Dutch far-right party FvD and its critics

This 10 December 2018 video says about itself:

Italy’s Fascist Resurgence (Subtitled)

Fascism is on the rise in Italy and is attracting people of all ages. Forza Nuova is the most radical right-wing movement and is rapidly gaining ground, sowing the seeds of intolerance and violence.

In the hills of Italy is a summer camp for kids. The theme? Fascism. 21-year-old Forza Nuova member Giorgia Pagiliuca helps out at the camp. “A lot must change”, she says. “Our country doesn’t help anyone unless they’re immigrants.”

The immigration crisis coupled with the financial crash led to the election of a nationalist government. “There’s a need for a clean-up”, states Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. “Heavy-handedly, if necessary.”

Helping immigrants has become a dangerous business. Don Massimo Biancalani converted his convent to house 100 migrants, but after a seemingly innocuous photo went viral, he has come under fire. “When Salvini posted the picture on his page, and wrote that I am an anti-Italian priest, thousands and thousands of insults ensued in the following days. Even death threats.”

Not far away lies the town of Predappio, Mussolini’s birthplace and burial site, now a place of pilgrimage for tens of thousands of fascists. “[They] feel it was better when Mussolini was around”, says Mayor Giorgio Frasinetti. With violence against migrants on the rise, many are deeply concerned for Italy’s future.

In the Netherlands, there is the FvD party, led by Thierry Baudet. Baudet went to France especially to hear anti-Semite politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. In Amsterdam, he had a long talk with United States neonazi Jared Taylor. Recently, he went to Spain for a rally of the Spanish Franco dictatorship-loving Vox fascists.

By Harm Zonderland in the Netherlands:

Far-right party wins most votes in Dutch provincial elections

30 March 2019

On March 20, provincial councils were elected in all of the 12 provinces of the Netherlands. The most significant outcome of the election was the entrance into the Senate of the Forum for Democracy (FvD), led by Thierry Baudet. The far-right, near-fascist party won 12 out of 75 seats.

It is still uncertain how many seats in the Senate each party will get. The prognosis of 12 seats is based on expecting that all provincial assembly members will vote for their own parties. But that does not always happens in the Netherlands.

The FvD was elected into the House of Representatives for the first time in 2017, when it won two out of 150 seats. In a statement made after the provincial elections Baudet issued a message to prime minister Mark Rutte: “You can no longer ignore the FvD.”

It was the first time that the FvD was running in the provincial elections, and it was among the top three parties in all the provinces. It is the strongest party in Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland, where the capital Amsterdam, the harbor of Rotterdam and the political center in The Hague are situated.

The FvD’s political agenda includes a call for closing the borders. It has been able to capitalize on the xenophobia stoked up by the rightwing-liberal VVD of prime minister Rutte and the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders.

Dutch daily De Volkskrant, 29 March 2019, has an article on the FvD’s ideas. They want to ban founding new mosques and Islamic schools.

On the same nationalistic grounds, the FvD proposes to leave the European Union. Furthermore, FvD’s leader Thierry Baudet is a so-called “climate change denier”. He was able to gain some working-class support by criticizing government spending on renewable energy rather than on healthcare.

Working-class FvD supporters hurt themselves. In parliament, as the Volkskrant article points out, FvD votes against less expensive rent for housing low-income people. They also vote to make it easier for bosses to sack workers and expand zero-hours contracts. They vote for privatizing healthcare.

In an election debate, Baudet claimed to want more money for education. But the Volkskrant article points out that in parliament, FvD voted against less stress-causing work and more pay for primary school teachers.

FvD wants right-wing schoolchildren to spy on ‘left-wing’ teachers, and denounce them to police and FvD leadership; like the Hitler Youth did in 1930s nazi Germany.

Voter turnout was higher, at 56 percent, than in the previous provincial elections in 2015 when 48 percent of those eligible voted.

The media concentrated their attention on a major consequence of the provincial elections: the composition of the Senate, the First Chamber of Parliament, that is elected by the provincial councils.

While the Senate is to be elected in the coming three weeks, it is already clear the government coalition has lost its small majority. The coalition parties, the right-liberal VVD, the liberal D66 and the Christian democratic CDA, with the exception of the latter, have lost seats.

No, the CDA did lose seats. The exception among the four coalition parties was the smallest of them, the Christian Union, winning one seat (probably, if provincial assembly members vote as expected, like I mentioned).

To get legislation passed through the Senate, the government coalition now has to seek support from opposition parties. Mark Rutte commented: “We will make sure we get majorities. It means a lot of coffee and even more phone calls.”

GroenLinks has eagerly expressed its willingness to co-operate. Its nine senators would be enough for a majority. GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver said: “Last week the government made promises on climate olicy. We will hold them to those promises.” Other parties, like the social-democrats of the PvdA and the right-wing PVV, have made certain demands that are to be met if the government coalition seeks their support.

The main winner of the election is the FvD. Like all fascist parties, both historically and at present, FvD puts forward an extreme right-wing agenda, serving the interests of their capitalist allies and benefactors. They combine nationalism and xenophobia with demagogic promises on issues such as healthcare and education.

Baudet appeals to nationalist sentiments and proposes xenophobic, anti-immigrant policies, using the same methods as Donald Trump with his “America First” rallies and his rants about “immigrant invasions”. While the entire political establishment is planning to place the financial burden of the energy transition on the backs of workers, FvD calls for ending investment in renewable energy resources, claiming that they are “too expensive”.

In addition, Baudet profits from popular discontent with the national government. After decades of austerity and “crisis management,” originally initiated by the social democrats of the PvdA, people have had enough of cuts to social programs, pensions and wages. Baudet publicly denounces the political elite and the “jobs carousel” or “old boys’ network”, appealing to the anger about the political establishment.

However, the political establishment has nothing to fear from Baudet’s denunciations, as those are just for the public. He has gathered a base of supporters in the capitalist class and affluent middle class—by portraying himself as well off and culturally literate, and by referring to art, culture and history in his speeches. In his victory speech, referring to climate policy, Baudet proclaimed: “The Owl of Minerva has come down, to dispel the idol called Transition.”

The rise of fascist tendencies within the ruling circles can be seen in several European countries, from Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD), to Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party and the Dutch Forum for Democracy , but also in the Americas. In Brazil, the recently elected president Jair Bolsonaro is known for his anti-immigrant views, his open admiration of the Brazilian military dictatorship, and his pledges to transnational corporations and the “free market”.

In the US, President Trump openly declared class war by claiming that the “twilight hour of socialism” has arrived, and vowing, “America will never be a socialist country.”

When social democratic parties, Greens, so-called “socialist” and other pseudo-left parties disappoint and betray the working class time and time again, people look for an alternative. And since there is no visible left-wing alternative, some voters stumble into the trap of voting for right-wing parties.

Over 500 Dutch academics signed this letter:

We, educators and researchers working at Dutch universities and research institutes, applied universities and research institutions, are alarmed at the recent actions and statements of the political party, Forum voor Democratie (FvD), and their party leader Thierry Baudet.

With this letter, we heed the message of the minister of Education, who expressed her indignation at Baudet’s attempts to cast universities as suspect institutions and who has called for the protection of academic freedom. We also join university students, teachers, and academics who have expressed their concerns about Baudet and FvD’s position on universities and schools.

In his post-election speech last week, Tuesday, Baudet claimed that ‘our boreal world’ was being ‘destroyed’ and ‘undermined’ by ‘our universities, our journalists, and those who receive our arts subsidies and design our buildings.’ Such statements are meant to conjure up a conspiratorial atmosphere in which academics, journalists, artists and architects are not only seen as suspect. They are deemed guilty of the ‘destruction’ of our society, and portrayed as the enemy of the people.

These statements are especially worrying because the FvD is attempting to put Baudet’s rhetoric into practice by opening the ‘meldpunt indoctrinatie op scholen en universiteiten’ (hotline for reporting indoctrination at schools and universities). They have called upon individuals to report ‘biased tests, politically tinted exam questions, one-sided textbooks, oikophobic projects, and prejudiced teachers.’ Given the strong interest Baudet expresses in dismissing climate science and promoting history based on national pride, it is clear that this initiative is not genuinely interested in reducing bias in academic institutions. Rather, it is interested in selectively discounting knowledge that does not fit its political and ideological aims.

Yet, all this takes place in a context where the latest nation-wide investigation into academic freedoms, conducted by the KNAW, concluded that there is no danger of auto-censorship due to a lack of diversity in political views within Dutch academia. Rather it revealed that the main potential threat to academic freedom came from political and economic interests external to academia.

Recent international examples show us how universities are put at risk and academic freedoms are infringed upon as a result of the rise of right wing populism.

Dear letter authors: unfortunately, like many othrers, you misuse the word ‘populism’.

From Bolsanaro in Brazil to Trump in the US, from Orban in Hungary to Erdogan in Turkey. We witness how watchlists of ‘suspect’ academics, public discrediting of scientific knowledge, and political attacks on institutional funding for education and research are used as methods to close down spaces for critical debate, further marginalize minorities and women, and consolidate the power of authoritarian parties.

This is why we as academic staff at universities must be careful to recognize and respond to such developments in the Netherlands clearly: our society will not tolerate any political infringement on the freedom to conduct critical academic research and education.

Are you an academic employee at a hogeschool, university or research-institute in the Netherlands and would you like to add your signature, please send an email to bezorgdeacademici@gmail.com

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Did Berlusconi murder witness of his underage sex?

From ANSA news agency in Italy:

Ruby witness Imane Fadil dies

Murder probe opened

Milan, March 15 – A Moroccan-origin model who was a key prosecution witness in the ‘Ruby’ underage prostitute trials involving ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi has died after claiming to have been poisoned.

A murder probe has been opened, police said.

They said she had died after a “month of agony”.

She was awake until the end despite progressive organ failure. Imane Fadil, 34, died March 1 at the Humanitas Clinic at Rozzano near Milan where she had been admitted at the end of January.

She told her relatives and lawyer that she was afraid she had been poisoned.

Berlusconi was cleared of paying for sex with an underage prostitute

on appeal, after having been convicted in another court earlier

after judges said he did not know Ruby was a minor.

He has since been embroiled in cases of allegedly bribing witnesses to lie about the real nature of his bunga bunga sex parties.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

Italian media report that a mixture of radioactive substances has been found in Fadil’s blood. …

According to the Italian press, Fadil was working on a book about her experiences at Berlusconi’s controversial parties. The public prosecutor is said to have a copy of the manuscript.

Big anti-racism march in Italy

This Associated Press video says about itself:

(2 Mar 2019) Tens of thousands of people marched in Italy’s financial capital on Saturday against policies by the populist

Once again: stop abusing the word ‘populist’ as an euphemism for ‘far right’.

government that they say promote racism.

The Milan city official in charge of migrant policy, Pierfrancesco Majorino, put the number of marchers under the banner “People First” at 200,000. He wrote on Twitter: “Salvini, count us,” aimed at the leader of the Northern League political party Matteo Salvini, who as Italy’s interior minister has blocked the arrival of humanitarian ships that have rescued migrants fleeing Libya.

Demonstrators Daniela Antonini, from Milan, and Armando Vassant, from Rome, said they joined the protest to defend the rights of others. The demonstration, which finished in front of the Duomo cathedral, had a festival mood with bongo drums, trumpets and DJ music.

By Marianne Arens:

Milan, Italy: 200,000 march against racism

11 March 2018

Around 200,000 people demonstrated last Saturday in Milan, Italy against the policies of the right-wing coalition government of Lega and the Five Star Movement (M5S) that close ports to immigrant vessels, let people drown in the Mediterranean and, with new laws, drive tens of thousands of immigrants into illegality.

The protest organizers estimate that nearly a quarter-million participants assembled in front of Milan Cathedral. Demands and slogans on colourful, hand-painted signs and banners read: “We all have the same blood,” “The world belongs to all,” “Stop racism” and: “Protect the people, not the borders”. Migrants who have to work as harvesters in Calabria carried posters with the inscription: “Stop exploitation”.

Many participants came in carnivalesque costumes, some in Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio (M5S leader) masks. There were also several floats depicting migrants dying in the Mediterranean Sea. The motto of the demonstration, “First the people”, was directed against the battle cry of Minister of the Interior and Lega boss Matteo Salvini, “Prima gli Italiani” (Italians first). The protest was organised by an association of six social organisations and NGOs and supported by the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala.

Sala is part of a network of mayors who reject the racist Salvini decree because they consider it unenforceable in their municipalities (Palermo, Naples, Florence, Milan and other major cities). In these Italian cities, opposition to the government is growing, and around 1,200 initiatives, NGOs, district groups, etc., publicised the Milan demonstration on the internet.

The organisers avoided any speeches at the demonstration, instead inviting singers, musicians and DJs to perform. At the end of the rally, they played Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power.”

Nevertheless, several prominent politicians from the so-called “centre-left camp” appeared on the sidelines of the rally to give interviews to the media in which they tried to present themselves as spokesmen for a “new left.”

“This is where the reconstruction of the Left begins”, claimed Mayor Giovanni Sala, himself an “independent” member of the political camp of former Democratic Party (PD) leader Matteo Renzi.

Also present at the rally were Maurizio Landini, head of Italy’s largest trade union, CGIL; governor of Tuscany, Enrico Rossi; and the previous and the new PD chairmen, Maurizio Martina and Nicola Zingaretti.

Zingaretti, who is also president of the Lazio region, was elected as the new leader of the PD after winning 70 percent of the over 1.5 million votes, and several journalists have already celebrated him as “the face of the other Italy”, who, they claim, will lead the resistance from below against the right-wing government.

…

Until last year, the PD held the leadership position in government under then-leader Matteo Renzi. It was Renzi’s interior minister, Marco Minniti (PD), who initiated the current racist course in Italy. Under Renzi and Minniti, the Mediterranean was completely sealed off and a deal was made with the Libyan Coast Guard to return migrants against their will, back to Libya where they are subjected to inhumane conditions, beatings, rape and starvation. It was also the Renzi government that began to put pressure on the sea rescue NGOs to illegalise rescue missions.

As a result of its social attacks on the working population, the Renzi government was so discredited in the end that the ultra-right Lega, supported by Beppe Grillo’s Five-Star Movement, was able to take power last June.

Significantly, Zingaretti owes part of his popularity as an opposition leader to the fact that his older brother, who looks like him, is the popular TV star Luca Zingaretti in the TV series “Commissario Montalbano.” This suggests that the current prestige of the new PD chairman is based on a misunderstanding and has little depth.

In fact, Italy is a deeply divided country, and the PD is just as responsible for this as the right-wing parties that now run the government.

Five million Italians live in total poverty, three times as many as 11 years ago, before the recession that began in 2008. At the same time, Forbes figures released on Tuesday have revealed the gigantic fortunes of the five richest Italians: Nutella king Giovanni Ferrero (US$22.4 billion), Luxottica founder Leonardo Del Vecchio ($19.8 billion), pharmaceutical entrepreneur Stefano Pessina ($12.4 billion), fashion designer Giorgio Armani ($8.5 billion) and the former head of government and media entrepreneur, Silvio Berlusconi ($6.3 billion).

“We have abolished poverty,” boasted Social Affairs Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio, who is also head of the Five Star Movement, last Wednesday. The reason for this was the introduction of the Reddito di Cittadinanza (citizen’s income). As of March 6, Italians may apply for the promised €780 a month.

However, this step will quickly lead to disillusionment among the needy. People will soon find out that the citizen’s income is nothing more than a bad version of the hated German Hartz IV system. Only Italians who declare themselves immediately available for work and who meet the impossibly strict examination of their income and assets will be entitled to receive the wage, while non-Italians are excluded.

Recipients of citizen’s income must accept one of three job offers, even if the offer forces them to travel 50 kilometres to work. The citizen’s income is booked on a special cheque card, which can only be used for cash withdrawals of up to €100 at a time and is limited to a maximum of 18 months. In addition, only those who are prepared to do at least eight hours of community service a week receive money. In the case of “abuse” of the benefit, they face severe punishment with up to six years imprisonment.

The most recent demonstration in Milan—like the one in Rome on February 9, in which workers, pensioners and school children demonstrated on a grand scale—shows that in Italy, as in the rest of the world, resistance is growing and the class struggle is reawakening.

French-Italian oil war in Libya

This 20 February 2019 video says about itself:

🇫🇷 🇮🇹 France-Italy railway construction exposes political rifts | Al Jazeera English

Costing nearly $10 million, it will be one of Europe’s most expensive train lines once finished and Brussels considers the transport corridor between Lyon in France and Turin in Italy important for Europe.

But leaders in Italy’s Five Star Movement, evoking the “yellow vest” protesters besieging French President Emmanuel Macron, have called it a waste of money and have said it is not what ordinary citizens need.

Macron, for his part, called new populist parties, of which the Five Star Movement is one, a form of political leprosy.

Thousands of locals in Italy are determined to see the project abandoned

As in Italy, construction companies often mean mafia; like they mean yakuza in Japan.

This is also a conflict within the Italian government. The far-right Lega supports the construction (as their ‘hero’ Mussolini ‘made the trains run on time’). The Five Star movement opposes it.

and diplomatic relations between the two countries have continued to unravel; although machines continue to work on the trans-Alpine railway, they may be digging a tunnel to nowhere.

Al Jazeera’s David Chater reports.

By Marianne Arens:

French-Italian proxy war in Libya

26 February 2019

There are concrete material interests behind the sharp tensions between France and Italy, which in February led to France recalling its ambassador in Rome. In Libya, where dozens of rival militias have been fighting for supremacy since the 2011 NATO war, the two EU members are conducting a proxy war over control of Africa’s largest oil and gas resources.

While Italy backs the Government of National Accord (GNA) of Fayez al-Sarraj in Tripoli, which is also supported by Germany and the UN, France has sided with the National Army of Libya (LNA) of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who presides over its counterpart in Tobruk. Egypt and Russia also back Haftar.

That this war is about oil interests and strategic influence in Africa is an open secret.

The “national accord government” of Fayez al-Sarraj, which has little influence outside the capital, controls the National Oil Company of Libya (NOC), in which the Italian energy group ENI has been involved for half a century. Italy has reopened its embassy in Tripoli and, together with the EU, is financing the GNA Libyan Coast Guard as Europe’s proxy border force to keep migrants away from Europe.

Haftar’s LNA had already brought the so-called oil crescent around Benghazi in the east of the country under its control last summer. In early February, it also took control of the oil fields in the southwest of the country, including the El Sharara oil field, considered the largest in the country.

The El Sharara field was occupied late last year by security personnel and local people protesting against the unity government in Tripoli and demanding higher wages and an adequate regional share of the oil revenues. It has been operated since 1994 by a joint venture of several international oil companies, in which, in addition to the Austrian OMV, France’s Total also participates.

Haftar is supported militarily by France. A paper by the government-related German Foundation for Science and Politics (SWP) states that France has “lent political—and most likely other forms—of support to Haftar’s operation in the south, and prevented its Western partners from issuing joint statements on the issue.”

Officially, Paris justifies its support for Haftar with the fight against Islamist militias in the Sahel zone. As part of Opération Barkhane, the former colonial power France has been involved for several years, with more than 4,000 troops, in the five Sahel countries of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad. The operation is also supported by Britain and Estonia, and works together with the German Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) in Mali.

A French government advisor had previously complained about the high cost of the operation and said that the only way to bring it to an end was to stabilize Libya. That is why the French government has opted for Haftar.

According to the Swiss daily Tribune de Genève, an army spokesman for Field Marshall Haftar also said, “We had a common interest, which is combating terrorism. France wanted to pursue terrorist groups in our neighbouring countries from the south, such as Chad, Mali and Niger, where these groups are heavily spread.”

However, many observers are convinced that France is primarily concerned with oil interests, and that the competition between Italy and France on this issue is the main reason for the ongoing civil war in Libya.

As Mohammed al-Diari, foreign minister in the Tobruk parliament from 2014 to 2018, explains in an interview with the Tribune de Genève, informed circles in Libya attributed the armed conflict to “the rivalries between the Italian group ENI and Total.” In general, “the question of oil resources is very sensitive.” Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, a former member of the Transitional Council in 2011, told the newspaper, “There will be no peace and stability in Libya unless the international community reaches consensus.”

The NATO bombing campaign of 2011, which was mainly based on the initiative of France, was not about human rights, but about oil and gas, access to Africa and control of the Maghreb. The bloody price for this is still being paid today by the people of Libya, who, eight years on, are still suffering from the civil war between rival criminal militias armed and financed by their imperialist backers.

In the last bloody conflict over Tripoli at the end of August 2018, 115 people lost their lives and 25,000 people became homeless due to the destruction of entire neighbourhoods, according to official sources.

France and Italy are not the only neo-colonial actors in the region. Germany, the US and Britain are also trying to defend their respective interests and expand their influence.

The US has repeatedly tried to relocate its AFRICOM centre, previously based in Stuttgart, to Libya. Washington is primarily seeking to stop China’s economic advance in Africa. The United States also wants to consolidate its alliance with friendly Arab states in order to curb Iran’s growing influence. Flying from Sicily, US forces repeatedly carry out bombing attacks against Libyan cities, allegedly to destroy positions of ISIS or al-Qaeda.

The German government is determined to make up for the “mistakes” of its 2011 foreign policy, when it did not participate in the Libyan war, and wants to exert influence in Africa itself. The Bundeswehr is already involved in operations around Libya—in Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan,
South Sudan and the Mediterranean.

In the hypocritical language of diplomacy, the already-cited study by the German Foundation for Politics and Science (SWP) recommends that Berlin cautiously distance itself from al-Sarraj, because Haftar is increasingly gaining influence. “Western states would also have to revisit their support to the GNA if the latter becomes engaged in an escalating struggle with Haftar.”

A central challenge in negotiating such a turnaround was the disunity of Western governments in Libya, in light of “the diplomatic spats between Italy and France, for which Libya is one arena; and the unilateral French support for Haftar’s southern operation.”

Italian demonstration against right-wing government

This Associated Press video says about itself:

(9 Feb 2019) Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Rome to protest against a budget reform that was approved by the Italian Lower Chamber and Senate in December 2018. The demonstration was organised by three Italian trade unions, bringing people from all over the country to the capital city.

By Marianne Arens:

Italy: Mass demonstration in Rome against right-wing government

14 February 2019

On Saturday, February 9, the first major national demonstration against the right-wing government of Lega and the Five-Star Movement took place in Rome. According to the organizers, 200,000 participants marched through Rome under the slogan “A future for work”. The three trade union umbrella organizations CGIL, CISL and UIL had called the protest.

… The large number of participants shows that the international class struggle is also awakening in Italy. The march was supported by angry workers, retirees and groups of school students who wanted to fight the government’s right-wing course. Some of the banners read: “Hands off pensions”, “Less state [attacks] against social networks—more welfare state”, and “stop racism”.

…

The Conte government, which took over government in June last year, is the most right-wing Italian government since the fall of the fascist regime of Mussolini in 1945. It is pursuing a chauvinist, xenophobic course, expanding the military and the police state and driving tens of thousands of migrants into illegality.

The government wants to begin paying its so-called “citizens income” shortly before the European elections in May. However, this is far from providing an unconditional basic income for all, as was promised in the general election campaign. Like the Hartz IV welfare and labour “reforms” in Germany, the “citizens income” of €780 maximum, which applies only to Italian citizens, serves the state as a whip to force the needy to undertake any work offered and to lower wages overall. As a result, the government has met with increasing resistance among working people.

…

Together with these union bureaucrats and representatives of former PD governments, employers and a president of the business association Confindustria also participated. Ermanno Bellettini, head of Confindustria in Romagna, criticized the government’s halting of several projects, such as oil and gas exploration off the coast of Italy, justifying the collaboration with the unions by saying, “We too are equally concerned.”

…

These were not the words of a representative of the working class but of the Italian ruling class. The close partnership of the three big trade union federations—CGIL, CISL and UIL—with representatives of Italian capital and the PD camp has a long tradition. It made possible the social attacks of earlier governments and paved the way for today’s Lega/Five-Star government.

In a TV interview in 2016, former Prime Minister and EU Commissioner Mario Monti confirmed the crucial role the unions played in the introduction of the hated Fornero pension reform, reversing in one fell swoop the old-age security that Italian workers had fought for after the fall of fascism in 1945. When he introduced the pension reform by decree in December 2011, union leaders did not seize the opportunity for social revolt. “No other country has implemented such a drastic pension reform so easily”, Monti gleefully noted.

The rise of the Five-Star movement from nothing is a result of this class collaboration …

… As long as they suppress the working class’s preparedness to fight and divert it into the dead end of class collaboration, the right-wing can benefit from growing disappointment and anger.

This was shown the day after the demonstration in Rome, in the results of the regional election in Abruzzo, which had been shaken by devastating earthquakes in 2009 and 2016. The right-wing camp won the election with 49 percent and its top candidate, Marco Marsilio of the fascist Fratelli d’Italia, is the new regional president.

The Lega, which supported Marsilio’s candidacy, was the strongest single party, with 27.9 percent. In contrast, the votes of the Five-Star Movement halved. At 19.3 percent, it did not receive half as much as in the last regional election in 2014 (40 percent). The so-called “centre-left” alliance under the leadership of the Democratic Party (PD) received only 31.2 percent, the PD alone just 11 percent.

A year ago, Beppe Grillo’s Five-Star Movement had risen to become the country’s strongest single party. It won the parliamentary election in 2018 with almost a third of the vote. But despite claiming to be “neither right nor left”, it entered a governing coalition with the far-right Lega, who have used it as a stepping-stone for its further advancement. Meanwhile, the Lega is by far the strongest single party.

French-Italian conflict on Libyan oil

This 4 September 2018 video says about itself:

Oil, so much oil… France & Italy battle for influence in Libya

Some 400 people have reportedly escaped from a prison in a suburb of the Libyan capital Tripoli. The area has been engulfed in heavy infighting between rival militias for days. A state of emergency has been imposed in the city.

Read more here.

By Alex Lantier in France:

France recalls its ambassador to Italy

8 February 2019

Yesterday, for the first time since World War II, the French Foreign Ministry announced the recall of its ambassador in Rome. … The communiqué made clear, however, that far broader international conflicts are involved.

“For several months,” it wrote, “France has been targeted with repeated accusations, unfounded attacks, and outrageous declarations that everyone knows and recalls. It is unprecedented since the end of the war. To have disagreements is one thing, exploiting them for electoral purposes is another. The latest interventions constitute a further and unacceptable provocation.”

While calling for “a relationship of friendship and mutual respect” between France and Italy, it added: “All these actions have created a grave situation that raises questions as to the intentions of the Italian government in its relations with France. In light of this unprecedented situation, the French government has decided to recall the French ambassador to Italy for consultations.”

Paris’s recall of its ambassador—a move typically signaling the danger of a collapse of diplomatic relations, or war—underscores the collapse of relations in the European Union (EU) flowing from the relentless incitement of nationalism and militarism by the European ruling class.

Clashes between Paris and Rome have become ever more bitter, as they vied for influence in the EU and backed rival factions in the civil war in Libya that followed the 2011 NATO war. Two years ago, Macron nationalized France’s naval shipyards to keep Italy’s Fincantieri corporation from buying them. When Italy’s far-right government took power, Macron postured as the spokesman of an enlightened Berlin-Paris axis hostile to neofascism, attacking it as “spreading leprosy.”

More recently, Italian officials have increasingly lashed out at France. After organizing with Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro the rendition from Latin America of former Italian leftist Cesare Battisti, who had initially fled from Italy to France, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini attacked Paris over Libya last month. “In Libya, France has no interest in stabilizing the situation, probably because its oil interests are opposed to Italy’s”, he said.

While setting up its own concentration camps for refugees in Libya, a former Italian colony, Rome has kept attacking France’s neocolonial wars in Africa. “Europeans, and the French in particular, have never ceased colonizing Africa,” di Maio said last month. He denounced the CFA franc, aligned on the French currency, used in many of France’s former African colonies: “There are dozens of African countries where France prints a currency, the colonial franc, and with this currency it finances France’s public debt.”

Rome also criticized the US-led coup in Venezuela,

The biggest party in the Italian government, the ‘neither left nor right’ Five Star movement of Di Maio, did. The other government party, the far-right Lega of Salvini, supports Trump’s coup in Venezuela; as stated by the Foreign Affairs Undersecretary of the Lega party Guglielmo Picchi.

which Paris has strongly supported—criticisms French papers attributed to Rome’s sympathies for Russia and China, who support the Venezuelan regime.

It is not for nothing that the French Foreign Ministry reached back to World War II to find a situation comparable to the current crisis between Paris and Rome. Today, over a quarter of a century after its founding in 1992, the EU has not resolved any of the fundamental inter-imperialist conflicts that prompted Italy to attack France on June 10, 1940.

Italian and French troops clashed in the Alps as the Nazi Wehrmacht crushed the bulk of the French army in the north. After the armistice, Hitler negotiated with Nazi-collaborationist dictator Marshal Philippe Pétain, French agriculture and industry were redirected towards German and Italian requirements for war with the Soviet Union. Berlin and Rome militarily occupied much of France’s colonial empire in North Africa, and Rome was authorized to occupy parts of southeastern France.

The similarity in foreign policy between 20th century fascist Europe and European imperialism today is unmistakable. After a quarter century of imperialist wars since the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the threat of war against Russia and China, the struggle for domination in Europe and the plunder of ex-colonial regions is reaching extraordinary intensity.

In 2011, as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, London and Washington launched a war in Libya, despite objections in Germany and from significant forces in Italy, the WSWS warned of the implications the imperialist war drive would have in Europe:

The common front of what former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld derided as “Old Europe” has broken apart. However, it is not to be assumed that Obama has fully worked through the implications of his support for Sarkozy’s schemes. By participating in a war publicly opposed by Berlin, Washington has all but repudiated its decades-long policy of maintaining the political and military unity of Western Europe. It is exacerbating intra-European tensions on a continent already riven by conflicts over economic policies. As has happened in the past, Germany—fearing that it has been outmaneuvered and isolated by its historical adversaries—will look for other means to protect its interests. Once again, Washington has set into motion events which will have disastrous consequences.

This warning has been vindicated. In 2014, Berlin launched a campaign to remilitarize its foreign policy, and the Brexit vote and Trump’s election in 2016 brought to the surface the profound breakdown of the NATO alliance. Now the European powers are all pouring hundreds of billions of euros into their military machines. While Macron said last year that Europe must be ready to fight Russia, China or the United States, the European powers are also preparing to fight each other.

As Britain prepares to leave the EU next month, the EU is in chaos. Bitter divisions persist in Berlin, the dominant EU power, over foreign policy. While Chancellor Angela Merkel is associated to an alliance with Macron, last year saw calls in both the German and Austrian ruling classes for a Berlin-Vienna-Rome “Axis”, reprising the name of World War II-era alliance between Berlin and Rome. Under these conditions, Macron’s sudden decision yesterday not to attend next month’s Munich Security Conference is another sign of deep crisis.

None of the imperialist powers in Europe have anything to offer to the working class, which cannot let itself be drawn behind any of the contending camps. All of them stand for social austerity, militarism, and the defense of the legacy of 20th century European fascism—from German militarist professors seeking to rehabilitate Hitler, to far-right ministers in Italy who hail Mussolini, to Macron, who declared his admiration for Pétain.

The critical issue is the struggle to unify the European and international working class against war on a revolutionary, socialist program.

French-Italian governments’ conflict on refugees

This 18 February 2018 video says about itself:

Italy: Protesters rally at French-Italian border in solidarity with refugees

Some 150 activists protested at the Italian-French border town of Ventimiglia, Sunday, to demonstrate against the heavy French police presence in solidarity with migrants.

The protest, organised by left-wing group ‘No Borders’, was entitled ‘We tread [on] the border’ (Calpestiamo il confine). The protesters climbed up the hills to the border fence, repeating the route that a number of migrants have travelled in order to reach France.

According to the report, 13 people died in the mountains attempting to cross the border, which is now separated with a chain fence and barbed wire.

Protester (Italian): “This border is not only represented by this physical frontier, but also what happens everyday in Ventimiglia and nearby areas. We are here to stress the fact that we don’t recognise this border. We don’t consider it as a real border. Freedom of movement for everybody.”

Dutch NOS TV reports today that the French Macron administration has recalled its ambassador from Italy because of conflicts between these two governments.

The right-wing Macron government and the Italian government, a coalition between the extreme right Lega and the ‘neither left nor right’ Five Star Movement, accuse each other viciously. The paradox is that in these accusations by both governments there is some truth, but also much hypocrisy.

The Italian government says that the cause of the refugees trying to cross the Mediteranean is ‘French colonial policy’. That is definitely partly true. Until the 1960s, big parts of Africa were French colonies. Much violence, economic exploitation. With consequences till today. After the 1960s, French colonialism changed to neocolonialism. Though the ex-colonies were now officially independent, French governments kept supporting pro-French local dictators and invading African countries for uranium or other resources every now and then. In 2011, French President Sarkozy was a major instigator of the NATO war on Libya. Because he wanted French oil corporation Total to grab Libyan oil wealth; and because he wanted to cover the tracks of payment of his presidential election campaign by the Libyan Gadaffi administration.

That Libya war never stopped, and led to a country in ruin: healthcare destroyed, women’s rights down the drain, slavery brought back after its 19th century abolition, torture, ISIS, bloodshed everywhere. And from Libya at war, the violence spread to many other African countries. Which led to more French neocolonial invasions and war crimes. And this way, indeed, to more refugees.

So, why is the Italian government not just partly correct, but also hypocritical? Because, like France, Italy has a bloody colonial past and a neocolonial present in Africa. Fascist dictator Mussolini, praised now by Italian Deputy Prime Minister Salvini, and his predecessors caused horrible bloodbaths making Eritrea, Ethiopia and ‘Italian’ Somalia Italian colonies. Mussolini’s soldiers and concentration camps in Libya killed hundreds of thousands.

After Italian colonialism came Italian neocolonialism. Eg, by Silvio Berlusconi, participating in the NATO war on Libya to grab some oil and letting the refugees of that war drown or imprisoning them. And by later Italian governments, with their harsh anti-refugee policies and their handing over of Italian taxpayers’ money to torturers and slave traders in Libya to stop refugees from coming to Italy. So, Italian politicians, like French ones (and US American ones … and British ones … etc.), have definitely contributed to the refugee crisis.

The Macron government in France criticizes the Italian government because of its anti-refugee policy. Again: there is truth in that. But also much hypocrisy.

Because the French government violently attacks refugees in Paris, Calais and elsewhere.

Because the French government violently, including with torture of children, tries to stop refugees from crossing the French-Italian border. European Union or no European Union.

Talking about the European Union: that is another reason for conflict between France and Italy. The Macron administration wants a centralized European Union. The government in Rome wants decentralisation. The logical consequence of centralizing the European Union is: making national borders ‘soft borders’. However, ‘pro-European’ Macron is inconsequent; making the French-Italian border a very ‘hard’ border.

The French National Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Monday to approve President Emmanuel Macron’s “anti-riot” law, undermining the right to protest and further expanding police powers: here.