Long Live the Fascist?

Long Live the Fascist?

Yascha Mounk: Long Live the Fascist?

Yesterday, at a dinner party of left-wing Italians, a radical friend with a provocateur?s smile suggested a toast to Gianfranco Fini. Gianfranco, whose very name was chosen to honor a fascist ?martyr.? Gianfranco, who for decades has led the post-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, and then the Alleanza Nazionale. Gianfranco, who as late as 1994 pronounced, ?Mussolini was the greatest statesman of the century. There are periods in history when freedom isn?t one of the most important values.? But the toast did not provoke anybody. On the contrary. Eight left hands stretched out to clink glasses, and eight loud voices–fortified by the frequent anti-government protests of the last decades–called out in approving unison: ?Gianfranco Fini!?

How was this unlikely toast possible?

It was possible because two remarkable stories, one that gives reason to hope and one that gives reason to fear, dovetailed over the last days. One of these stories recounts the utter demise of a respectable, democratic Italian Right. Democrazia Cristiana, the grand old party of postwar Italy, had its serious flaws, from a deep-rooted culture of corruption to an excessive closeness to the Vatican. But it also stood for a substantive political program and genuinely aimed to safeguard a limited form of liberal democracy. On the whole, it was a stabilizing force in an imperfect but democratic political regime.

Then the established parties crumbled during a particularly shocking corruption scandal in the early 1990s, and Silvio Berlusconi became the new face of the Italian Right. Berlusconi did not only bring to the Right the disdain for all tradition that is often said to be typical of self-made men; he brought to the Right a disdain for all tradition befitting a man who made his fortune by using his dominance of the airwaves to make anew the aesthetic preferences, material aspirations, and shopping habits of ordinary Italians.

Berlusconi?s break with tradition also had a more immediate cause. The old class of corrupt rulers hoped to become rich by being in power. Democratic and even legal institutions served them well as long as they did not interfere with the long-accustomed flow of bribes. Berlusconi, on the other hand, ran for office when he realized that he needed political power to save his crumbling business empire from deep legal trouble. Lady Justice with one eye conspiratorially closed was still too clairvoyant for him. He set out to blind her other eye as well.

As a result, over the last two decades the Italian Right has become actively destructive of Italy?s democratic institutions. An ever-increasing portion of legislative activity is devoted to serve Berlusconi?s legal interests, Berlusconi?s economic interests, Berlusconi?s electoral interests, and so on, and so on. Elections, once a contest between different political programs, are now but a series of personal referenda on Berlusconi. The old Right?s fondness for a system that served its elites rather well has gone. In its place stands daily vitriol against Italy?s institutions, courts, and constitution.

Thus far the sad story. The other, more optimistic, story recounts the rebellion of those few Italian right-wingers who no longer want to participate in weakening the state and subverting the legal order. Fini now personifies this rebellion.

To succeed in bringing Italy?s post-fascist movement into the political mainstream, Fini had to pay particularly fervent lip service to the constitution. At some point along the road, that lip service has turned into true belief. Fini–who still has some extreme views on immigration, for example–has made it his mission to get Italy?s Right to embrace liberal democracy. So when the erstwhile center-Right, led by Berlusconi, started to hollow out democratic principles to protect its leader, Fini, an erstwhile man of the hard Right, refashioned himself as an eloquent defender of democracy.

With the Left in disarray, Italian politics has, over the last months, been dominated by the increasingly bitter rivalry between Fini and Berlusconi–in other words, between the democratic Right and the destructive Right. Fini spoke out against laws custom-made to suspend court cases against Berlusconi and to curtail the professional prerogatives of journalists. Berlusconi, utterly intolerant of dissent within his own ranks, viciously attacked Fini. In the end, they even had a shouting match on live TV.

Such hatred between two key members of the government might quickly have led to new elections–had they not, a bare two years ago, merged their old parties to form a common political platform, the suitably Orwellian Popolo della Libertà, or ?People of Freedom.? As a result, Fini, though increasingly principled in his defense of Italy?s institutions, shied away from a clear break with Berlusconi: he feared that an exit from their common party would leave him without an institutional power base. Berlusconi and the destructive Right would then be all that is left.

Berlusconi, not Fini, ultimately put an end to this untenable situation. Less than a week ago, in the manner of a dictator denouncing traitors, he in effect expelled Fini and his followers from the party they had created together. Fini responded with an impressive press conference in which he called Berlusconi ?illiberal? and announced the formation of an autonomous parliamentary group. Henceforth, he would decide which government projects to support according to principle, not one man?s vested interest.

It is, in good part, Fini?s admirable performance over the last days that has earned him such enthusiastic good will among the Left. But, unlike my friends at the dinner party, I did not toast Fini. Not yet. Fini did not jump to oppose Berlusconi–he was jumped. Before he gains my confidence, he needs to show that he has the courage to act on his own principles of his own free will.

Fini?s first opportunity to demonstrate that he wants to play this important role will come as soon as tomorrow. Giacomo Caliendo, the government?s junior minister of justice, is being investigated for participation in an illegal Masonic lodge, nicknamed ?P3?–a predecessor of which, ?P2,? once pondered an anti-democratic coup and helped pave Berlusconi?s own way to money and power. The opposition has tabled a vote of no confidence on Caliendo. Fini and his followers have not yet announced how they will vote. If Fini votes for Caliendo, he will cede his moral high ground and soon be forgotten. If he votes against Caliendo, it could be the end of Berlusconi. Fini would then become the rightful leader of Italy?s democratic Right.

I would never vote for Fini. Yet I hope that, by week?s end, I too will enthusiastically toast a former fascist.