Council of Fascists in 1922.
What does all this tell us? Much of the received wisdom handed down about the period is either false or much-exaggerated. What is clear for us in the British Democratic Party is that we reject all forms of dictatorship and support the widest implementation of democratic idealism.
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Fascist is a word bandied about by the ignorant when they really mean Nazi. People like the repulsive immigrant Margaret Hodge wouldn’t recognise fascism if it bit her on the bum.
I enjoyed listening to Sam at Conference and reading this short piece. Can we hear more from you Sam, you seem to be someone worth listening to?
I did too. As someone who was previously a Conservative Party member and a councillor for them I am hoping not only that he writes many more articles for this website but because of his previous party affiliation he will be able to persuade Tories that nationalism is not a ‘socialist’ philosophy that many of them wrongly think of it as and that there are other political options former Tories can join beside UKIP. Speaking for myself, I was also a former Conservative although I have always tended towards nationalism.
Paolo Di Canio did the Roman salute and there is uproar but nothing was said when the arch Marxist David Milliband was at the club.
Yes, there are sickening double standards with respect to ideologies which are BOTH totalitarian.